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Genus appealed to me because it's set in futuristic dystopian London, specifically in King's Cross � now known simply as The Kross. Many of you may associate King's Cross with Harry Potter and The Hogwarts Express, but The Kross is anything but magical. It's dirty, dull, and impoverished; a reluctant home to The Unimproved. You see, in Trigell's world, physical perfection is easy to attain � for the rich. For a price, your children can be free of disability and disease through genetic selection.

Genus is a vivid and frightening view of London. It's terrifying not because it presents a world where the human body can be manipulated as easily as anything else, but because, as a result, it creates an even larger divide between the rich and the poor. If we already live in a world where meritocracy does not exist, it exists even less in The Kross.

Genus was unfortunately unable to captivate me completely, not due to the gritty plot, which I rather enjoyed, but due to the writing style. It leans more towards literary fiction rather than the commercial science fiction I'm used to. I tend to assume that dystopian novels tend to focus more on the plot, but Genus instead zooms in on the tiny details surrounding its characters, such as Holman, an old man with an incurable (for him) ailment that means he is unable to walk properly and is permanently in excruciating pain. It was not quite as snappy as I had hoped, being more contemplative and watchful, and I was impatient to know where it was going.

If you're tired of reading dystopian novels that all sound the same, Genus may be one to pick up. It offers a fresh view of society that isn't completely far from reality and shows what can happen when perfection comes at a costly price.

Thank you Corsair for providing this book for review!