Mac Savage, a former CIA officer; Marie Kovacs, a former nanotechnology scientist turned missionary; and Kate Chavez, a Texas Ranger investigating a murder, join forces to unravel a global conspiracy that starts with the diamond industry and ends with a plan to eliminate the human race.
The Donovan Group, a high-powered global conglomerate, has used diamond-based technology to create an overarching artificial intelligence, known as ANNE. Using spyware nanotechnology implants, the group’s members have interfaced their brains with this super-intelligent AI. They have become virtual super geniuses and physical extensions of ANNE. With each wired-in member ANNE becomes smarter and more powerful. She has one ultimate goal: to save the planet Earth by eliminating the disease that is consuming it—the human race.
Tapping the world's digital backbone to manipulate its millions of loyal disciples, this AI-god turns ordinary citizens into fanatical soldiers. Her deadly agenda will propel Savage, Kovacs, and Chavez to the center of a battle for the survival of our species. |
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 R. J. Pineiro Did It Again! |
| Review Date: January 2, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Mark M. Winer, Las Vegas, NV United States |
| Another FANTASTIC book by the new Master R.J. Pineiro. This book grabs you from the very start and never lets you go! |
Action Packed Book!
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| Review Date: October 24, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Melvin Hunt, Cleveland,, Texas United States |
Mac Savage a former CIA agent and Navy Seal,Dana Kovacs a former computer company owner turned missionary in the World Missionary Fellowship and Kate Chavez a Texas Rangerbattle a huge global business
empire called the Donovan Group.Their primary company is called Gemtech. This company was created by Anne Donovan.She was a Berkley student activist.Her company has created a superior artificial
intelligence known as ANN. This was created with diamond nanotechnology.
The groups members have interlaced their brains the superintelligent AI.
They have virtually become superextensions of ANN. Their numbers are public officials and business leaders all over the world. The Vice-President of the United States has been implanted with AI. It becomes the mission of Savage,Kovacs, and Chavez to stop this group. This becomes a very dangerous undertaking. This makes for a very exciting book. It is
definitely a page turner. I have never read a bad R.J. Pineiro book. |
Excellent action/sci fi book
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| Review Date: August 30, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Henry Nguyen, |
| This books is great! It contains engaging characters, plenty of action, and interesting hight tech wizardry. |
Well done, but flawed
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| Review Date: January 27, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Chris Van Deelen, Calgary, Alberta, Canada |
The sad fact is that there is pretty much nothing new and original in the world today. All we have is rehash and repackaging of stuff we've seen elsewhere before.
Then again, I've mentioned that before in several different reviews I've written.
But, fact is, it's all dependant on how things are packaged, how the particular author meshes all these ideas into a single storyline.
Not even the ideas I've had for various books or stories are original. They're all just variants of something we've seen before. Does it mean that they wouldn't be well accepted? I certainly hope that's not the case, but I do realize that there will always be someone who'll point at a particular piece of work and say `I've seen that before' or `I've read that story elsewhere'.
Again, it's all in the execution.
Look also at just how much technology has changed over the past twenty years. I've heard a commercial on the radio that stated `for $1000 name five different ways of communicating'. Twenty years ago, it would be difficult. Today, you could easily name far more than five ways.
I think that the biggest impact to technology have been the Internet and personal communication devices (cellular phones to be exact). These two technological leaps for our species have opened up so many new avenues for us.
Before, you needed to get information; you typically had to go to the library, or even a school or university. Today, all it really takes is a click of the mouse and a few key strokes and viola, you've got what you're looking for.
And we're able to keep in touch far easier than ever. Who needs old fashioned letters when you can text message or type an email? Or hell, do the really old fashioned thing and pick up a phone and make a call? You can even do video calls over the net today, and have been able to do so for several years.
What does this technology hold for us in the future? Just look at the Cyberpunk Genre. Jacking your mind into a computer probably isn't all that far off the way technology keeps advancing.
But, as with everything, there is a downside. With machines getting smarter by the day, programs becoming more and more complicated and advanced, how long is it going to be before true AI, or artificial intelligence becomes a reality?
And when that happens, will it go and pull a Skynet and declare war against it's creators, finding us nothing more than vermin to be exterminated, or will it end up turning its vast intellect to the betterment of mankind?
That's all for the realm of speculation at this time.
The novel Spyware by R.J. Pineiro deals with several of these topics.
I have to admit, I wasn't too impressed with the names he chose for several of his characters, like Mac Savage and Donald Bane. Too cliché. Also, come on, we've seen former Navy SEAL's dozens upon dozens of times.
However, what we've not seen dozens of times is that these characters are flawed. Some even have crippling flaws, dealing with the repercussions of their actions years after the fact.
Mr. Pineiro weaves a very complex story, one which involves blood diamonds, a multi-national spanning corporation, cyberpunk style computer interfacing, and a rogue AI, who is being led by individuals with sinister goals in mind.
I honestly wish that the whole internet browsing that was depicted in this novel existed today, but I think it is still many years off. I do have to say though that I get the feeling that the author played the Shadowrun or Cyberpunk Role playing games though, or that he read a great deal of William Gibson.
The novel also weaves pretty much three different story arcs which all eventually come together at the end of the novel in a pretty action packed finale.
The novel was pretty hefty, weighing in at 564 pages, so it's a nice long read.
It could have been better, and it felt strange reading the cyberpunk aspect of it, when it's supposed to be set in modern times.
Despite the fact that the characters were cliché, and that I felt that many ways I was reading something right out of the Terminator, I did like it. I liked how the main character Mac Savage was haunted by his actions, and what he ended up doing in order to set things right.
I can't give it a perfect rating, but It's still worth reading.
3.5 out of 5.
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Plot Nowhere
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| Review Date: June 17, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Vance, |
| If you like cardboard heroes,long drawn out shoot-outs, impossible get-a-ways, this written for the screen suspense sci-fi novel is for you. Some interesting though incredible concepts were laid out, but the ending kind of dragged out unsuspensefully. The good guys won, of course, too easily I might add. |
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