THE SPLICED SERIES BY JON MCGORAN

I found this series by randomly picking it up off the library shelf. I was there looking for a different book which they didn’t end up having, but I wasn’t about to go home empty handed. Not gonna lie, I was intrigued by the covers and the description sounded like it could either be a hit or a miss. I was willing to give it a try though, and I’m glad that I did. 

The Spliced series includes three books: Spliced, Splintered, and Spiked. They’re about a future world where it’s possible for humans to “splice” animal DNA into themselves. It deals with discrimination, a corrupt society, bad people doing bad things, and what it means to be human. The main character, a teenage girl named Jimi, gets dragged into this world of chimeras (humans who’ve spliced their DNA with animals) by her best friend Del, and through trying to save him from himself (and maybe some other bad people) ends up becoming a face for the E4E (Earth 4 Everyone – pro chimera) cause and helps stop a lot of bad situations for Chimeras and other people caused by H4H (Humans 4 Humans – anti chimera) and its leader Howard Wells. Be not confused though, Howard Wells does believe in humans altering themselves, just not with animals—with computers. They’re called Wellplants (created by Howard Wells himself) and getting one is called being spiked. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the first two books, and the third one was a bit of a miss. Okay, a lot of a miss. It was very frustrating and painful to read. So read the first two, and call the last one good with my lovely explanation given in the Spiked section. 

Let the spoilers begin!

SPLICED

The first book, Spliced, starts out with Jimi being very cautious of chimeras and not really understanding why anyone would want to get spliced. But her best friend, Del, was maybe a little bit too intrigued by the idea. Del’s character is one I had a difficult time with. I never really believed he had a true friendship with Jimi because he never showed it. He dragged her into a fight with the police and then just abandoned her there to deal with the consequences of his actions. And then he went off to get spliced in some dark alley by a sketchy “Genie” (not doctor, but will splice people) and didn’t even tell her. Del had a hard life. His mom died when he was young and his father was abusive, but that doesn’t condone his actions. He should have appreciated Jimi and everything she was willing to do and sacrifice for him. He should have been that kind of friend for her. 

Because of these characteristics in Jimi, friendship became a big part of the storyline. No, Del never reciprocated Jimi’s friendship, but because of him, Jimi made new friends: Rex, Ruth, Pell, Sly, and Ryan (until he died). Obviously, Jimi was skeptical of them at first, but they were trying to help her find Del and they ultimately became people she could trust and count on. She maybe didn’t completely understand why they got spliced, but she realized they were as human as she was and didn’t deserve to be treated as nonpersons (H4H was trying and partly succeeding in getting a law passed that would say that chimeras were nonpersons and they would lose their rights). 

After Del’s sketchy splice and an unsuccessful trip to the chimera doctor after things went bad, Del, Ryan, and Ruth got abducted by some haters but ultimately ended up at a chimera sanctuary called Haven. So then Jimi, Rex, Pell, and Sly went on an adventure, taking trains and hiking through the woods, to try to find Haven based on a crudely drawn map found in Ryan’s pocket. This might be my favorite part of the book. It was fun. There were mud slides, it was cold, and Jimi’s chimera acquaintances (not quite besties yet) weren’t that welcome in society because that stupid law just got passed, but they’re on a mission to save their friends. I loved how Jimi had her moment away from the group when she went into the small town to get some supplies. That little bit of separation showed that she did care about these people and wanted to get back to them. It was crazy that the city locked its gate after dark so she just couldn’t leave, and she was forced into staying with the worst H4H-ers in the town. And their creepy son! But when Rex showed up because he was worried and helped save Jimi, my heart melted a little bit. He’s so sweet. After that, I loved Jimi’s internal struggle of why she was even thinking about having a relationship with a boy (Del or Rex) when two weeks ago the thought never crossed her mind. 

When they finally stumbled across Haven and found their friends, it was all a little bit expected. Del was there and perfectly healthy (after being re-spliced), the “camp” itself was very fancy, and the leaders were particularly creepy. It was obvious there was more going on than meets the eye, and it was perfect that Del was the number one believer that everything happening there was good. It put even more of a divide between Jimi and Del and proved that either Del had completely changed, the splice brought out these (not so great) qualities in him, or they never really were that good of friends. When Jimi got sworn to secrecy and kicked out (because she wasn’t a chimera, rude!), I loved how she took it upon herself to leave on her own terms and how Rex knew what she was going to do and “walked” (snuck out, climbed fences, and ran for miles) her out. I just can’t believe she got that far before she realized what was happening and had to turn around.

