Cain's Blood by Geoffrey Girard

Rating: WARTY!

The premise of this story is exactly the same as its partner, Project Cain, of course: that military-funded scientists have recovered DNA from serial killers (both living and dead), and are breeding clones of those killers intent upon finding weapons. The asinine "logic" of this premise is discussed in my review for Project Cain. Well the title Cain's Blood might be unique, but there's a half-dozen novels which are variants on "The Blood of Cain", which means it's well beyond cliche class and into ludicrous by now. If it goes any further, it'll be plaid.

The basic story is the answer to the question: what would happen if we cloned famous serial killers of history and raised those children in a variety of environments? Would they all turn out just like the original killers? Could we use them as military weapons?

The short, sensible answer is "No, of course not, because you cannot duplicate the exact circumstances of the genetics and raising of any one of them to begin with!", but Girard disagrees. His downright stupid premise is that these clones would turn out exactly like the originals, even to the point of, for example, John Wayne Gacy dressing as a clown - in his teens yet. Girard further concluded that these murderers in the half shell would be happy to join a serial killer boys' club and hang out together, plotting and organizing their gory rampages as devoted teammates. It was at that point that I quit reading this novel, my stomach in equal parts doubled-up with laughter and with nausea. I refused to finish something as amateurish, ignorant, and confused as this is.

Girard's premise at first blush did interest me, and I liked the idea of having two novels on the same topic from different perspectives. This may have been done before, but if so, it's not anything I've encountered, and if so, having had to wade through this effort has cured me of any desire to seek out other such pairings! I also liked the idea of having a clone of a serial killer who would (no doubt!) turn out to break the mold.

The bottom line, though, is that Girard failed, and dismally so, to carry through with his premise in an entertaining way. Instead, he blundered blindly into poor genetics, he sowed the story with pretty nauseating and gratuitous violence to no constructive purpose that I could see, and as if that wasn't bad enough, he frequently ventured into complete absurdity with his interpretation of how these clones would behave. I can see an amateur, writing his first novel, slipping into this, knowing no better, but I do expect better from a professionally published writer. I have to ask, yet again it seems, what has happened to book editors, when we get sad efforts like this one appearing in hard-cover from a recognized publishing house?

I do not like either title (that is 'title of the novel', not 'title as a short-hand for the entire novel', although that's also true), and with regard to the other one, I started also disliking the novel itself rather intensely, so I put it on hold and switched to this one. The plan was to read this to the point where I stalled in the other one, and then try to read them concurrently, but the other novel was so badly written (it's one tedious and never-ending teen-angst whine) that I was sincerely hoping that this one would be several leagues above the other if I were going to finish either of them. It failed to meet that hope and expectation.

The other novel tells the story from a YA perspective (the main character is a sixteen-year-old). This one tells the same story from the perspective of one of the investigators, Castillo, and thankfully this one was absolutely not a first person PoV - a format I am learning to detest with increasing acerbity with every novel like Project Cain that I make the mistake of reading. The first thing I learned is that Girard is yet another writer who doesn't grasp the difference between 'titled' and 'entitled', but given how dynamic language is, I guess it's not surprising, especially these days. The two will be as interchangeable as flammable and inflammable before so very long.

One more question: what's with the 'Cain' reference? Obviously it's Biblical (and this is confirmed in both novels), but I think Girard is missing the point made in the Bible. Let me clarify one thing before we start: I see no reason whatsoever to take the Bible literally. I take it with a pound or two of salt (Lot's wife notwithstanding as a pillar of the community) There never was any Adam or Eve. The Bible confirms this because those names are generic Hebrew words meaning earth (or red earth) and life. Nor was there an Abel or a Cain. And BTW, all the names you think you know from the Bible are wrong, some of them completely so. For example, anyone who is praying for something in Jesus's name isn't going to get anywhere, because there is no character called "Jesus" in the Holy Bible. Jesus wasn't his name. The mythical Messiah's name was actually much closer to 'Yeshua'. It's really the same name as 'Joshua'.

By that same token, there was neither Able nor Cain. There was Hevel and Qayin, and these names were actually derived from their occupations. Ibil (Hevel - Abel) means herdsman, and qyn (Qayin - Cain) means metal-smith (yes, the Bible lies! Is that a surprise - honestly?). The Bible confirms this when it declares that Cain gave rise to the bronze and iron-working industries in the Middle East though his descendant Tubal-Cain. There are many different views of this story and its meaning, as wikipedia makes clear, but the bottom line is that the Bible talks out of its ass: the story ultimately has no more meaning than your average fairy-tale. It's just something religious nut-jobs made-up to try and gain control of the population by some means other than the ballot box. They're still pursuing this same failed ploy today in the USA.

