Genius Wars, The [Hardcover]

In this, the third and final book in the saga of Cadel Piggott (now Cadel Greeniaus), the boy genius has at last been able to abandon his life of deception, crime and illegal hacking, imposed on him by his purported father, Prosper English, and has settled down into a much-desired normal life with a kindly police detective, Saul Greeniaus, and his social-worker wife, Fiona. Things are going along just fine, when Cadel's best friend, Sonja, who has cerebral palsy, is attacked, and bad things continue to happen to Cadel and those close to him. Evidently, the malevolent Prosper English is behind all this, and Cadel must track him down.

Like the first two books, this well-written cyber-thriller is packed with suspense, lively characters you can care about, and a complex, intriguing plot that keeps you turning the pages. I was a bit taken aback by the ending, which was not quite what I'd expected. It's not a bad ending, but it left me wanting more. Ms. Jinks, however, tells us that this is the final book about Cadel's adventures. Nonetheless, this is still an exciting, well-crafted trilogy that shouldn't be missed. Be sure to read "Evil Genius" and "Genius Squad" before you start this one!

I am going to start out by saying that I had not read the first two books in this series before I read "The Genius Wars", but there was enough back-story worked into this installment that I never felt lost or confused.

I enjoyed "The Genius War", finding it to be based upon an interesting premise, though one which might have been arrived at by the following recipe: "Toss a couple of Artemis Fowl books and a volume or two of Harry Potter into a shredder, sift together and bake at 350-deg. for 45 minutes... ".

Seriously though, the adventures of Cadel Greeniaus (née Piggott) and his disparate group of brainiac, computer genius friends and associates are quite entertaining -- from criminal super-hacker in training to boy genius computer expert police associate to mild-mannered high-school-aged college computer science student, Cadel has gone through some changes since his debut in "Evil Genius". There is a lot happening in a short span of time here, but the action is not so rapid-fire as to be difficult to follow. The characters involved are described well enough for a reader who has not read the first two books to have sufficient sense of them to understand how they fit into the story and what their roles are.

Readers who are not too familiar with computer technology and terminology might be a bit at sea, but just as readers of Patrick O'Brien's seafaring tales may follow the larger storyline by glossing over the overtly technically nautical passages by saying to themselves "and then they went aloft and did something clever with the sails", readers who are less than familiar with gigabytes, USB drives, CGI, and CCTV can gloss over these bits by saying to themselves "and then Cadel and his friends did something clever with a computer", freeing themselves to follow the larger storyline, which is that of Cadel realizing that his nemesis, Prosper English, is after him again, and how he goes about tracking him down in order to eliminate that threat from his life. In both examples the more technically savvy reader will find a bit more depth in the story while the less technically adept need not feel left out -- the basic human situations of the tale are, overall, more important than the technical details.

As an American I found the Australian locations exotic; as a Californian, I found the California locations familiar -- this was an agreeable combination. I also found Cadel to be a sympathetic character; a youngster striving for normality and a chance to pursue his talents and interests in a satisfying and useful life. The fact that he must face physical danger (and try to protect his friends from the danger they face just because they are his friends) and intellectual challenges to follow that path is the basis of the story.

I pondered a 4-star rating for this book, but while it is generally well-written, it falls a bit short of my standards for a 4-star read, partially for its slightly derivative premise and partly for the mildly tiresome repetition of the "boy-genius-is-increasingly-frustrated-by-necessity-of-dealing-with-less-brilliant-adults-who-control-his-world" theme (which is also roughly parallel to a recurring theme in the Harry Potter stories). Readers who are in this book's target audience might not discern these aspects, and might well be less discriminating in their assessment of the pacing and the cohesiveness of the plot - overall, it should play well with the target audience.

I have to admit, I like the idea of an intellectually stimulating series about a kid who is a computer genius. What I like best is that the author made Cadel very human. He was manipulated from birth and made to believe he was the son of a criminal mastermind. They tried to turn him into a criminal as well. That was in the first book, Evil Genius. Then after a few revelations Cadel tries to reinvent himself. That was a struggle because he'd in essence been brainwashed. I admired him for fighting back against his indoctrination. Most of all he had to get out from under the thumb of his main brainwasher, Prosper English. By the end of the second book, we're given hope that Prosper, who was a fugitive by the close of Genius Squad, would finally leave poor Cadel alone. However in this book people near and dear to Cadel start getting hurt and he suspects Prosper English is once again targeting him. Thus begins his race against time to stop Prosper English once and for all. Cadel's final fight with his nemesis in the Pacific Ocean was exciting. I enjoyed the entire series, and look forward to the author's future novels.

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