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Dusk

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Somewhere in the backwoods, a lab assistant named Curtis is working at a government laboratory called SERU. His job is to take care of the lab rats and make sure they don't kill each other. These are not your common variety lab rats; they were bred to be ruthless predators. There is one particular rat called General, a white rodent with an extra large brain that is smarter and more dangerous than it first seems. Curtis realizes that there are "experiments" that are far more disturbing than killer rats, but knows that it's better to pretend not to notice and stay out of trouble.

One evening, during a routine feeding, Curtis hears something seeking attention from another lab. He decides to ignore the noise at first, but is startled when the mysterious creature asks for food and starts shrieking. This makes the lab rats restless and Curtis curious. He decides to find out what is hidden in the other room. What, or rather who, he finds is nothing like he has ever met before or will ever meet again.

At first, all Curtis sees is a distressed young girl with white blond hair, but then he notices the brilliant orange eyes that are the reason for her trapped existence. Dusk is the product of a military experiment gone wrong. Many years before, the army wanted to see if soldiers could have night vision. A human embryo was injected with hawk genes, and Dusk was born. They found that she was more than they could handle, so they have kept her sedated and locked in a cage during most of her young life.

While Curtis is trying to make sense of the shocking discovery, a fire accidentally breaks out and burns down the military facility. Curtis manages to rescue Dusk and himself from being victims of the deadly blaze, but loses sight of Dusk as she escapes to the nearby ghost town of Prospect. Dusk isn't the only "experiment" to survive, as General, along with some of his followers, and Wolf --- a killer guard dog --- also flee to Prospect.

Two years go by, and Curtis's son Jay shows up from the city to stay with his dad in the backwoods for the summer. Jay is going through some tough times and doesn't understand his religious mother or his father, who turns to drinking to drown out his pain. One day, he decides to run errands and goes by Prospect. Meanwhile, Dusk keeps watch from the steeple of a church as the mutant survivors take turns during the day ruling the ghost town. Little do Jay and Dusk know that their very different worlds are about to collide and be turned upside down.

DUSK is a stunning work of science fiction that is interesting and disturbing at the same time. It reminds readers just how far we've come from the early days of sci-fi, when ideas like computers and space age were thought to be unrealistic and impossible. Hopefully, combining animal and human genes together in freak experiments won't happen anytime soon. One thing is for sure though: readers will find this book hard to put down.

[...]

i first picked this book up in high school and have come back to it on many occasions simply because it's so easy to love.

The story of a government experiment, Dusk, and a simple boy, Jay. Dusk, having been the subject of an experiment to give soldiers night vision, is part human/part hawk. Having escaped, she lives in a deserted ghost town, watching, from a distances, as the other escapee's fight for dominion over this cursed place. Equal parts innocent and wise, Dusk is possibly TOO human. With the intelligence of a child and the instincts of a hawk, she wasn't taught to interact with the rest of humanity.

Jay, on the other hand, is just a plain child. The son of the lab janitor that inadvertently freed Dusk and the other lab occupants, he foolishly stumbles into this quarantined town and finds Dusk. This is the story of all that follows in that town, told from the shifting vantage points of all the key players.

While the premise for the book sounds silly or absurd when summarized, the stark and utterly blunt way the story unfolds leaves you feeling that something like this COULD be possible, and that alone is enough to frighten. I loved this book in high school and I still love it. There really is no reason not to enjoy this simple piece of sci-fi indulgence, even if you dont want to think about undertones and the what-not. especially the what-not.

Now if Susan Gates happens to read this, PLEEEEEASE make a sequel. I'll be your friend :3

Non-Fiction
Dusk
By Susan Gates

This was one of my favorite books this year because it has the best story line to it. This fantastic fiction story is about how future scientist wanted to experiment to see if humans cold have vision like hawks. Dusk the young girl that they experimented on knows nothing about herself. She can be very dangerous to humans and to herself depending on her mood. They keep her in a cage like place that has gas to make her sleepy so she wont hurt herself. When the military center gets destroyed, Dusk and all the other animals run to a near by town called Prospect that no one lives in anymore and she has to learn how to survive on her own. As years pass she meats a boy named Jay that is about 15, and she doesn't know which side she should be on. So now she has to make a decision to kill Jay or let him help her with a really bad situation that she is in right now. Jay doesn't know what to do about this so he has to decide quickly or something bad may happen to Dusk. There are many problems they face and one of them is seriously dangerous. The reason I love this book is because it has adventure and extraordinary details that make the story even better. You can find this book about any war in the young adult section in any library.
If you do end up reading this I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

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