I knew something shady was happening, but I had no idea these people were rounding up chimeras to hunt like them animals. And have other people pay to hunt them! The fact that Del’s dad was one of them—wow. It wasn’t necessarily surprising for his character, but he was paying to go hunt and kill his own son for sport. I loved how Jimi had to sneak back into Haven (after she stole a car) and ruined the big dinner and Del’s speech. It hurt my heart when Del said that he only kissed Jimi (way back at the beginning of the book) as a way to say goodbye. No, I was never on team Del, but this made me hate him even more. He fully intended to abandon Jimi. He was going to start this new life without her and never even let her know he was okay. He was such a punk and she was trying to save his life again, after continuously trying to save his life the whole book. Luckily Rex believed her, and everybody else started to believe her and ran away. I have such a vivid picture in my mind of Jimi stealing another car and driving it back and forth through the fence to help the chimeras get away. And the guard chasing after Jimi and her handcuffing him to the fence. 

This book totally reminded me of that saying in the Caraval series about how there’s and ending and a true ending because I thought that was going to be the end, but it wasn’t. Del just had to go off and cause more problems, trying to blow up an entire town. Then his dad actually did shoot him! Despite a lot of work going into trying to make believe he was dead, I never actually did believe it. I knew we’d see him again, I just didn’t think it would be all the way in the third book. I also knew that Rex was really Leo Byron, Jimi’s childhood best friend she hadn’t seen in years. I thought it was fitting though…and nice. I loved how when the press finally showed up and believed all of these terrible things that almost/did happen, Jimi only made her grand speech about humanity to break Rex out of police custody. She didn’t want the attention or to say “I told you so” she was trying to help the guy she kinda sorta was starting to love. 

I really enjoyed the progression of Jimi and Rex’s relationship throughout the book. It was slow. They spent a lot of time together and learned a fair amount about each other (except for Rex’s past as Leo which was revealed at the end). At the beginning of the book, I was worried that Jimi was going to become someone who was all about the cause and that Rex was going to have a savior complex, but I don’t think that’s how they ended up, and I’m happy about it. They turned out as really nice characters. And despite all of the politics I did not care for (at all), I really enjoyed the book.

 SPLINTERED

I was pretty disappointed by how the second book, Splintered, started out. It was slow, Rex was keeping secrets from Jimi (boo!), and it was definitely more political than the last book. An unwell chimera showed up (Ruth and Pell found him on a train—basically their only appearance in the book), so Jimi and Rex took him to Doc Guzman (the chimera doctor from the first book). He dies. The point of the book is that Jimi and Rex are trying to prove that Doc isn’t a murderer and get him out of jail. 

There were lots of meetings with lawyers, talks at the coffee shop, and watching the news, until the more exciting part of the story began with Jimi, Rex, and Claudia traveling to the hospital that the dead chimera had a bracelet from. The hospital claimed that he was never a patient (after the stupid chimera law got put on pause with the disaster hunting situation of the last book, Howard Wells tried to save face—even though he “wasn’t involved”—by funding treatment for chimeras at some hospitals), so the plan was to go there in person to do more investigating. Claudia was introduced in the first book after she had just gotten spliced and was looking to get “fixed” (reverse the splice). We were under the impression that she had been fixed, but it didn’t take, and in a roundabout way, she’s the reason the cops got called on Doc, and that’s why she gets involved in trying to save him. 

I loved the road trip aspect and them traveling in Claudia’s fancy car (her parents are rich): traveling on sketchy roads, having car trouble, dealing with haters, and, again, ending up hiking through the woods. I don’t know what that says about me, but I love a good dystopian hike through the woods. Then when they pass out and come to in a different part of the woods, things start to get real. I love the fact that they’re just like “huh” and kept walking. Of course, it’s explained later that they passed out from toxic gasses seeping up through the surface from the mines below them, and there were chimeras in the forest who had dragged them out of the toxic zone. 

Everything at the hospital was kind of funny. Jimi goes in asking a bunch of questions and then the head doctor showed up. She tricked them into getting a look at the computer screen which proved they were lying. Next thing you know, they’re being chased through the halls and, ultimately, saved by a janitor. The janitor, Kiet, was looking for his chimera boyfriend, Devon, who went missing from the hospital months ago, and showed Jimi, Rex, and Claudia the secret basements in the hospital where the chimeras were being splintered (altering their lungs to only be able to breathe toxic chemicals) and forced into slave labor mining a rare metal. It took being chased again by guards/cops, Rex being arrested, and finding out about/meeting with the chimeras in the woods (who had escaped from the mine and could live in the woods because they could breathe there. Yes, Devon was there.) to figure it all out. 

