Customer Reviews

Slatewiper

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Usually I'm a sucker for novels that combine cutting edge science with doomsday scenarios and conspiracy theories. They make perfect reads for the beach or for long winter days spent sick in bed with a cold. With a plot that sounds like something out of tomorrow's headlines, Slatewiper looked like it would fit that bill perfectly. It's got genetic engineering, conspiracy theory, racial and ethnic hatreds, and a doomsday scenario realistic enough to give one nightmares. With all this going for it, "Slatewiper" should be a dynamite read. Unfortunately, it falls far short.

So what went wrong with the book? First of all, the charaacters are weak. The main character, Dr. Lara Blackwood, is just too good to be true. Beautiful (of course) and a brilliant scientist-entrepreneur, she's also an Olympic sailor. When I read the book, I kept picturing Laura Croft, although she doesn't fit Blackwood's physical description. The villain, a fanatic Japanese neonational businessman, is equally stereotyped in his racism, ethnocentrism, and general evilness. His heir, a brilliant computer security specialist, is conflicted over his loyalty to his family (including his uncle's extreme view of Japanese racial superiority) and his horror at his uncle's plans. And then there are the sleazy scientist and his business partner, both willing to sell anyone or anything down the river to further their own ambitions. Other characters are brought at the drop of a hat and equally quickly removed. Toward the end of the story, each new character starts looking increasingly like a proverbial deus ex machina, appearing conveniently just when needed. None of these problems would be fatal, however, if the plot didn't suffer too many holes to carry the weight of the wooden characters.

It's unfortunate, because Perdue does have a point to make in "Slatewiper"-actually several points, all of them worth making. The first is the abysmal history of atrocities committed by the Japanese during World War II, for which, he and others have contended they were given what amounts to a "get out of jail free" card. Unrepenent ultranationalist and ultraright wing movements do exist in Japan today, but Perdue takes their existence and exaggerates them to horrendous proportions. He's using them to make a specific point about racial hatred and its futility in light of modern genetics. However, he depicts them as being so deeply and insidiously entrenched in positions of power, that it feels like overkill. At times I wondered if Perdue might be working out personal grudges here as well as making fiction. Nonetheless, many of the most effective scenes in the book were descriptions of traditional Japanese culture.

Perdue's second point, namely the stupidity of racial and ethnic hatreds and the essential genetic unity of the human species, is even more important. Unfortunately, he doesn't handle it as well. Much of the plot turns on the ability of modern genetics to discern genes that separate one ethnic group from another and to target genetic bombs to attack specific groups. Here, his science (or at least his presentation of it) is muddled. Yes, there are genetic differences between groups and some genes are more common in one group than another, but it's extremely unlikely that geneticists will ever find a way of identifying genetic boundaries between groups. We're just too much alike as a species and there's been too much interbreeding throughout history (and prehistory) to be able to make hard and fast distinctions. Race remains important, but largely for cultural rather than biological reasons. I think Perdue knows this (at least judging from his treatment of Arabs and Jews), but he leaves it unstated so as not to undermine the device upon which his plot rests. Overall, his explanation of the underlying genetic theory underlying the plot is brief. It's adequate, but barely. I wish that he had expanded it to something more than a two page summary near the beginning of the book. Better presentation of the science would have made for a more credible plot.

"Slatewiper" is an attempt to warn readers about the dangers of genetically-engineered bioterrorism. To some extent it's successful. Unfortunately, the failures of the novel undermine the points Perdue wants to make. "Slatewiper" is an ok book, but it's not the wake-up call Perdue would like it to be.

Just finished this book in paperback, and all I can think is "I paid $8.47 for this" ?
I don't read much modern fiction and this book has reminded me why.
It reads just like a movie script and I've noticed this is typical of today's lightweight fiction.
The hero of the story is basically a female Batman.
Mr. Perdue, you should've just thrown in a superhero costume !
She's 29 yrs old and gorgeous. Her father was a Navy SEAL. She knows karate. She won an Olympic silver medal in rowing. She then started up a extremely successful genetic medicines lab. She developed cutting edge genetic disease treatments and is destined for the "Nobel Prize". She's a millionare. She spends her downtime (how does she have any?) taking part in "great solo around-the-world races" aboard her 56ft yacht, which she co-designed at Norway's most prestigious shipbuilding yard. At the "excitng" end of the novel, she becomes a ninja-like ruthless killer.

And the bad guys can't shoot !

Here are the three somewhat interesting things found in "Slatewiper";
1. A suggestion that Japan is experiencing a renewed nationalistic/racial supremacist movement. Mr. Perdue even includes reference to several racist articles that are widely read in today's Japan. I "Googled" these articles and they do indeed exist.
2. The concept of a ethnic targeting bio-weapon is intriguing.
3. The heroes develop an E-Bomb in latter chapters. Popular Mechanics magazine did a cover story on the E-Bomb, I believe in it's Dec.2001 issue. What significant about this EMP weapon is that it maybe of interest to terrorists (a fact that Mr. Perdue repeats many times) and that it's relatively cheap and easy to construct.

Ok, I gave it away. Now you don't have to waste your money.

Slatewiper is a chilling tale, especially the parts that seem to have come true since Perdue's writing of it. The Red Cross, Brotish Medical Association and others are now warning about the sort of race weapon in Slatewiper. I particularly liked the Heroine and how she struggled with her body image even after success in athletics and being an entrepreneur. She is not beautiful in a typical sense, but has a womanly beauty that appeals to me.

