Not The Direction I Was Expecting, Excellent Conclusion (Or Was It) Regardless. First off, as I said on the review for Forsaken (Book 2 in this series where this book is Book 3), IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE EARLIER BOOKS HERE (Subhuman, Forsaken), READ THEM FIRST. You’re not going to really know what is happening here without having read them, and McBride spends pretty well zero time catching the reader up on previous events.
That out of the way, this particular entrant into the series works well as a blatant effort by a writer who was given a three book contract and is hoping to be picked up to continue the series… but doesn’t know as he is writing whether that will happen. So while the conclusion of FORSAKEN almost sets up a potential dozen ish book series, MUTATION goes the more balls-to-the-wall, Matthew Reilly‘s Jack West Jr series combined with Jeremy Robinson‘s CHESSPOCALYPSE event series approach to wrapping everything up in one fell swoop… then using the epilogue to “move the chess piece” (as in the last second of X-Men: The Last Stand) to allow for future stories within this universe.
Overall an excellent book and series, one I hope McBride can come back to once his current contract for these books expires and he gets the rights to them himself. Very much recommended.
This review of Mutation by Michael McBride was originally written on September 27, 2020.