The Genius Wars [Hardcover]

Catherine Jinks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2010

The thrilling Genius trilogy is now bigger and better.

Boy genius Cadel Piggott has a new name (Cadel Greenaius), a new family, and a new life. No more illegal hacking, no more false identities, and most of all, no more Prosper English. But when his best friend, Sonja, is attacked, it’s up to him to figure out who was behind it. Before he knows it, Cadel is crossing oceans and continents, barreling back into the depths of the criminal activity he thought he’d left behind, and coming face-to-face with Prosper English once again. Can Cadel track down Prosper before it’s too late? And what rules will he have to break in the process?

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Product Description
Boy-genius Cadel Piggot has a new name (Cadel Greenaius), a new family, and a new life. No more illegal hacking, no more false identities, and most of all, no more Prosper English. But when his best friend Sonja is attacked, it's up to him to figure out who was behind it. Before he knows it, Cadel is crossing oceans and continents, barrelling back into the depths of the criminal activity he thought he'd left behind, and coming face to face with Prosper English once again. Can Cadel track down Prosper before it's too late? And what rules will he have to break in the process?

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Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Catherine Jinks, Author of The Genius Wars

Dear Amazon Readers,

Well, here it is--the final installment. I'm sorry it's taken so long for The Genius Wars to reach you over there in the U.S., but at last your wait is over!

I've had a lot of messages on my website asking me if this is really the end of the series. My answer continues to be: yes, this really is the last we'll see of Cadel, if only because I've pretty much tied up all the loose ends in his story. At the conclusion of Evil Genius, Cadel was left in a kind of limbo. At the end of Genius Squad, Prosper English was still looming in the background. (It was quite obvious to me that Prosper wasn't going to just vanish into thin air, leaving Cadel to get on with his life.) But now, in The Genius Wars, I've sorted things out between Cadel and Prosper. And since the whole series revolves around their relationship, there's nowhere else for me to go.

Besides, I'm not a computer expert. I'm not a math whiz, either. That's why these books have been incredibly hard to write; if my friend Richard Buckland hadn't helped me, I wouldn't have been able to finish them at all. For those of you who aren't familiar with Richard, he's a bona fide computer expert--and a math whiz, too--and he appears in The Genius Wars under his own name because I felt that he deserved some kind of recognition. (You can view many of his university lectures on YouTube, by the way; his lecture on Turing is particularly fine.)

Of course, if someone offered me a million dollars to write a fourth book, I'd be horribly tempted. How could any author not be? But I'd be dancing with the devil if I did accept an offer like that, knowing full well that trying to write a fourth book would not only half-kill me--it would be downright wrong. In a funny sort of way, it would also be unfair to Cadel. You'll know what I mean, once you read the book.

So happy reading! And thanks for all the positive feedback you've given me over the years. I wouldn't have been able to keep slogging on without it.

-Cathy

(Photo © Peter Dockrill)

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From Booklist

Cadel Piggot Greenaius has a new family and hopes for a brighter future, but a series of “accidents” convinces him that Prosper, whom he mistakenly thought was his father, has both discovered the truth of their relationship and thinks the 15-year-old boy might be meddling in his evil schemes. Even with a new police detective stepfather, Cadel knows he is the only person who can take Prosper down, permanently. Cadel’s story, started in Evil Genius (2007) and continued in Genius Squad (2008), careens to a finish in this book, which also includes several characters from previous titles. Jinks is an entertaining writer, which helps ameliorate the thin plotting. Her imaginative use of technology, which may have some readers seeking an idiot’s guide to programming, creates some truly tense moments, and Cadel is Everyman enough for readers to root for in the thick of things. Fans of the trilogy will delight in this concluding volume, and it will also appeal to gadget-crazy boys—and girls—who enjoyed Alex Rider’s adventures. Grades 7-10. --Cindy Welch

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books; 1 edition (September 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152066195
• ISBN-13: 978-0152066192
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

CATHERINE JINKS was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1963. She grew up in Papua New Guinea and later spent four years studying medieval history at the University of Sydney. After working for several years in a bank, she married a Canadian journalist and lived for a short time in Nova Scotia, Canada. She is now a full-time writer, residing in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales with her husband Peter and their daughter Hannah.Catherine is a three-time winner of the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year award, and has also won a Victorian Premier's Literature Award, the Ena Noel Award for Children's Literature, and an Aurealis Award for Science Fiction. In 2001 she was presented with a Centenary Medal for her contribution to Australian Children's Literature.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exciting conclusion to a terrific trilogy, September 17, 2010

By 

Sheila L. Beaumont (South Pasadena, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Genius Wars (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

In this, the third and final book in the saga of Cadel Piggott (now Cadel Greeniaus), the boy genius has at last been able to abandon his life of deception, crime and illegal hacking, imposed on him by his purported father, Prosper English, and has settled down into a much-desired normal life with a kindly police detective, Saul Greeniaus, and his social-worker wife, Fiona. Things are going along just fine, when Cadel's best friend, Sonja, who has cerebral palsy, is attacked, and bad things continue to happen to Cadel and those close to him. Evidently, the malevolent Prosper English is behind all this, and Cadel must track him down.

