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LATEST REVIEW
Melissa Levine for

Independent Professional Book Reviewers
www.bookreviewers.org

Author Barry Pollack’s new novel, Forty-Eight X: The Lemuria Project, is an action-thriller with a dose of scientific flavor that presents the innovative use of military force against terrorism. Vividly detailed and informative, the author swirls reality and fantasy into a thought-provoking tale of military power.

After committing a horrendous crime against his own men during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Colonel Lawrence “Link” McGraw was stripped of all honors and thrown into a solitary prison cell for life. A year into his sentence, McGraw’s freedom was gained when he accepted the mission to lead a platoon of genetically engineered soldiers. The Lemuria Project is headed by General Maximillian “Mack” Shell, funded by the United States Congress, and driven by many of the world’s greatest scientific minds.

The primary mission of the Lemuria Project is to create soldiers who can stand in for America’s sons and daughters in the war against terrorist. Although the project is cloaked in sufficient secrecy (its location is on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean on the most secure military base in the world) two archeologists hired by the Israeli military intelligence come close to uncovering the project. Joshua Krantz and Fala al-Shohada, scientific partners and lovers, identify a weapon that was left after the slaughter of a group of terrorists. As Joshua and Fala search for the origins of the unusual weapon, the U. S. military’s newly designed soldiers perfect their skills as trained killers and grow to large numbers.

Pollack incorporates a number of topics into this action infused thriller. Every possible angle is represented: Politics, including detailed accounts of major incidents that occurred during the Reagan and Clinton administrations; genetic manipulation of animal and human DNA; international relationships between the United States and the Middle East, and more. The author crafts this tale with the skill of a historian, a political pundit, and a scientific scholar. The myth of the lost city of Lemuria serves as a creative background to this multi-layered story of scientific and military possibilities.

Forty-Eight X: The Lemuria is a provocative mixture of adventure, science, and military might. I highly recommend it.