The horror of genetics run amok rears its ugly head in The Dragon Factory as Nazi clones continue the work of Mengele on the edges of civilization, where they are plotting a new, genetic world order, a world radically remade according to Nazi delusions of genetic purity.
Meanwhile, Joe Ledger, Baltimore ex-cop and defender of the world from a zombie menace in Patient Zero, is about to be arrested by the NSA at the beginning of this high contact action adventure novel, putting a dent in his ability to take on two deadly enemies — the strange, genetically perfect beings known as the Jakoby Twins, and their corrupt father, Cyrus – before the Extinction Clocks runs out.
The Vice President, working under the influence of the sadistic and sexually perverted cream-white twins, has used the President’s coma to try and take down Ledger’s organization, the DMS (Department of Military Sciences), in order to steal Mindreader, a computer algorithm capable of infiltrating any database in the world without leaving a single electronic trace. The twins need it in order to steal genetic engineering secrets locked away in electronic vaults their hacking capabilities cannot pierce.
The plot against the DMS by the Vice President, however, is somewhat of a loose cog inside the plot engine, its action causing the thrill machine to cough and sputter rather than rev up as it starts on a run toward apocalyptic battles, adding nothing to the neo-Nazi plot as far as the tension of the story is concerned: the threat posed by the NSA isn’t very threatening when it comes right down to it — it is hard to imagine two government agencies really taking one another on in a real way. Consequently, the NSA angle is more of a distraction than a real danger for Ledger’s Echo Team and his attempts to evade the NSA come across as half-hearted. Indeed, the NSA’s attempts to take Ledger down as just as flat. It would seem that in the action adventure genre, there is little room for the moral ambiguities inherent in the enemy within motif that the NSA vs. DMS subplot suggests, and, consequently, the inclusion of this subplot reduces the overall thrust of the action.
Article comments
1 - Fitz
Great review. I enjoyed The Dragon Factory, but loved Patient Zero more. I'm very excited about Rot & Ruin, the first in the Benny Imura series that began with the short story "Family Business" in the zombie story anthology The New Dead.