This was a unique read, the characters were great and I really enjoyed reading this book. I would like it if there was more in the series.

This book checked a lot of boxes for me as a good thriller. Believable hero with an intriguing backstory, nasty villain who is smart enough to conceal it from almost everyone, a near-future technology that could run amok and bring ruination to mankind- check. This novel started slowly for me as the first few chapters were about the main two characters and the political intrigue as they vie to be selected to determine the direction of the space program and future research into nanotechnology. Not my cup of tea but I pressed on and as things sorted themselves out the story took off and got really interesting. Not a seat-of-your-pants thriller, but the action keeps moving, especially once Daniel is off to a near-earth planet and things take an unexpected turn.

Back home our villain (who also suffers from an incurable and ghastly disease) is plotting to take over the world. What happens in space will set things on a path neither of them expected. There are a couple graphic scenes that can be skimmed over if needed, but I loved the nanotech plot line and the implications it presents about the future and what it means to be human. Found myself still thinking about the novel in the weeks after I finished it.

Okay I love sci-fi novels and this one was definitely a sci-fi hit. Sci-fi is a hard genre to break into as it’s easy to go off the rails while writing something made up and not even in the realm of possibility. I thought this novel was completely plausible though and not ridiculously overdone so that I couldn’t get through it. I’ve read some bad sci-fi novels in my time and this was not one of them.

The main character Daniel is a sympathetic person who you feel for as he works through his demons and overcomes all his obstacles. All the characters have great depth and appear well thought out. Finally, I really liked how the book centered around believable concepts. It definitely gave the book a unique feel compared to other sci-fi novels. This book will definitely be a hit and hopefully we see more from this author.

I am NOT a sci-fi lover. Creative worlds and creatures to kept it entertaining. Individuals who love and enjoy the alien, extraordinary, Nanotechnology experience.

Very interesting book about where the future could go. And probably will go. I liked the characters and heroes of the novel. It's a well written book.

What I Liked

The writing and the plot have a very vintage sci-fi feel to them — may be Heinlein or Simak. Since I enjoy reading the work of both those authors, I found this one to be an entertaining book too.

The worldbuilding is detailed and it describes the eternal fight between religion and technology well. Even the Bad Guy’s meteoric rise to power as the head of the most powerful religious organization is plausible — mostly.

What I Didn’t Like

Cookie cutter Bad Guy who rapes a woman after drugging her into paralysis and then infects her with nanobots. Finally, he kills her, and dumps her dismembered corpse down the garbage chute. Now, these are two separate things for me. Firstly, the Bad Guy is bad for classic villainy reasons — he has been rejected by the whole world. Very cliche and overdone.

Secondly, the rape scene is just a gateway to a whole lot of problematic writing. Even though most of it happens off-screen, readers get an eyeful of the violence involved. Why was it even needed in the book? Couldn’t the villain have proved how bad he was in some other way?

And the problem isn’t just limited to the villain’s character. We find the whole text peppered with cruelty towards females or female-like aliens. The protagonist — if we can call him that — is a horndog. He cannot come across a woman without wanting to do her. What separates him from a not-so minor other bad guy who likes to fuck helpless aliens and is an all-around huge rapist?

Now, let us look at the female characters. When we meet the trio of main characters, they are all experts in their field. Two guys — the Bad one and our protagonist — and a female scientist. They’re vying for the same position. Needless to say, our horndog protag wins the honor.

The next time we see the female scientist — I know, cringy to keep adding female every time but it’s needed for clarification — she’s married to the hero and has turned into a nagging shrew. Also, her husband keeps her at an arm’s length and she lets him? And he behaves like a toddler, i.e., throws tantrums when dealing with diplomats who could shut down his life’s mission, and she deals with the fallout.

But that’s not all. In the process of turning part-alien, she’s physically raped by the minor bad guy, is mentally incapacitated so the Bad Guy can rape her, and has sex with the protag when he’s in a drugged sleep. He thinks it was a dream because, god forbid, we think he raped a simian female alien who’s relearning everything, including how to walk.

