I’ve been interested in dystopia books for a while now, and I must say, they sure have a way of finding me! Today, as part of Lola’s Blog Tours, I want to share about my latest dystopian read – Kingdom: Tiber City Blues by Anderson O’Donnell. Check out the rest of the schedule here and the synopsis below.
In a secret laboratory hidden under the desert, a covert bioengineering project—codename “Exodus”—has discovered the gene responsible for the human soul.
Somewhere in the neon sprawl outside the nation’s collapsing economic core, a group of renegade monks are on the verge of uncovering a secret that has eluded mankind for centuries.
In a glittering tower high above the urban decay, an ascendant U.S. Senator is found dead–an apparent, yet inexplicable, suicide.
And in the streets below, a young couple races through an ultra-modern metropolis on the verge of a violent revolution….closing in on the terrible truth behind Exodus–and one man’s dark vision for the future of mankind.
The Short Take – From Goodreads
Kingdom: Tiber City Blues is a one-of-a-kind book. Exploring the consequences of experiments to create humans, this was an interesting read. Tiber City is home to Morrison Medical, a biotech corporation that is well known for its groundbreaking vaccines and treatments. However, there is something else going on at its facilities – a project that has been kept a secret for a long time, until now. Following the story of Campbell, the scientist who fathered this Project Exodus, and left it couple decades ago, Dylan Fitzgerald, whose father is recently decreased, and Megan, the daughter of Morrison Medical’s CEO, this novel focuses on how these characters are connected and pivotal to Project Exodus.
I found the first half of the book a little dense to go through but once the foundations were laid out, the second half was fast-paced. A big part of the story is the disintegration of society and the need to create perfect humans, the motivation for which is spiritual and scientific at the same time. This was a little hard to grasp at points along the story, about why certain things were happening and were important, but overall, all loose ends seem to be tied towards the end.
Kingdom: Tiber City Blues offers a raw, focused perspective on the humanistic aspect of biotech advancements. Different from the other books I have recently read in the genre.
The Long Take – Themes for Thought
On building an empire
Kingdom: Tiber City Blues mentions that the Omega gene, the gene that has been shrouded in mystery for the longest time, has been discovered. The research that Campbell started with Morrison, is finally materializing into something, a decade after Campbell is washed his hands off it. Morrison, alone, has built his empire of cheap health care in the Tiber City in exchange for people being test subjects. The motivation behind this seems like the scientific-need-to-know, and made me wonder about the bigger concept.
Is an artificial human still human?
If we do succeed in building humans, we would obviously want them to the have the best of the best qualities – whether it is looks or intelligence (their definitions being subjective as well). From what I understand of the storyline, artificial humans, with their amazing qualities, would also be able to keep an audience captive. But think about the fear that intelligent computers – Artificial Intelligence – holds in our imagination and real life. There are numerous articles on the Internet about the fear of the AI… would our society accept artificial humans the same way?
Morrison does not seem to ask these questions – this is the reason why I say scientific-know-how. He has built an empire, prying on the needs of the desperate people and letting science take its course, putting humanity in a box, somewhere locked away. But isn’t that exactly the kind of drive needed to accomplish something like this?
On spirituality and the mystical
With Morrison Medical controlling the city, in the undercurrents is The Order, a group of monks and other spiritual people who have been conducting their own tests to learn more about humans, their interest being in part of the brain responsible for activity, when a person is under a trance. They are trying to find the relationship between genes and the probability of experiencing something mystical.
The Order was looking at what could replicate, or cause lack of replication of these mystical experience, and that ultimately caught Morrison’s attention. I commend Anderson for taking this angle and showing two distinct aspects of studying the brain – the first, why scientists and religious people find it a fascinating subject, and second, how advances in science can affect religion and what people believe in.
** Kingdom: Tiber City Blues is now out in stores so get a copy and let me know what you think! Let’s have a book-discussion! **
Amazon Print
I am thankful to Lola Blog Tours and the author, for providing me a complimentary copy of the book as part of the blog tour, in exchange for an honest review. Be sure to check out the blog tomorrow for a Q&A with the author. Kingdom: Tiber City Blues has made it to my list of dystopian novels that will feature in a future article about the themes is dystopia based on the books in the genre I read in 2019. Stay tuned for that as well! 🙂
Cover image: Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more book thoughts on Armed with A Book!
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