Virtually His
Gennita Low
Mira, May 2007, $6.99
ISBN: 0778324486

To be the chosen one meant successfully competing against your peers, the elite of the elite. The winner will become a super-soldier, but unlike the late Captain America of comic book fame, this person will be real and working operations so top secret and dangerous that only a handful of government management agents and the chosen one’s handler will know of mission impossible. The training is two years just to prepare to be selected for the final most risky phase before becoming fully operative as the most dangerous person in the world.

COS Command candidate Helen Roston is the final survivor; she has reached the last segment of her metamorphosis in which she received a special serum to enhance her mind and to ease the link between her and now her virtual reality trainer. His virtual caresses and kisses have her coveting more, but even before she began the training, she preferred to be on top so Helen plans to control her responses as she trusts no one. Her mission is impossible, selected by those whose candidates lost to her so want her to fail so their chosen one can be the second guinea pig. Schools out for real.

VIRTUALLY HIS, the first Helen Roston super-soldier story, is an interesting complex science fiction thriller. The story line, especially at the beginning, takes its time purposely to set the environment by focusing on the technology and training of the chosen one learning to use virtual reality and performance enhancing serums (sounds like steroids) to enable out of body “remote viewing” and other widening of the senses way beyond normal capabilities. This makes the novel a difficult book to read but worth the time. Those fans who appreciate an entertaining well written deep espionage science fiction thriller will enjoy Gennita Low’s opening saga if nothing else but to learn who Helen’s monitor is (kept this reviewer up late).

Harriet Klausner