If genetic engineering could guarantee you and your family perfect health and unparalleled beauty, would you pay top dollar for it? Would you kill for it?Residents of the Colony would. And do.Only the Insurgents can stop them.Seventeen-year-old Asher Solomon is a premier operative with the Insurgents. He and his team have rescued countless hostages, saving them from painful deaths in Colony labs … painful deaths in Colony labs as desirable genetic traits are stripped from their bodies.
He’s also suffered more losses than anyone should have to.
Then Asher gets intel that might give his people the upper hand. The Colony is searching for Subject A36. If the Insurgents determine the subject’s identity first, they might be able to turn the tide of the war.
Asher and his team embark on their riskiest mission ever, and the stakes have never been higher. But even if he survives the physical dangers, the devastating secrets he uncovers might destroy him.
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Set in a dystopian future, Asher and his team live in a world where children with desirable traits (specific hair or eye color, physical strength, agility, etc), are captured and harvested for “gene stripping” so the wealthy can purchase coveted qualities like selecting from an a la carte menu. After seeing the destruction of his family, seventeen-year-old Asher has found a new family with his team, including, Brynn, who he has come to love and Noah, who is like a brother. But doing what they do comes with excessive risk and plenty of danger.
From the start, there is barely time to catch your breath. The reader is given detailed insight into Asher’s character as well as multiple members of his team. Each are unique and fully fleshed out individuals, the good and the bad.
The Colony—which orchestrates gene stripping—is set on finding and capturing Subject A36, a genetically altered individual designed as the perfect killing machine.
This novel is packed with non-stop action, and shocking revelation piled upon revelation. The writing is smooth and snappy, scenes plunging like a roller coaster from one into the next. I devoured this book in two sittings and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys dystopian fiction, great YA characters, and pulse-pounding action.
When young Asher Solomon is forced to take his two sisters and run for their lives from soldiers of The Colony, he knows inside he’ll likely never see his parents again. And then his sister falls, injuring her ankle, and he knows all their lives are about to change forever.
Years later, Asher is an operative with the insurgents, fighting to protect civilians from The Colony.
Now that scientists have figured out a way to rid the population of diseases and therefore lengthen lives, the echelons of society pay them to strip the desirable genes such as favored eye or hair color, intelligence, or strength from captured civilians, leaving the hostages to die horrible deaths.
Twenty years ago, a few years before my birth, scientists developed and perfected the process of gene editing in embryos, which changed the futures of the unborn population. Genomes that carried both life-threatening and non-life-threatening diseases could be altered before a fetus was born. Changing the DNA of an embryo, or germline engineering, meant genes for that disease would never be passed down to any subsequent offspring.
Subject A36- Teri Polin
Ash and his team work hard, and often endangering their lives, to protect the outliers and their families. When a terrible secret comes to light, Asher is tested in ways he never could have expected.
I’d learned that promises were like a beacon in a storm—things to cling to and place our hopes in
Subject A36- Teri Polin
There are so many layers to this story, it gripped my attention from the start and kept my interest to the end. The author created a believable- though horrifying- concept for the future of mankind. I can only hope there are brave heroes like Asher ready to save the day should this come to pass!
A must-read, I can’t wait for the next book in this series!
“Subject A36” is a YA story set in the future. There is a divide in how people are treated. The Colony contains the people who have all the money and power. They harvest good genetic traits from the insurgents or the have-nots, a process that kills the donor. The insurgents rescue those who are picked up to do the harvests. It’s a time where having a certain color of eyes or being intelligent means death to those who don’t live in the Colony. Seventeen-year-old Asher lost his family to this horrible practice and found his place on missions to release people from certain deaths. I love his relationship with his team, especially Brynn, the one who holds his heart. The connections feel very real to me and all the complications that go with hidden truths. This is a fast-paced story told in first-person through different points of view, which added to understanding the complicated world in which Asher exists. There are a lot of twists and surprises for Asher and his team. A couple of times, I was so invested in what was happening, sleep became unimportant. Although this is a YA read, it’s a story for adults too. I can’t wait for the next book to find out what happens next. I highly recommend this.
Subject A36 by Teri Polen is a brilliant take on futuristic experiments that could allure many ambitious scientists who live in their self-created bubble of plucking everything from nature to manipulate it for the mighty and the rich. It is harrowing to imagine that “The Colony” kidnaps children to strip them of their coveted genes to create “perfect humans” for those who could pay the price!
This book engages you from page one and keeps you on the edge of your chair to read – what next? I couldn’t put it down and each time it revealed something new, I muttered wow! Written in a simple but eloquent style, Polen doesn’t waste a word in unnecessary descriptions; she focuses on the story and the outcome of action.
“Harvesting” – a shuddering term in connection with human beings but it lies at the center of this book, which gets darker as it proceeds.
Despite its theme, this book draws its strength from the emotional aspect of the story, which keeps you assured with the conviction that goodness can never be rooted out; there would always be kind people like Brynn, Noah and Paige. Love would remain the ultimate conquering force. It’s the love of Asher and Brynn, the friendship and benevolence of Asher, Noah and his team, the goodness of Garrett Solomon that shines in the abyss of darkness. I detest “The Colony” and there lies the success of Polen in crafting the perfect villains that live in it. I am eagerly looking forward to its sequel.
My favorite way to enjoy a series is to wait until all the books are out, then start at the beginning and binge read straight through. But when I read the premise of Subject A36, I couldn’t wait, and grabbed Book 1 immediately. It was even better than I imagined, and now I’m in agony! How am I going to wait to find out what happens to Asher, a character I enjoyed tremendously? I just can’t get that last scene in the book out of my mind!
This dystopian novel presents a grim future wherein genes are stripped from children in order to provide the wealthy with good looks, brains, or athletic prowess. Like in any good story, there are those who fight against such terrible injustice, and Asher is a young man who is the very definition of a brave insurgent as he tries desperately to rescue as many hostages being held by the “Colony” as possible. And doing so against nearly insurmountable odds, of course, which adds to the overall excitement and action.
Subject A36 may be geared toward Young Adults, which I am anything but, however, the story is compelling enough, and well-written enough to appeal to readers of every age. There is nothing here but excellent character development, a tightly woven plot, and a ton and a half of nail-biting drama. I’ll be reading Book 2 the very day it is published, I’m sure, and I highly recommend Subject A36 to anyone who loves a wonderfully told tale.