Steel Helix [Mass Market Paperback]

Ann Tonsor Zeddies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2003

ORIGINAL SIN

Piers Rameau, a brilliant geneticist, was offered the chance to help design mankind’s replacement—Original Man, a smarter, stronger, swifter race based on manipulated human DNA. But Rameau refused, and chose to follow his own path.

Now Kuno Gunnarsson, creator of Original Man and Rameau's would-be employer, is dead—but his superior creation lives on. And one faction of Original Man is determined to wrest control of the galaxy from the inferior race. A brutal attack destroys both Rameau's home planet and the satellite that has become his world. One tragic casualty is Dakini, a fragile, genetically altered dancer who had become Rameau’s reason to live.

The sole survivor, he finds himself a prisoner of Gunnarsson Prime, a clone of the original creator, on board the Jumpship Langstaff. Against his will, Rameau is enlisted as the ship's wartime medical officer. As a doctor, he swore an oath to do no harm. As a man, he swears blood vengeance on the inhuman killers who destroyed everything he ever loved . . . .

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

ORIGINAL SIN

Piers Rameau, a brilliant geneticist, was offered the chance to help design mankind?s replacement?Original Man, a smarter, stronger, swifter race based on manipulated human DNA. But Rameau refused, and chose to follow his own path.

Now Kuno Gunnarsson, creator of Original Man and Rameau's would-be employer, is dead?but his superior creation lives on. And one faction of Original Man is determined to wrest control of the galaxy from the inferior race. A brutal attack destroys both Rameau's home planet and the satellite that has become his world. One tragic casualty is Dakini, a fragile, genetically altered dancer who had become Rameau?s reason to live.

The sole survivor, he finds himself a prisoner of Gunnarsson Prime, a clone of the original creator, on board the Jumpship Langstaff. Against his will, Rameau is enlisted as the ship's wartime medical officer. As a doctor, he swore an oath to do no harm. As a man, he swears blood vengeance on the inhuman killers who destroyed everything he ever loved . . . .

About the Author

Ann Tonsor Zeddies spent her first three summers on a mountaintop in Idaho, and wanted to be a cowboy until she realized that the frontier had moved off the planet. Her interest in biology began at an early age, when she collected a bucket of assorted amphibians and turned them loose in the tent where she was living with her parents and younger brother. Her brother became a professional biologist; Ann chose to deal with strange life forms by writing science fiction.

While working on earlier novels, Typhon’s Children and Riders of Leviathan (written as Toni Anzetti), she swam in all of the Great Lakes, and snorkeled in the Pacific, between the Mariana Trench and the volcanic island of Pagan. She has camped in the Badlands, and ridden horses in the Huron National Forest and the vineyards of Quercy. Along with her husband and two of their four children, she earned a black belt in tae kwon do. After stays in Michigan, Kansas, and Texas, she now lives in Pennsylvania.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (March 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345418735
• ISBN-13: 978-0345418739
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,665,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good story and thoughtful, July 19, 2003

By 

Henry Dieterich (Ann Arbor, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steel Helix (Mass Market Paperback)

The book is set in the same imagined future as Typhon's Children and Riders of Leviathan, which the author wrote as Toni Anzetti, and shows the same gifts as those books. One misses the beautiful descriptions of nature, especially those from Riders, since the book is set in spaceships and space stations, but the author's ability to build a setting from within, by showing us rather than explaining to us, that is so evident in Typhon's Children, is very much alive here. The central character, brilliant but flawed, has to grapple with some real moral issues that are not entirely irrelevant to our own time. And best of all, the book cries out for a sequel. I am looking forward to reading it.