The Athena Factor [Hardcover]

W. Michael Gear (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 23, 2005

Bizarre celebrity thefts are occurring all over the world: A piece of hair from John Lennon, Julia Roberts' bed linens, and Sheela Marks, Hollywood's hottest actress, is constantly being approached in odd ways by obsessed fans literally out for a piece of her. Paranoid and desperate for her own safety, she turns to her security expert, ex-Marine Lymon Bridges, who must match wits with his most formidable opponent yet.
One of Bridges's new recruits, Christal Anaya, was a hot shot FBI agent who recently lost her job due to a major slip-up during one of the agencies most sought after cases. Now Bridges hopes to use her investigative expertise to unveil the perpetrator behind these "attacks." But what she finds is far stranger than anything coming out of Hollywood. A major genetics firm has been all over the world, kidnapping the best genetic scientists to use their expertise in a bizarre black market trade of celebrity DNA, and its megalomaniacal mastermind will stop at nothing until the world is as beautiful as Hollywood's A-list.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dr. Frankenstein has at last perfected his art and hung out his shingle in Hollywood. The Athena Facor is a hell of a novel."---Stephen Coonts

"In The Athena Factor, Michael Gear has transformed America's obsession with Hollywood beauty into an epic thriller of transcendent terror. I thought the world would come to an end with comet strikes, mushroom clouds, and apocalyptic plagues. I never dreamed we'd overwhelm the earth with J-Lo look-alikes and George Clooney clones."-Jack Anderson, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist

About the Author

W. MICHAEL GEAR, who holds a master's degree in archaeology, has worked as a professional archaeologist since 1978. He is currently principal investigator for Wind River Archaeological Consultants.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; First Edition edition (June 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765311666
• ISBN-13: 978-0765311665
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,725,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

W. Michael Gear has co-written 23 international bestsellers which have been translated into 21 languages. His novel People of the Raven won the Golden Spur Award in 2005. Michael's solo novel Morning River was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1998. In addition to writing both fiction and non-fiction, the Gear operates an anthropological research company called Wind River Archaeological Consultants, and raises buffalo on his ranch in northern Wyoming.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad action if you skip most of the philosophizing, March 10, 2006

By 

Keith Nichols (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Athena Factor (Hardcover)

This isn't too bad a read, although the action bogs down here and there as the author lets his characters expatiate on the pros and cons of cloning people and whatever that seems to entail. It's easy enough to skip these interludes and get on to whatever action is under way at the time they crop up. The characters are not that well developed, tending toward the stock rugged he-men and gorgeous babes (who are actually very well developed) that populate many examples of this sort of novel. The plot gimmick that gets the ball rolling is that many folks who want babies would rather give birth to a clone of some celebrity than whatever might result from their own DNA. The possibility of using genetic fiddling to correct "bad" genes is also broached.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hollywood fluff & science don't mx, August 6, 2005

By 

A. Husted (Overland Park, KS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Athena Factor (Hardcover)

I usually don't read these types of books, but thought I'd give this one a chance. While it was entertaining, it certainly doesn't rank up there as a "must read." The plot, while some may think is believable, was totally unbelievable to me, and the characters were quite shallow and stereo-typical. I couldn't bring myself to root for the good guys to get to the bottom of the mysterious goings-on. The ending was quite cheesy and I thought hastily put together. Sure, it wrapped up all the loose ends but did it too easily and without much thought.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Laughably bad, wooden characters, predictable plot, December 9, 2008

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Athena Factor (Mass Market Paperback)

I got this book from a friend for free, and frankly I was robbed. It wasn't worth the money I didn't pay for it. A suspense novel should have some surprises in it, and this one, frankly, has few enough that it isn't suspenseful at all. It's poorly written (some of the dialog is so wooden Mr. Gear must have chopped down a forest or two) and very poorly conceived, with a plot propped up with a lot of scientific gibberish that may, or may not, make sense to someone who knows what the author's talking about. I don't know, but the information is so boring that I didn't really care.

The plot surrounds a sort of Julia Roberts-Jennifer Anniston-Nicole Kidman sort of actress named Sheela Marks. She's a Canadian movie star at the top of her game, making multi-million dollar movies and running from pillar to post every day trying to keep up with her life and career. She has a bodyguard who (of course) is in love with her, and who thwarts an attack in the opening pages of the book. The attacker has a syringe rather than a knife, and our hero the bodyguard can't figure out why a guy would attack his client with a syringe rather than a more effective weapon, especially since the guy has a well-thought out plan and an escape route all scoped out.

So the bodyguard (his name is Lyman Bridges) hires an ex-FBI agent who got fired for having sex with her boss while they were on stakeout. The ex-FBI agent is a heartbreakingly beautiful (of course) Latina who immediately goes to work, and spends way more time than you would expect figuring out what's going on. Then again, since the blurb on the back of the book gives away the plot twist, maybe it wouldn't be that easy to figure out if you didn't already know what was coming. It makes the last part of the book rather predictable, and pretty anti-climactic.

I couldn't really say I enjoyed much of anything about this book. The author does a decent job of portraying the life of a movie star (so I have read; I'm not one myself, so I can't speak from personal experience) but other than that, there's nothing really to recommend this book.