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Summary
Summary
With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the president has been forced to establish his own clandestine group--Covert-One. It's activated only as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out. The Utopia Experiment When Dresner Industries unveils the Merge, a device that is destined to revolutionize the world and make the personal computer and smartphone obsolete, Covert-One operative Colonel Jon Smith is assigned to assess its military potential. He discovers that enhanced vision, real-time battlefield displays, unbreakable security, and near-perfect marksmanship are only the beginning of a technology that will change the face of warfare forever--and one that must be kept out of the hands of America's enemies at all costs.
Meanwhile, in the mountains of Afghanistan, CIA operative Randi Russell encounters an entire village of murdered Afghans--all equipped with enhanced Merge technology that even the Agency didn't know existed. As Smith and Russell delve into the circumstances surrounding the Afghans' deaths, they're quickly blocked by someone who seems to have access to the highest levels of the military--a person that even the president knows nothing about.
Is the Merge really as secure as its creator claims? And what secrets about its development is the Pentagon so desperate to hide? Smith and Russell are determined to learn the truth. But they may pay for it with their lives . . .
Summary
Best selling author Kyle Mills's follow up to The Ares Decision, the first book in the Covert-One series created by the late Robert Ludlum.
Author Notes
Kyle Mills was born in 1966. He moved around a lot as a child because his father was an FBI agent. He graduated college with a degree in finance and worked in a bank before becoming a writer. His first book, Rising Phoenix, took eight months to write and was published in 1997. His other works include Storming Heaven, Sphere of Influence, Fade, The Second Horseman, Lords of Corruption, Robert Ludlum's The Ares Decision, and The Immortalists. His title Robert Ludlum's the Utopia Experiment made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2013. His books, The Survivor, co-written with Vince Flynn, made The New York Times bestseller list in 2015 and Order to Kill, also co-written with Vince Flynn, mady the New York Times besetseller list in 2016.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The 10th installment in this thriller series about a super-secret government agency is easily the best yet. Mills, who authored the eighth entry, The Ares Decision, succeeds in melding science-fiction, espionage, and action to create an intelligent page-turner. Covert-One operative Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, a microbiologist, is on hand in Las Vegas when tech genius Christian Dresner unveils Merge, a sort of Google Glass on steroids that has extraordinary military potential. Merge links directly to the wearer's brain, but, more disturbingly, it uses all the online data in can get to code the people the wearer observes as either good or bad. To very few readers' surprise, Dresner's motives in creating Merge-and offering the US exclusive rights to the military application-aren't pure, setting up another opportunity for Smith and his allies to save the day. Mills's projections of where current technology and the future of privacy may be heading are both chilling and plausible. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
In the latest of Covert-One operative Lt. Col. Jon Smith's adventures, Mills (The Ares Decision, 2011, etc.) uploads Ludlum's superagents into augmented reality. Merge makes supersophisticated iPhone apps resemble No. 2 pencils and scrap paper. A microphone in a molar cap and two studs in the skull enable a deceptively plain plastic box of circuits and software to seamlessly interface with the human brain, displayed through virtual icons and made functional by thought processes. Merge is the brainchild of Christian Dresner's Dresner Industries. The behavioral science behind Merge is the work of Dresner's friend, psychologist Gerhard Eichmann. Both are refugees from authoritarian Communist East Germany. Dresner is a Steve JobsHoward Hughes amalgamation; Eichmann is the weird-scientist clich. Dresner releases Merge to the masses and then offers a tailored version exclusively to the U.S. military. Covert-One op Smith, a combat-experienced medical doctor, is assigned to lead the test. And Merge works, providing hyperawareness and seamless battlefield communication and proving so powerful in a real-world test that a group of desk jockeys outfights a special ops team. Covert-One chief Fred Klein, undercover at Anacostia Seagoing Yacht Club but with on-call access to President Sam Castilla, is cautious. Martin Zellerbach, Smith's psychologically troubled childhood friend and wizard computer geek, is entranced. CIA operative Randi Russell isn't sure. She's found evidence that Merge has been tested in an Afghanistan village, with the subjects thereafter slaughtered by mercenaries. Smith and Russell soon run afoul of Maj. James Whitfield, leader of a secret Pentagon group allied with the military-industrial complex. Smith also discovers that Dresner Industries has financed tests in a secret human experimental North Korean laboratory. Mills rockets the action around the world. Mills offers an interesting new premise for action-adventure, albeit with the resolution one tick less than satisfying.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.