Splintered

The Spliced Series, Book 2

By: Jon McGoran

Narrated by: Sophie Amoss

Seventeen-year-old Jimi Corcoran risks her life to clear a friend’s name—and in so doing uncovers the horrific truth about an influential businessman’s motives in this second installment in the Spliced series.

After Del’s death, Jimi wants to pick up the pieces of her life and move on. But she’s become a public figure in her defense of chimeras, and she can’t quite shake the spotlight—or her suspicion that she’s being followed.

When her friend Dr. Guzman, a chimera sympathizer, is arrested for the murder of a chimera wearing a strange medical bracelet, Jimi does some digging—and eventually discovers that Howard Wells, the venal businessman and proponent of the Genetic Heritage Act, is supporting a hospital that ostensibly provides healthcare for chimeras.

After teaming up with friends Rex and Claudia, Jimi learns that the hospital is actually a cover for an extensive mining operation that retrieves metals needed to operate WellPlants, the computerized brain implants that only the super-rich can afford—and which have made Howard Wells millions. When Jimi realizes that the perilous mining is being done by captive chimeras, she risks her own life to shut down the operation—and incurs the wrath of one of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world.

©2018 Jon McGoran (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Political Fantasy

To be very honest I don't like the main character, but the story is so compelling I had to continue the series. It's the sort of book you don't actually like, but then you keep thinking about it for months on end. Even though its a science fiction novel, the similarities to the "real world" are striking. It feels like a modern-day 1984. Is it actually fantasy, or is it a warning of what is yet to come?