Invasive Procedures is a novel based on a screenplay of Orson Scott Card's 1977 short story Malpractice. It is a rather boring and undistinguished book. It is a bog-standard medical/scientific thriller with very little in the way of new and interesting ideas. Both the characters and the plot are less than thrilling, and the writing is hackneyed, lumpy, and downright embarrassing in places.

There is a specific reason that I'm taking the time to warn you off from this book. It was 'written' by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnson. This is obviously the primary selling point, as Card's name takes up a third of the cover, and Johnston's name looks like a masthead. The title is also on there somewhere, if you look for it. However, this is not an Orson Scott Card book. I don't know what part he had in writing it, but it was not a large part, and I suspect that it was no more than simply writing the original short story 30 years ago. His writing style and his ability to make characters of all sorts interesting is not at all in evidence. I have never read anything by Aaron Johnson, so I don't know if this is up to his usual standards. However, as Johnson is primarily a Hollywood screenwriter, I assume that he is responsible for the high speed chases and crashes and daring escapes - and also the crappy dialog and lumpy story development.

The story is based on the idea that a religious sect founded by a rogue geneticist is using experimental viruses to 'miraculously' cure genetic diseases. This is a problem both because the viruses used are deadly to anyone but the person they are tailored to, and also because they contain eugenic easter eggs that make the recipient more docile and susceptible to control. The United States government is naturally against his program of world domination, and tries, ineptly, to stop him.

If this sounds interesting, it is not. I had assumed that I would review this book by saying that it would be an okay read if you were stuck on a long flight and needed something mindless to read; by the end of the book I had completely changed my mind. There is no reason to read this book. It is bad and gets worse as it goes on. It is primarily an example of how not to write, and why you should never trust a publisher.

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