Review: The Cure by Doulgas E. Richards

The Cure follows graduate student Erin Palmer who due to a close encounter with a psychopath in her childhood now studies them to determine what makes them different to ‘normals’. Unbeknown to her supervisor she is not just studying psychopaths but is experimenting on them, and with her mysterious partner has finally discovered a genetic cure for the condition. There are some who would do anything to stop Palmer succeeding, and soon Palmer is on the run and unsure who to trust. Will she chose the right allies?

I really liked how The Cure began as it had a good balance of exciting action and science, we get to know and feel for Erin early on and this helps draw the reader into the story, which in the first third of the book is very believable. I was a bit perturbed when the story suddenly took a fantastic leap into the unknown and introduced not one but seventeen races of extra-terrestrials and a plot to save the Earth from humankind and an overwhelming alien threat. As a fan of more realistic Sci-Fi this jolted me, and whilst I did enjoy the rest of the story, the alien plot was just a little too unbelievable for me and also a bit clichéd. The sudden introduction of all of this lead to lots of exposition, which did become tedious after a while but there was plenty of action which kept me going, in addition to several interesting twists and terms.

Whilst not what I was expecting, The Cure turned out to be very readable, as long as you checked your disbelief in at the door. Aside from the psychopath thing, the plot is pretty run of the mill for Sci-Fi but works well. I would recommend this to fans of action-based alien Sci-Fi.

The Cure will be available in dead tree format from September 18th from Amazon.co.uk and from Amazon.com

[An ARC was provided through NetGalley]