In the near future, the Coming Storm is not just the latest superstorm to hit the East Coast but also a reaction to the federal government’s over-the-top response to immigrants.
In 2023, the United States is fighting a war at home. Poor, mostly immigrant neighborhoods in New York City have been made into cages enforced with barbed wire fences and armed sentry towers run by the federal paramilitary group, FSU.
In the meantime, larger and larger storms have hit the city flooding it up to second stories and crushing iconic areas like the Coney Island boardwalk.
Concurrently, the government is running a secret project called Palindrome to modify soldiers’ DNA to make them supersoldiers. Using CRISPR, a real method discovered last year that can do exactly what is described in this book.
Jenna was a scientist on the project until she refused to use her technology to experiment on humans. The FSU knows there are traitors within the project and arrest all the scientists that worked on it for questioning. When Jenna escapes, the chase is on to find her.
The Coming Storm is non-stop action. There is very little down time for talking about plot. The plot itself is definitely “ripped from the headlines” containing an expansion of our current immigrant paranoia, global warming, and DNA manipulation using real science. However, I found the action rather exhausting. Pro-Trump readers will not like the obvious negative references to his wall policies that are constantly being beaten into the reader’s head. This plot would make a great action movie like First Blood, Transformers and even Alien vs Predator. If you like those type of movies, you will adore this book. From me, however, it gets 3 stars.
Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.