Like the first two books, this well-written cyber-thriller is packed with suspense, lively characters you can care about, and a complex, intriguing plot that keeps you turning the pages. I was a bit taken aback by the ending, which was not quite what I'd expected. It's not a bad ending, but it left me wanting more. Ms. Jinks, however, tells us that this is the final book about Cadel's adventures. Nonetheless, this is still an exciting, well-crafted trilogy that shouldn't be missed. Be sure to read "Evil Genius" and "Genius Squad" before you start this one!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Techno-Potter?, April 11, 2011

By 

The Dread Pirate Roberts (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Genius Wars (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I am going to start out by saying that I had not read the first two books in this series before I read "The Genius Wars", but there was enough back-story worked into this installment that I never felt lost or confused.

I enjoyed "The Genius War", finding it to be based upon an interesting premise, though one which might have been arrived at by the following recipe: "Toss a couple of Artemis Fowl books and a volume or two of Harry Potter into a shredder, sift together and bake at 350-deg. for 45 minutes... ".

Seriously though, the adventures of Cadel Greeniaus (née Piggott) and his disparate group of brainiac, computer genius friends and associates are quite entertaining -- from criminal super-hacker in training to boy genius computer expert police associate to mild-mannered high-school-aged college computer science student, Cadel has gone through some changes since his debut in "Evil Genius". There is a lot happening in a short span of time here, but the action is not so rapid-fire as to be difficult to follow. The characters involved are described well enough for a reader who has not read the first two books to have sufficient sense of them to understand how they fit into the story and what their roles are.

Readers who are not too familiar with computer technology and terminology might be a bit at sea, but just as readers of Patrick O'Brien's seafaring tales may follow the larger storyline by glossing over the overtly technically nautical passages by saying to themselves "and then they went aloft and did something clever with the sails", readers who are less than familiar with gigabytes, USB drives, CGI, and CCTV can gloss over these bits by saying to themselves "and then Cadel and his friends did something clever with a computer", freeing themselves to follow the larger storyline, which is that of Cadel realizing that his nemesis, Prosper English, is after him again, and how he goes about tracking him down in order to eliminate that threat from his life. In both examples the more technically savvy reader will find a bit more depth in the story while the less technically adept need not feel left out -- the basic human situations of the tale are, overall, more important than the technical details.

As an American I found the Australian locations exotic; as a Californian, I found the California locations familiar -- this was an agreeable combination. I also found Cadel to be a sympathetic character; a youngster striving for normality and a chance to pursue his talents and interests in a satisfying and useful life. The fact that he must face physical danger (and try to protect his friends from the danger they face just because they are his friends) and intellectual challenges to follow that path is the basis of the story.

I pondered a 4-star rating for this book, but while it is generally well-written, it falls a bit short of my standards for a 4-star read, partially for its slightly derivative premise and partly for the mildly tiresome repetition of the "boy-genius-is-increasingly-frustrated-by-necessity-of-dealing-with-less-brilliant-adults-who-control-his-world" theme (which is also roughly parallel to a recurring theme in the Harry Potter stories). Readers who are in this book's target audience might not discern these aspects, and might well be less discriminating in their assessment of the pacing and the cohesiveness of the plot - overall, it should play well with the target audience.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it!, December 7, 2010

By 

Janice Sims "a reader & a writer" (Central Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Genius Wars (Hardcover)

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I have to admit, I like the idea of an intellectually stimulating series about a kid who is a computer genius. What I like best is that the author made Cadel very human. He was manipulated from birth and made to believe he was the son of a criminal mastermind. They tried to turn him into a criminal as well. That was in the first book, Evil Genius. Then after a few revelations Cadel tries to reinvent himself. That was a struggle because he'd in essence been brainwashed. I admired him for fighting back against his indoctrination. Most of all he had to get out from under the thumb of his main brainwasher, Prosper English. By the end of the second book, we're given hope that Prosper, who was a fugitive by the close of Genius Squad, would finally leave poor Cadel alone. However in this book people near and dear to Cadel start getting hurt and he suspects Prosper English is once again targeting him. Thus begins his race against time to stop Prosper English once and for all. Cadel's final fight with his nemesis in the Pacific Ocean was exciting. I enjoyed the entire series, and look forward to the author's future novels.