I did see it coming from when they watched the news earlier about Howard Well’s new and improved Wellplant that used a fancy rare metal and then them walking over the abandoned mine city (hike through the toxic woods). But there was so much more to it than that. With how involved the hospital was, changing the chimera’s lungs, and the chimera’s only having a three-ish month lifespan after being splintered. Plus, then Claudia and Jimi (Rex was still in jail) got abducted/saved from the crooked cops chasing them (working for Wells) by Chimerica (was supposedly a fictional land where chimeras could live freely, but actually a chimera organization for change) and Sly. Jimi and Claudia got taken across the border (WHAT?) into Canada for their safety where they found out about Chimerica and that it was what Rex was keeping from Jimi. But they weren’t about to help Jimi and Claudia save the chimeras in the hospital or even get Rex out of prison. They had to steal a helicopter to escape. It was pretty cool even though they ended up needed help.

Rex was bailed out of jail by Wells’ people and put in the hospital, so saving him became another step in the increasingly complicated plan. Jimi, Claudia, Sly, Kiet and Devon enacted this crazy plan involving shutting down the security, stealing a truck, shooting guards with dart guns, stealing exosuits (Ironman suits), and getting all of the chimeras out of the back entrance of the mines and to the toxic woods. Of course, things happened and Claudia and Devon were forced to actually shoot guards (Jimi wouldn’t even though the guard was trying to shoot her and kill the chimeras. At least she stuck to that standard for the rest of the series, but for someone who demands that others do hard things for a good cause, she really didn’t live up to that herself.), the fragile stability of the mine was comprised, they found out the dead chimeras’ bodies were being crushed to harvest the metal they inhaled for three months (and the “chemical snow storm” they walked through in the woods earlier was their ashes. Yes, they caught “snowflakes” on their tongues. Nightmares!), the getaway car was late, and Jimi went up the elevator to the other floors looking for Rex. He was okay and hadn’t been splintered, but they both barely got out of there before the whole hospital collapsed (with a whole lot of paperwork proving what was going on, obviously). 

Again, there was an end and a true end. Even though the truck full of chimeras made it to the toxic woods, they still weren’t doing good because the massive storm that was happening caused all of the toxic chemicals to be blown out of the abandoned town. They eventually figured that out and moved everybody into a basement (still toxic), and they realized that the chimeras really didn’t die after three months. The effects of being splintered just wore off and they could breathe normal air again. I was happy that Kiet and Devon got their happy ending. They deserved it after everything Kiet was willing to do for him: getting the job at the hospital, working with these people he just met, and risking his life to save all of the other chimeras. 

The ending was awesome, but I was a little disappointed about how Ruth and Pell weren’t really involved in this book. And when Sly was involved, he showed more loyalty to Chimerica than to Jimi and Rex (his best friend for years, we found out). I think it kind of undermined the friendship that they built in the last book and proved it maybe wasn’t as strong/real as I thought it was. I did like how Claudia was reintroduced, and she became a really strong character and a good friend to Jimi (like I haven’t said that before). Claudia didn’t just look to Jimi for what to do—she knew what was right and was brave enough to do it. Among other things, that’s where the third book went really wrong. But before we get there, I also didn’t love how Jimi and Rex were separated for a good portion of the book. I guess it gave Jimi the opportunity to save him and showed what she was like without him there, since he was pretty much always there in Spliced, but I missed him. 

SPIKED

The third and final book, Spiked, is where things took a turn for the worse. It was so repetitive and so political I wanted to throw the book across the room. I’m not kidding—if it wasn’t a library book, I would have. To be fair, it started out pretty good. Jimi gets invited to a lunch where H4H and E4E were going to civilly discuss a change for the better, but she gets abducted (for a few minutes) and never makes it. Which turns out to be a good thing because it gets blown up and everybody there dies. Jimi gets questioned by the FBI about her involvement and about CLAD (another chimera E4E organization), and there’s a lot of tension in the city because of the bombing and the big H4H conference in town. When Jimi and Rex do get involved with CLAD it seems pretty stupid because the FBI is all over her case…but whatever. I was excited for another road trip adventure, hiking through the woods (do I have a problem?), and sneaking through a fence, but it was kind of lame. The mean girl from Jimi and Claudia’s time with Chimerica in Canada came along (ex-Chimerica, now CLAD), and she and Rex didn’t even make it through the fence because they wouldn’t fit. It was just Jimi, Claudia, and Ogden (new CLAD friend?). They found out chimeras were working for Wells at a chicken farm and the chickens were sick/infected. From there I called the rest of the book, and I very quickly lost the low interest I had in the storyline by that point. 

