Cover blurb
An electrifying thriller about species re-engineering run amok, Scales is a great, fast-paced read perfect for fans of Jurassic Park.
A secret corporate-military project enhances four men with dinosaur traits to sell the public on a next-gen army of super-soldiers. But weeks before the big media unveiling, Eddie Boka, leader of the dino-prototypes, falls victim to a dark compulsion. His desperate overseers call in Dr. Adelaide LaTour, a therapist rejected by mainstream psychiatry for her wildly unorthodox methods. Sparks fly from the moment the ill-matched pair meet. But Eddie and Adelaide’s mutual antagonism soon takes a back seat to threats from deadly mercenaries and from something far worse, the monstrous byproducts of genetic engineering gone horribly wrong.
My thoughts
Following the middling audience reception to Jurassic Park III in 2001, the future of the franchise was in doubt. One infamous attempt to revive the film series was a screenplay co-written by filmmaker John Sayles. The plot involved trap-door spider raptors, medieval castles, and dinosaurs with human DNA spliced into them. From what I remember, the human DNA only made the dinosaurs smarter, but it wasn’t long before alleged production art surfaced of half-human, half-dinosaur genetic monstrosities. The Sayles script was rejected, although elements of it – such as using dinosaurs as weapons of war – were later incorporated into Jurassic World and its sequels. Scales by Christopher Hinz finally gives us the dinosaur-human hybrids promised by the production art, but like Sayles’ screenplay, it’s a bit of a mess.
Eddie Boka is a volunteer in Project Saurian, a public-private venture in which four soldiers are genetically and surgically altered to have dinosaur-like traits. This is not Jurassic Park, where humanity has obtained actual dinosaur DNA. Rather, the scientists working on the project use DNA from living animals to recreate biological structures similar to those found in dinosaurs. The name “Project Saurian” is a marketing gimmick, as one character explains: “[D]inosaurs are mythic and popular. They represent a powerful aspect of the past that has proved relentlessly intriguing since paleontologists first dug up their bones. Our marketing surveys showed that such terminology is strongly preferable.”
The problem for Eddie is the altercations come with side effects. During his first combat mission, his animal instincts take over and he partially consumes an enemy soldier. Project Saurian’s higher-ups witness the incident via drone, so they hire psychologist Adelaide LaTour to rid Eddie of his cannibalistic tendencies before the project goes public. Adelaide specializes in using shock therapy to cure patients of compulsions, which has made her a pariah in her field, given most psychologists view the treatment as unethical. The shock therapy also doesn’t endear Eddie to Adelaide, at least not at first. The two eventually develop feelings for one another, although both worry that there will be repercussions if their mutual attraction becomes public.
It turns out Eddie’s and Adelaide’s growing romance is the least of their worries. Project Saurian’s leaders are also working on a secret side project involving clones that are more dinosaur than human.
When the dino-human clones were revealed early in the story, I assumed I knew where Scales was heading: The clones would escape, terrorize the countryside, and Eddie and Adelaide would team up to take them down. But the novel takes a more meandering path. Much of it is about the inner workings of Project Saurian and Eddie’s integration into society once the project goes public. The clones don’t really factor in until the very end of the novel. Even Eddie’s romance with Adelaide – which I thought would be the novel’s central focus – is bizarrely truncated. The two characters have a couple of tense therapy sessions and then suddenly have romantic feelings for one another. Why? Readers never see any of the character development that led to their romance, almost as if the author didn’t think it important.
That lack of engagement with either the romance or the threat of the clones makes Scales a chore to get through. Readers spend the most time with Eddie, but I never felt the book delved deeply into his struggle to come to terms with the changes taking place within him. The same with Adelaide, who, again, we never get to understand why she is attracted to this man who is part lizard. The author also introduces a third complication in the second half of the novel that gives the plot some much-needed narrative thrust, but like many other elements of the novel, it is underdeveloped. Scales feels very much like the author had a good idea but couldn’t think of a good story to match it, so it ends up forgettable as a result.
Trivia
- Christopher Hinz has written multiple science fiction novels. His novel Liege-Killer won the Compton Award for best first novel.
- The novel’s premise of a biotech firm using paleontology as a marketing gimmick is timely. Around the same time Scales was released, two real-world biotech companies issued false claims about resurrecting dire wolves and genetically engineering T. rex “leather” for fashion apparel. The irony is Jurassic Park the novel, released in 1990, used dinosaur cloning as a precautionary tale about the commercialization of biotechnology. Now biotech companies use the popularity of the Jurassic Park franchise to sell “dinosaur” products to the public.
Prehistoric Pulp 