Rating: 
Summary: Biomedical Thriller Chiller
Review: Tyler Jessup, thirteen years old, is on an outing in the mountains when he is struck down in a freak accident--a heavy piece of climbing equipment buried deep in his brain. Fortunately the best neurosurgeon in the country is available and agrees to take the case; unknown to Tyler's desperate father, Dr. Saramaggio is also involved in some--shall we say--questionable research. The book starts with this premise, tells us a lot about the brain and about the frontiers of research, the possibility of rebuilding the brain with neural stem cells, but then veers off into metaphysics. Can the mind be somehow separated from the brain, extracted by a computer, exist somewhere outside of space and time? And would the world's greatest neurosurgeon do anything--anything--no matter how unethical, to pursue his unorthodox research and the glory that might go with it? This should be a great book, and at moments it is. It almost works. Unfortunately the writing is uneven, the characters inconsistent, and the events are foreshadowed to such a degree that they lose a lot of their punch by the time they actually happen. At times the narrative drags. There are too many literary cliches--the "mad scientist" mentioned by other reviewers, the grieving father drinking himself into oblivion, the decaying "asylum" from another century with no evidence of modern hospital practice. The unlikely romance... Then the contrived ending left me with more questions than answers. Well, it was a good book and you will probably enjoy it, but it could have been better. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber
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