This Cruel Design

August 15, 2018
A new virus threatens humanity in the follow-up to This Mortal Coil (2017).It's only been a week since 18-year-old crackerjack coder Catarina "Cat" Agatta sent the vaccine she helped develop into the gentech embedded in every person, eradicating a terrible virus that caused its victims to detonate, leaving survivors holed up in underground bunkers. Unfortunately, Cartaxus scientist Dr. Lachlan Agatta, who taught Cat everything she knows, and who she thought was her father until recently, has fled, taking his plan to recode humanity with him. Cat and her companions must stop Lachlan and find a way to head off a new strain of the virus that kills even faster than the last before Cartaxus takes extreme measures. Additionally, Cat's suppressed childhood memories are coming back with a vengeance, and she must come to terms not only with her identity, but also her destiny. Suvada has created a fascinating, complex world where DNA can be easily manipulated (and where race isn't easily defined) and technology can open the mind to endless possibilities. Respecting her readers, she offers plenty of food for thought about how far technology can take humanity and how far we should let it. Plenty of (occasionally terrifying) action and twists keep the pages turning all the way to the revelatory finale. New readers may be a bit lost and will want to begin with the first volume.Convoluted but breathlessly exciting. (Science fiction. 14-18)

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October 1, 2018
Grades 9-12 Genius hacker Catarina Agatta continues to learn disturbing truths about herself and her father, Lachlan. Cat and Cartaxus soldier Cole, antagonists in the first book (This Mortal Coil?, 2017), are now a couple, dedicated to finding and killing Lachlan, whose experiments in reprogramming humanity have had disastrous consequences. Captured by Cartaxus leader Brink, Cat and Cole are sent, along with enigmatic genius coder Mato, to the hidden desert city of Entropia to try to find Lachlan. But Cat keeps having distressing flashbacks that lead her to believe that she is in fact not Catarina Agatta but Jun Bei, another young genius hacker who Lachlan tortured in his experiments. Jun Bei rebelled, fought back, and was destroyed?or was she? Meanwhile, the Hydra virus, responsible for a terrible pandemic, seems to have resurfaced, and coding is the way to control it. While it does seem as if every problem rides on Cat's shoulders (can't anyone else step in?), it's still exciting to see a young woman at the center of a coding adventure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)