This story all harks back to the last few verses of Genesis chapter one, where the Biblical god declared that we should all be vegetarians, but humankind fell from that lofty goal and became carnivores. That was the real "fall of man" Abel was a representation of the carnivores, herding sheep and killing lambs for sacrifice to a god; Cain was the metal-worker who no doubt forged the very sword which he then used to slay the heathen Abel. But honestly, who actually wants to worship a god which demands that you slaughter and burn animals, and which finds the stench of burned flesh pleasant? I'm forced to wonder if a god like that found the odors at Auschwitz II - Birkenau pleasant, which would explain why he never lifted a finger to stop the slaughter of his chosen people, would it not?

So Cain slew the carnivore and thus struck a blow for the original wish of this god: that we should all be herbivores. That would also explain why the Hebrew god of the mountains rejected the death penalty and didn't harm Cain. On the contrary, he freed Cain and sent him out to evangelize the vegetarian lifestyle, and even put a mark on his head to protect him from harm! How's that for forgive and forget? You'll note that despite having the ability to resurrect Abel from the dead, this god chose not to do so. What more proof do you need of his complicity in this crime? Once again a god gets a human to do his dirty work for him!

As an aside, I do find it hilarious that in a nation like the USA, sixty percent of the population, all of them no doubt believers, reject forgiveness, and reject their god's decision here (to free the murderer), and instead demand the death penalty. But religion and rationality are not the best of bedfellows, are they? Not that I'm advocating freeing murderers, understand! I'm merely commenting on how completely absurd religion is when you look at it through rational eyes. I have yet to meet a religion which actually makes sense.

So, enough of a digression (but what am I expected to do when Girard rambles on about Cain, names two novels after him, and has yet to explain what that has to do with anything else he's written in those novels. Cain may have been a killer, but he never was a serial killer, so if this were a court case, I'd be the one calling out, "Objection, your honor: relevancy!" Anyway, I am done with this pair. I couldn't face going back to the whining teenager in the other novel, and I've grown so bored and disillusioned with this one - to say nothing of becoming really tired of Girard's over-the-top, salivating relish of gratuitous violence and appalling absurdity (the teen John Wayne Gacy is already wearing clown outfits! Really? Really?) that I really cannot stand the thought of reading another page when I have so many other novels inviting my attention. This is a warty one (or two)!

Project Cain by Geoffrey Girard

Title: Project Cain
Author: Geoffrey Girard
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

I review the companion novel to this one, Cain's Blood here.

Based on CAIN XP11, which according to wikipedia ran as four installments in a publication called Apex Digest in 2007, Project Cain is a YA novel set in the not-too-distant future which is paired with Cain's Blood a more mature novel about the same subject and which I shall review directly after I've read this.

A word on genetics. I don't know where Girard thought he was going by proclaiming that "gene xp11" has anything to do with serial killers or is some sort of 'anger' gene. Anyone who knows anything about genetics will also know that a single gene is rarely acting alone and rarely specifies a trait such that a change to that one gene will completely change that trait, which makes the mutant gene in X-Men absurd, of course. There are such genes, but more regularly, genes operate as part of a gene network which is tolerant of an occasional mutation, but yes, it can be disrupted, too. I know that xp11 has been implicated in renal cell carcinomas, for example.

The gene does appear on the X-Chromosome (hence the 'X' part of the name), but the one Girard refers to is actually not xp11, but xp11.3, gene ID 4128, as is shown in this map from Vanderbilt. This section does affect monoamine oxidase A, as Girard says, but it's not known as the anger gene but as the warrior gene, and wikipedia expressly argues against Girard's plot point in that, while MAOA does appear to have a connection with antisocial behavior, it has: "...had no statistically significant main effect on antisocial behavior. Maltreated children with genes causing high levels of MAO-A were less likely to develop antisocial behavior". Quite the opposite of Girard's premise! Note that Girard is writing fiction and can write whatever he wants, of course, but my point here is that if he's going to get into genetic details, then he needs to do a better job than he's done.

