cover image The Cyanide Process

The Cyanide Process

Jennifer Rahn. Bundoran (Diamond, dist.), $15.95 trade paper (253p) ISBN 978-1-927881-20-0

This is Rahn’s (Wicked Initiations) first science fiction novel, and her inexperience shows. Gina Delgado, the protagonist, is a researcher of gene-splicing techniques who is forced by her employer, ZerronTech, to work for Samuel Greigsen—the man who sabotaged her project and caused her disgraced exile to a backwater mining planet. Gina quickly discovers that Samuel has a hidden agenda for her research that will make her complicit in piracy, murder, and the illegal creation of metahumans. She’s caught in a power struggle among Samuel, ZerronTech, and the Yoshinogari, an organized crime family of Japanese cyborgs without a home. Gina struggles to stay alive while keeping her research out of the wrong hands. Although the science may be plausible, the needed exposition is dry and clumsily handled. Worse, the narrative is hopelessly regressive; casual sexism and racism are recurring themes, as are compulsory breeding programs. Gina is a passive protagonist who is dragged from one set piece to the next, is obliged to do “woman things,” occasionally gets to do some science, has lots of feelings, and mostly fails to affect the plot. The pacing is inconsistent, and the narrative, despite being a tale of metahumans and cyborgs among the stars, is unimaginative. (Oct.)