I don't re-read many books, but, after reading Swann's Prophets: Apotheosis: Book One, I wanted to return to the same universe, so I started again at the beginning.

I wasn't disappointed. This book still holds up with the exception of some outdated computer technology, but science fiction fans should be able to overlook that. With this, his first novel, Swann was already a master of plotting, of doling out information at just the right time, of writing cinematically vivid action scenes that are multi-sensory - particularly here where one of the prime senses of the hero is smell.

That hero is one Nohar Rajasthan. Nohar has a couple of crosses to bear. The first is that his father was a revolutionary who died in a gun battle with police. The second is that he's a moreau - a genetic chimera of human and animal designed as a soldier. Nohar happens to be a human/tiger hybrid. But Nohar's more immediate problem is that he's almost broke. A private eye in Cleveland, his most recent client gets shot in a bar by a gun toting Afghan dog, and Nohar finds himself breaking one of his most basic rules - taking a case that involves a human. Said human, now dead, was the campaign manager for a virulently anti-moreau politician. And Nohar's new client seems to be one of the few Americans more despised and with less rights than a moreau - a "frank" aka frankenstein, a genetically altered human. Throw in lots of gunfights, political intrigue with a surprising revelation, and even some interspecies sex and you have a very fast-moving, entertaining novel. (Swann handles the usual mystery/thriller cliché of the protagonist bedding someone he meets during the course of the investigation so well I didn't mind much.) ( )

It wasn't a bad little read. Makes in interesting concept - and a definite warning about tampering with nature (not that it shouldn't be done, but how humanity as a whole will react to it) ( )