Customer Reviews

Psyclone

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This is a fast and furious read, sort of like Andromeda Strain meets the Road Warrior. A cloning experiment is stolen by a sadistic hi-tech terrorist, who programs it to kill everyone in sight and then sets it loose in a small desert town. Some clever plot twists, lots of hardware and things that explode, and sometimes moves a little too fast to keep track of everything. A few scenes are too gruesome for my taste, sometimes gratuitously so; plus the characters never stop moving. The style is like pulp fiction, meant to keep you turning pages without thinking about it too much. If you like this sort of thing you will not be able to put it down. But it is quite violent and a bit melodramatic. So be warned; otherwise, I recommend it.

"Psyclone" reminds me of those classic Republic serials. The pacing is frantic, the action (and the body count) piles up, and every scene ends on a chaotic cliffhanger. You even get the exploding vehicles. You almost expect it to say, "will our hero escape the fiery bloody horrible death? Find out in the next chapter!" Events move very quickly and the fights, double-crosses and gun battles get increasingly intense as it moves toward a final showdown between the hero, Gene, and his nemesis from the stasis tube. And for the most part it works.

The action starts right at the first page and it may take you halfway through the first chapter to catch up to the pace. A retired Special Forces agent hired to guard and transport an artificially created organism is double-crossed and left for dead, the secrets stolen. He is responsible for getting it back. What he doesn't know is that he is intimately bound to the organism and that he's part of an ongoing experiment to see who has the better genetic "traits." The plot becomes more complex and convoluted as the hero tries to find the creator of the organism.

Pyromaniacs will love it. Everything gets blown up, shot to pieces and burned to the ground. There's a love story in here too, but not of the romance novel type. Not exactly high literature, but a perfect "airport book."

Oh My! You can't catch your breath for even a second in this hyper-adreniline fueled sci-fi/medical thriller. Over the top villians, a luscious heroine, and a complex lead character are wound into this action-packed techno tale. The references to Road Warrior and Andromeda Strain are on target. Be Warned-- this is not for the faint of heart, as there is mucho gore and violence. Just right for a quick summer action pick me up.

Pysclone is a dark, twisted techno-thriller. In his debut novel, Psyclone, Charles Shelton has created a world where AIDS is sham created by a scientist working for the military. When one of the by products of his experiments goes renegade, it is up to a secret operative named Gene Collins and his associates to stop him at all costs. Psyclone is a good read. It has an intelligent, contemporary plot which is bound to make a few waves because of his use of AIDS as a plot device. It is the kind of book that you can lose track of the time. While waiting for a friend to pick me up because of some car problems, the time passed quickly and I didn't notice that I was waiting almost 40 minutes. Charles Shelton has a very literate, yet easy to follow, prose. While the first chapter started a little slowly, the novel rapidly picked up its pace and I was hooked. I also found the character of Gene Collins to be a refreshing addition to the spy/thriller genre. He is bitter on the surface, but beneath he struggles to hold on to his humanity. Gene and his cohorts don't waste time getting down to business. When they have to kill, they do it quickly and efficiently. They don't waste time engaging in idle banter with their targets, as in a James Bond film. I recommend Psyclone very highly.

This is a fast and furious read, sort of like Andromeda Strain meets the Road Warrior. A cloning experiment is stolen by a sadistic hi-tech terrorist, who programs it to kill everyone in sight and then sets it loose in a small desert town. Some clever plot twists, lots of hardware and things that explode, and sometimes moves a little too fast to keep track of everything. A few scenes are too gruesome for my taste, sometimes gratuitously so; plus the characters never stop moving. The style is like pulp fiction, meant to keep you turning pages without thinking about it too much. If you like this sort of thing you will not be able to put it down. But it is quite violent and a bit melodramatic. So be warned; otherwise, I recommend it.