Prodigy

by Dave Kalstein Narrated by Paul Michael Garcia

Overview

In the year 2036, the world's best boarding school is the Stansbury School. The students, better known as specimens, are screened at a young age and then given twelve years of the finest education-and developmental drug regimen-available. Graduates go on to dominate in all the top colleges, Forbes 500 companies, and government positions.

But when several alumni are murdered, school officials decide to keep the police in the dark. They discreetly ask the school's valedictorian to solve the mystery, but he discovers that the most obvious culprit, the school's chemically-imbalanced delinquent-and his own nemesis-is being framed. Together, the two unlikely allies uncover a massive conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of the Stansbury administration and the United States government.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

The Stansbury School's class of 2036-"flagship editions of youth"-are "bred... for top-of-the-line performance," poised to matriculate at the best colleges and destined to dominate the private and public sectors. After a 12-year regimen of chemical enhancement, conditioning and ideology inside Stansbury's high-rise virtual prison, in the megalopolis of San Angeles, these co-ed high school students, known as "specimens" in Kalstein's cautionary debut, emerge a master race of ninja-assassin geniuses: unnaturally tall, lethal and intelligent-at the cost of imagination and individualism. The story hinges on two students, both full-ride scholarship orphans, who form an unlikely partnership after six recent Stansbury graduates are murdered. Valedictorian Thomas Oliver Goldsmith has put his "blue collar work ethic and indomitable will" behind Stansbury's mission, while Winston Cooley, a rebellious malcontent, refuses to swallow the mandated drugs or the school's supposedly high-minded ideals. When Cooley unwittingly ends up at the scene of an alum's murder, the school's administration puts Goldsmith on the case. For Stansbury, the scandal could jeopardize the school's chances to receive a $1 trillion-a-year research grant from the government. For Cooley, his very freedom is at stake. Kalstein's action-packed comment on the price of "progress," the absurdity of hypercompetitive education and the myth of meritocracy hurtles to a satisfying if predictable conclusion. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Futuristic flourishes deck out a down-and-dirty story of a murderous conspiracy that roils an elite boarding school and its brainwashed students. The year is 2036. Gyromobiles have largely replaced automobiles. They cruise the skies above San Angeles, a city created to handle California's population explosion. In the desert, a massive tower thrusts skyward. This is Stansbury School, home to 4,000 students (known as specimens), ages 6 through 18, most destined for Ivy League schools. They exist on an elaborate med cycle that stimulates intellectual and physical growth while suppressing sexual and aggressive urges. A lethally armed security force controls "unbalanced" specimens. Foremost among these is Cooley, a rebellious orphan on scholarship who won't take his pills. His adversary is another scholarship orphan, Goldsmith, unpopular valedictorian and steely enforcer of the rules who yearns for friends. Might a crisis cause the two to bond? Yes indeed. Five Stansbury graduates, unbalanced ex-specimens, have been brutally murdered in San Angeles. Cooley stumbles onto the scene of the sixth serial killing and is set up as the perpetrator, but then his nemesis Goldsmith uncharacteristically breaks the rules and visits the San Angeles murder scene. He realizes he and Cooley are both pawns, and eventually discovers the killings are linked to an imminent Senate vote in Washington that would bestow a trillion dollars annually on Stansbury. The novel spins out of control as murder reaches the school's executive suites. In comic-book heroics involving laser syringes and heat-seeking ThermaGuns, the orphans hold off Security long enough to allow a former valedictorian, despite her "deep, red, andwet" wounds, to simulcast damning testimony to the Senate committee. A first novel that sacrifices a serious consideration of eugenics and the price of progress to the greedy demands of a tangled plot.

JUN/JUL 08 - AudioFile

Failure is not an option at the Stansbury School. It's the year 2036, and prestigious Stansbury trains carefully screened, pharmaceutically enhanced specimens (as the students are called) to take their places as top leaders and thinkers in education, business, and government. But a few problems have developed. A Senate investigation is underway, finals and graduation are drawing near, and some of Stansbury's less successful graduates are being murdered. Narrator Paul Michael Garcia is at his best giving gravity and emotion to the voices of the valedictorian, the punk, the misfit, and the brainy beauty, who band together to solve the murders. Kalstein weaves biting dystopian discourse with teen romance to create likable characters and a surprising, moving epilogue. B.P. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169804263
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged

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