Genesis: The Dogs of War Prequel by J.M. Madden

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After a harrowing mission, Navy SEAL Aiden Willingham was approached to participate in a secret research project. Now he realizes the Spartan Project is a covert, multinational government testing program run by a private company called The Silverstone Collaborative. The company’s mission is to create super soldiers, men capable of recovering from horrendous illness and injuries, using a serum derived from indigenous plants in the Amazon rainforest. The program is brutal and when the men object, they go from test subjects to caged prisoners overnight. The doctor leading the program is world-renowned for his cutting-edge cures, but Aiden sees only the madness in his eyes.

The serum is producing results, but men are dying every day of testing. And, as more men die, the experiments turn more deadly. What the research team doesn’t realize is exactly what the serum is doing … creating a psychic connection between four of the men. Aiden and his team have to break out of the camp before they’re compromised further. But getting out of the camp is the easy part. They know that actually living to bring the Silverstone Collaborative to justice is going to be the most difficult mission any of them have ever undertaken.

Genesis

The start of something good!

The Hero: Aiden – he was in the military, a Navy SEAL, and he was a participant in the Spartan Project. It was a top-secret project that had delegates from different special forces branches of the military from a bunch of different countries. When they arrived in the jungle, they had been impressed with the state-of-the-art research facility and the participants were housed in barracks with the guards, but as things went on, and some of the participants died, the guards were replaced by the Brazilian army and the participants were moved into cages after being drugged. Now the few that were left were prisoners being tortured and their lives might be forfeit.

The Story: The governments of their countries were involved in research to create super soldiers who could heal from devastating wounds and sicknesses and do things that normal humans couldn’t come close to. The research was funded by the Silverstone Collaborative and headed by a brilliant but sadistic Doctor Shu. It revolved around the Ayahuasca plant in the Amazon and some locals who drank a brew derived from the plant and demonstrated superhuman abilities. Though the tests that Aiden and the men underwent after being given the serum were things like being infected with deadly viruses and being horrifically injured to see if they would recover.

Aiden and the others found out that not only could they force their bodies to heal from some of the terrible experiments, but they also saw improvements in their mental capabilities. They could talk to each other through their minds and even held sway over some people using mental suggestion. Though they kept these abilities to themselves and didn’t inform the people that were holding them.

This book was the prequel to a new series and a spin-off of another series, though it was my first book by this author. I do love the whole super-soldier trope and have read many books with the theme of genetic experimentation. They almost always start out like this, with military men being imprisoned and tortured while being experimented on. So, I couldn’t wait for them to escape and take control of their own lives.

The story was actually very good and most of it was action. The next book is actually book one of this series and the Hero is also Aiden, so it makes sense that this book was all about what happened to the guys and their escape. They had a long trek through the Amazon rainforest so it was pretty interesting, and I certainly can’t wait to start the next book.

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