I think a strong woman like Kate Blackwood frightens men. I like that too,

The writing in this book is superb and the tension and action make it a top action thriller.

Perhaps the only female superstar in the molecular genetics world, CEO Lara Blackwood runs GenIntron, a bioengineering lab, a firm developing cures or treatments for diseases using synthetic genes made from DNA. Lara feels good about her work and even serves as an advisor to the president. However, her perfect world crumbles when GenIntron's new parent company board fires her and Tokyo is devastated by a deadly disease that uses a person's DNA to kill he or she.

SLATEWIPER contains a synthetic gene similar to Lara's work that destroys people from within by converting them into slime. The Korean population residing in Tokyo is being eradicated as a genocide conspiracy of biblical proportion is happening. Lara is the only hope to stop Tokutaru Kurata from ethnic cleansing that will leave Japan for the Japanese. The quest becomes even more personal when Laura finds out that a hitwoman is killing off Lara's scientific associates.

Exciting, plausible perhaps even today, SLATEWIPER is a superb thriller starring a strong woman who, except for the macho male muffins, readers will appreciate. The story line is action packed yet the author makes sure the scientific basis for the theme is presented, easily understood in spite of the complexity of the topic, yet interwoven into the plot so nothing slows it down. Fans of scientific based thrillers will quickly realize that this book is worth setting aside several because once you start, you are hooked at a microbiological brain level to finish it in one sitting.

Harriet Klausner

Why, you ask? Maybe it is because I felt dirty after reading it. Perdue does a fantastic job of digging up the lowest scum of mankind and then making that scum turn into characters on paper. After reading the book I feel like ranting on and on about politics, terrorism, and the deep seeded corruption that lies within the very men and women that we look upon to save us. But I will not to that. I will tell you to read this book and to open your eyes to the possibility that this could be our future. (The author's note at the end is a powerful statement by Lewis Perdue, make sure you read it.)

I am a huge fan of political and end-of-the-world thrillers so I was looking forward to this book. However, shallow uninteresting cartoonish characters caught in ridiculously inplausible situations made this book agony to read, I couldn't even finish it. It only gets one star because the bad guys [Kurata and Rycroft] were so wonderfully evil. As for Shirley, the well-stacked [albeit "surgically augmented"] chain-smoking assassin, well our hero is lucky that burning building just happened to collapse on her just in the nick of time. Whew! I was worried there for a nanosecond.

People's anxiety about the misuse of genetic technologies and bioterrorism provides a timely backdrop for a new novel about a virus programmed to kill Koreans living in Japan. In Slatewiper, Lewis Perdue has imagined a disease whose victims are targeted by the genes they carry. The result is an entertaining if overwrought thriller that has plenty of carnage and some genetic detective work.
Hired by the White House to help the investigation into a mysterious, 100% fatal disease that seems to be afflicting only Koreans living in Tokyo, geneticist Lara Blackwood is drawn into an international conspiracy concerning bioengineering, ethnic cleansing, and, on a more personal level, a hit woman out to kill everyone Lara knows.
The Japanese characters on these pages are one-dimensional vessels of nationalism and xenophobia. Only one sympathetic Japanese protagonist exists, and he was conspicuously educated in California .
For those with a hardy stomach and a lust for adventure, Slatewiper may provide an enjoyable ride.

I chose the book because it's about gene-tampering to produce a plague (just my cuppa!) but it was disappointing in terms of story and not well written. Although I did learn quite a lot about WWII atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army. This happens to be one of Perdue's buttons but he does make a good case that whilst we Westerners are fairly well informed about the Holocaust, we are much less aware of 6 million killed by the Imperial Army in China, Korea, the Philipines and other Asian locales.

When this book first came out, I skimmed it and tossed it aside about half-way through.

Well, six years or so later, I'm still a post-apoc fan, so I thought I'd been hasty and would give it another chance. Bad idea.

The heroine is a case study for "Mary Sue" characters (and why we hate them). Tall, stacked, gorgeous, brilliant, athletic, dedicated to humanity, enormously stacked, owns a racing yacht that she helped design, it goes on and on. I wanted this broad dead and/or disfigured so much that it hurt.

However, the worst part is that a really good idea for a novel has been wasted. This was a fantastic, mind-bending premise: a virus genetically engineered to attack a specific race or ethnicity. Race-killing made to order. Instead of getting into the unintended consequences of such a weapon, the author uses car chases and ninja fighting and lots of chances for the ultra-stacked heroine to wear tight clothes. A crime against storytelling.

Unfortunately, if any other writer tries to tackle this storyline, they'll be accused of stealing it. What a waste.

See book summary above.

I was very surprised by this international thriller. There wasn't much said about it, yet it ranks right up there with one of the best I've read recently. It's based on the interesting premise of creating a genetic virus that attacks (with 100% fatalities) only certain ethnic groups. The leader of that group is a powerful neo-nationalist japanese industrialist.
As well as being very suspenseful and well written, Lewis Perdue has done a lot of research regarding Japan's atrocities during WW2, ranking very near the cruelty of the Nazis. The science is solid, too.
I recommend this to anyone who likes a good scientific/medical thriller with international locales.