And if you think that the plot might have required all that mistreatment of its female characters, she spends the second half of the book utterly naked — of which there’s literally no need. Even when dressed to impress the judiciary council when they return to Earth, her outfit leaves little to imagination.

So, while I found the book interesting, I had issues with the message it left me with.

NanoMorphosis by Maria L Anderson offers us readers, with a magnificent read. Individuals who love and enjoy the alien, extraordinary, Nanotechnology experience, this book remains a must. The storyline continues to use its diverse characters Walker, Daniel or Cadmond to draw us closer to the events. People who appreciate reading about missions, aliens and destruction of planets. This book will definitely keep us busy and interested. The writing style offers an extraordinary approach and prevents the reader from becoming bored. The book describes the unique events and characters clearly. One actually feels every moment happening. This allows readers to understand precisely what happens and to sit at the tip of their chairs because of anticipation. Readers who seek a bit of extraordinary science fiction or fantasy reading, buy this book and enjoy the characters fighting off the aliens.

Firstly, the good news: This is a fast paced, imaginative and action packed science fiction yarn that combines FTL travel, a voyage to an undiscovered an exoplanet, aliens and ability enhancing nanotechnology with an almost Bond like struggle for power with a splendid villain. It even incorporates the Paris opera House intact within the megafortress of a world dominating religion which provides the stage for a Phantom of The Opera style adventure in its depths. This would be a first class and gripping read but for one thing. The principle character is such a drip that it is impossible to imagine him being chosen to head up a mission of interstellar exploration. I know that these days its impossible to have an action hero, particularly a white educated hero, without lumbering him with some kind of disability. For those of us who simply want to be entertained this is tiresome, but authors want either to make some social point or to give their characters what they think is depth. In this case our hero is traumatised by an encounter with an alien when a child. The author clearly thinks that his journey to overcome his demons with a little help from sex and technology is part of the story but the difficulty is that for most of the book he just comes over as dim and feeble. I found myself cheering for the really wonderfully wicked villain.

Everyone comes across certain ideas for the first time. Man being the real monster. The seeming magic of nanotechnology taken to its ultimate end. What would be the end of artificial intelligence and what happens when first contact happens with seemingly unintelligent creatures, or indeed aggressive intelligent ones. ANd what would the political fallout be in this situation.

NanoMorphosis tries to tackle a lot of this as if nothing had be written in the genre before. So we start with the anniversary of the aftermath of an alien attack. In the twenty years hence Earth has a global government, an earth first church but no real sense that it has tried to grapple with the issue. There is some space travel, but no real sense as to how this affects humanity beyond a little work. And in the mix we have our hero (the survivor of said alien attack) and our villain, a genius scientist with a nanovirus which has wrecked his skin. Literally, its Doctor Doom. Though a horny Doctor Doom, who manifests his evil early on (lest we feel any sympathy for him before he tries to take over the world) by raping someone. Never mind, back to our here who appears to be both the head of the space agency and its leading astronaut, who is also very horny and - well.

NanoMorphosis reads like something from the sixties, with a few political updates but next to no social ones. The psychology of our lead white males is either success in their chosen field, or sex. The lead character is constantly berating himself for being attracted to (and latterly having sex with) an alien, which he latterly discovers is actually a nanomorphological mutation of his dead ex-girlfriends corpse. He'll tap that, IThe last act of this book might as well be the witches shapeshifting battle in Sleeping Beauty - nothing is left but immense ill defined powers and good vs evil. And yet...

I like bad genre movies. I can enjoy rolling my eyes at ticking of hackneyed plots. And reading this, despite all the things I knew weren't very good about it, was similarly enjoyable. I would not defend it, the experience of reading it was most similar to reading The Da Vinci Code, incredulously strapping myself in to another ridiculous and yet hackneyed plot cliche until the end. If you'd told me it had been written by Heinlein in 1960, I'd have believed you.