So, Project Cain is a military-funded research project whereby the DNA of serial killers is taken and cloned, so the military can raise a series of children who would grow to be deadly killers and therefore invaluable weapons. It's brain-dead, of course, because they can never replicate the circumstances of the childhood of those serial killers. They can try to emulate it, but this is not the kind of scientific experiment you can completely control - to say nothing of the appalling ethics of such a scheme. But this story focuses on one such clone, named Jeffrey Dahmer. Kudos to Alexander for taking the bizarre if gutsy step of making a serial killer (who's not Dexter Morgan) the hero of his story! It;s rather sad that he completely ruined his starting point by making Jeffrey the most irritatingly whiny-assed teen ever created by a fiction writer. For this alone I want tor ate this novel warty! This kid is endless nails on a chalk-board, which I guess is evil enough....

But having said that I have to ask: honestly? This story makes no sense at all, even assuming that, say fifty years from now, genetics would be advanced enough that cloning could be carried out with both a high rate of reliability and at reasonable cost! Why? The military already has trained killers, and they’re free! They're the volunteers who routinely sign-up for military service, and who are professionally trained with weapons. Some of these people are trained to be very deadly, extremely skilled, and highly efficient. They're called Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs.

How would a serial killer (who is highly specific about the targets he is willing to prey upon, all of whom have to have some real meaning to him) be of any advantage whatsoever in a military conflict? They would be as likely (if not moreso!) to kill their fellow soldiers as they would the enemy. From what I've read, most of them can only work alone, they need to get up very close and personal with their victims, and many of them want to be caught. I can’t imagine (unless the mission specifically called for it for some clandestine reason), that any soldier, and especially not a Ranger or a Seal, would want to be caught in pursuing their duties. I's sincerely hoped that Girard had much more than this to offer, but it did not look that way at all by chapter fifteen at least.

Other than that complaint, it is technically well-written for what that's worth. To be fair, Jeffrey does have some reason to be the way he is: his dad, who seemed superficially to be a decent, if somewhat remote dad, came to him one night and gave him a thousand dollars and warned him to stay away from DSTI - the corporation his father worked for. Then his dad left. Jeffery couldn’t find him anywhere. He came home to find people in dark suits hauling everything of interest - including every personal thing of Jeffrey's - out of the house. Jeffrey slept overnight in the emptied house, but was captured there the next day by a man called Castillo - the subject of the other book in this pairing.

Castillo isn't friend of DSTI either. He's ex-1st SFOD-D, and he informs Jeffrey that twelve kids were killed in a nearby boys' institute, with six more missing. Every one of those six was a cloned serial killer: David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, another Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert Fish, Henry Lee Lucas (who may have been actually wrongfully convicted and who had his death sentence commuted by George W Bush), and Dennis Rader. Castillo takes Jeffrey for a ride-along to try and track down these kids - as well as find Jeffrey's dad.

Well, I reached chapter 15, and frankly, I'm ready to drop this novel like a not best seller, because I am so infinitely-SICK-and-freaking-TIRED of the whiny-assed self-pitying Jeffrey boundlessly, ceaselessly, constantly, endlessly, interminably, everlastingly, and self-perpetuatingly complaining about how miserable his lot in life is, and how everyone hates him, and how he's got nothing to expect, nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for and nowhere to go, which is coincidentally exactly< how I feel about this novel right now! Actually, at this point, want Jeffrey to run into the six escaped serial killer clones and be hung, drawn, and quartered. I really do. To paraphrase Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs, it's the best thing for him really, his life is going nowhere! I detest this self-obsessed brat.

At the end of chapter 14, which was long past my due date, as rotten as I felt having read that far, I thought that just maybe there was going to be a sea-change, because as he was wandering self-pityingly around the motel trying to get into any room other than his, he saw a woman's body on a bed - with the face painted into a doll mask. Now he doubts his sanity. That's perfectly fair, because I honestly doubt mine for even reading as far as I did in this novel. But rather than have this tediously slow novel take off at that point, the very next thing which happened was that this worthless excuse for a teenager started right back into the whining again.

The deal was that I'd read these two novels consecutively. Scratch that. I am now starting on the other of the pair, hoping that that one is better than this one. When I catch up in that one to the point where I am in this one, then I'll try to read them concurrently and I'll try to finish them both, but I'm making no promises about either one of them, having suffered my brain cells being serially killed from the crap I had to wade through in the first fourteen chapters of this novel!

I finally decided to call this one - or more accurately, these two. After wading through pretty much the same pointless boring crap in the other one that I'd already waded through in this one, I could neither stand to read any more of that one, nor face coming back to the whiny teen in this one, so I decided to return them both to the library. Maybe someone else can benefit from them. I certainly can't; not when I have over a dozen books on my reading list on the right there, all of which offer a promise that neither of these books seems able to deliver on! This one goes down as a warty!