Author: Emily Suvada
Series: This Mortal Coil #1Audience: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Dystopia
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Release Date: November 7th 2017
My Rating: 4.5 Cups
Source: RivetedLit
Blurb (from Goodreads):
In this gripping debut novel, seventeen-year-old Cat must use her gene-hacking skills to decode her late father’s message concealing a vaccine to a horrifying plague.I was kindly encouraged to read this book by not one, not two, but FOUR different friends. Clo, Haley, Kal, and Soph have all instructed me to read this book, and when four bloggers tell you to read a book, you don't resist it, you don't put up a fight, you just read it. I am very glad that I listened to these awesome people.
Catarina Agatta is a hacker. She can cripple mainframes and crash through firewalls, but that’s not what makes her special. In Cat’s world, people are implanted with technology to recode their DNA, allowing them to change their bodies in any way they want. And Cat happens to be a gene-hacking genius.
That’s no surprise, since Cat’s father is Dr. Lachlan Agatta, a legendary geneticist who may be the last hope for defeating a plague that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. But during the outbreak, Lachlan was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called Cartaxus, leaving Cat to survive the last two years on her own.
When a Cartaxus soldier, Cole, arrives with news that her father has been killed, Cat’s instincts tell her it’s just another Cartaxus lie. But Cole also brings a message: before Lachlan died, he managed to create a vaccine, and Cole needs Cat’s help to release it and save the human race.
Now Cat must decide who she can trust: The soldier with secrets of his own? The father who made her promise to hide from Cartaxus at all costs? In a world where nature itself can be rewritten, how much can she even trust herself?
This Mortal Coil is such a great story about survival and human advancement. It's also a great story about humans' dependency on technology, which I also loved.
I was told very early on not to trust anyone in this book, and yet... and yet! The thing is, I had favorites. My ultimate favorite was Agnes, this character who in my head looked like the nicest old lady and just a precious soul that needs protecting. She's not a character that has a lot of page time, but she is the one character that I hope doesn't die, get sick, or turn out to be one of the bad guys. I need Agnes to survive this very interesting and adrenaline fueled trilogy.
My next favorite person was Cat. I loved Cat. Although I wasn't entirely certain why she did certain things, I had faith in her. I loved how she wasn't confident in her choices, as well as the fact that she was confronted by the direct results of her choices. Cole doesn't let her off the hook just because she can help out with this vaccine, and he shows her the various mistakes she's made along the way. I was probably most in love with this book for this very reason. It's not often that I read about main characters being forced to face the outcomes of their decisions, especially when they're the wrong decisions.
Cole was a cinnamon roll wrapped in a cinnamon roll made of marshmallows. Cole deserves all the good stuff in the universe and more. Cole.... Cole. Listen. My heart bled because of this guy. His story is absolutely heartbreaking. There's a prequel novella that's a freebie on the RivetedLit site that shows what his life and the lives of other side characters I will not be mentioning because my heart is not ready for this. I haven't been able to read that novella. I started it and then I remembered why I hated Cat's dad so much, and I just couldn't keep reading because I was insanely angry at what these characters went through.
Let me get back to Cole a little bit. The thing I love most about him, and it's something I've mentioned previously, is that he didn't try to protect Cat's feelings when something went wrong because of her. He wasn't full on "I told you so!!!" but he would tell her "yeah, you messed up, this is why things are bad now". I loved him for it. It's rare that something like that happens in YA, or at least the books that I've read so far, so reading those scenes was like a breath of fresh air.
I loved how technology, coding, and computers, played such an important role in this book. Humans now have chips and entire apps installed to make their lives easier, or to cure then from diseases. I enjoyed seeing where Suvada went with this. Mostly because now, most especially now what with the quarantine, we as humans are attached to our tech a lot, either for work or for fun. It's an interesting idea, being able to hack our DNA and work on it much like you would a math problem. The computer science nerd in my likes this idea a lot. I enjoyed this aspect of the story a lot, and I just want to see where the author will go with this idea next. I am expecting greatness.
There are a lot of surprising plot twists throughout this book. And a few not just surprising, but insanely shocking twists too. I didn't expect a few things to be revealed, while I expected one detail to happen the way it did. I liked that I was right about it. I have pestered the lovely ladies that convinced me to read this book with my theories, and I still believe Dax is just.... Not a good person. I just... I hate him, almost as much as I hate Lachlan.
I truly loved this book. It was action packed, the pacing was great, and the characters were awesome. Yes, okay, even the ones I hate. I am happy that I