We got the obvious storyline I saw coming from book one, and I really could have done without it. Howard Well’s Wellplants were taking over the world. The computers were in control and causing people to change and act like a hive mind. Wells had also been trying to prove since day one that chimeras caused the awful pandemic that happened years ago killing a bunch of people (including Jimi’s dad). He said that because they were spliced with animal genes, chimeras were providing a way for animal diseases (the avian flu) to be transferred to people. Even though it was scientifically proven that it wasn’t true (the first chimeras came after the pandemic), Wells still wanted it to be true. He altered the avian flu to be transferable to people and was planning on spreading it to the world to (prove he was right) lower the population and save resources like the last pandemic did. But if you actually think about it, the last pandemic was within 15-ish years because Jimi remembers her dad and she’s 17. That’s not very long of a time to feel like the world is saved and then ruined again. It’s stupid. Also, I don’t know if I’m the only one who hates a pandemic storyline now that we’ve gone through one, but just no. Let’s do without them. And this book was published in April 2020. That just makes it worse for me, non-intentionally predicting what was going to happen. 

Back to the plot, none of the chimeras were getting sick because when they were spliced (in the last two years) they were exposed to the disease and became immune. The immunity also was contagious so they were spreading it to other chimeras (who got spliced before) and the people they came in contact with. Jimi’s aunt, the one she’s named after that disappeared, is actually the head of Chimerica, the first ever chimera/the person who invented it, the one who put immunity into the “splicing agent”, and the ex-girlfriend of Howard Wells. They worked on preventing the first pandemic together which is how this all started. She cared about nature; he cared about computers. Wells’ plan was for all of the “plants” (people with Wellplants) to release the disease in a bunch of different ways at the same time, but Jimi, Claudia, Rex, and Ogden, got to the computer system at Wells tower in time to crash it and therefore crash all of the Wellplants in people’s brains. Turns out that Wells was controlled by the computer for years and it “wasn’t really him”. People decided that chimeras were cool because they could spread the immunity to them, and H4H pretty much ended. So, the book with the stupidest plot line, and only plot line that effected humans as well as chimeras was the event that “ended” the discrimination. While that may be realistic and very true of society, was it a good moral to learn? That nobody cares when minorities are dying, and people only do care when they can use them for something?

The story involves a lot of repetition of stupid things like: Jimi and Rex going to a protest, leaving because people start fighting, “talking” (a list of political and current events—no actual dialogue), watching the news (entire news broadcast recap), Jimi going to Claudia’s, watching the news again, Jimi and Rex going for a drive, “talking” again (the same list), getting abducted by Chimerica or CLAD, talking and talking some more with the people who abducted them (Sly and Jimi’s aunt or CLAD and Cronos/not-dead-Del), Jimi going home, watching the news, Jimi going to Claudia’s, and then we start all over with another protest. There is a big moment where Jimi decides to tell the world about the disease spreading, but then she gets talked out of it by her aunt because they need more time for the immunity to spread through the population before they provoke Wells into releasing the disease. But then CLAD and Cronos show up (that’s what happens when you try to play both sides). He doesn’t even do anything and they just tell him about it! They know he won’t keep his mouth shut, but…oh well, I guess. It’s stupid, every two seconds Jimi goes back and forth between believing/trusting someone and not and deciding to do something and not. The whole book was a contradiction. Anyway, Wells’ people, including Del’s (Cronos’) dad, show up to fight, and they kill Jimi’s aunt. Cronos tries to abduct Jimi (to save her?) but in a roundabout way, that’s how the shutting down the Wellplants plan starts. 

Aside from the stupid plot line and repetition, I hate how the characters were portrayed in this book. Jimi was Jimi, but controlling and undecisive and hypocritical. Rex was Jimi’s lapdog. He hardly had any lines and when he did it was just to tell Jimi he’d miss her. Don’t get me wrong, I love their relationship (or how it was in the last two books), and I like that he misses her and wants to spend time with her, but they never talk about what they’re going to do, she decides (12 times because she’s undecisive). They do become intimate with each other, which is…whatever, but after the book mentions that, it seems like whenever Rex glances at Jimi it’s “with that look in his eyes.” Don’t do that to my Rex! He understands they’re in the middle of a serious situation, AND HER MOM IS RIGHT DOWN THE HALL. Come on. Claudia was also portrayed as very weak. Especially after she was so opinionated and strong in the last book, it was ridiculous for her to turn to Jimi for every little thing (not in a good friend type of way). Yeah, her dad got a Wellplant and was taken over by a computer, but calling Jimi to come over every five minutes isn’t going to do anything. In the first part of the book, with their adventure to the chicken farm, she almost seemed normal. But after that, and even in the end where she helps take down the Wellplant computers, she’s not herself. Oh, I forgot to tell you how when that all went down, Jimi accidentally shot Rex with a dart gun/bomb thing so he was unconscious for all the action. Yeah, he really was just there to stand (lay) there and look pretty. And finally, Sly. He really abandoned his loyalty to Rex and Jimi by always siding with Chimerica. Even after Jimi’s aunt was dead and the world knew about the disease, “the council” (the decision makers of Chimerica) voted against helping Jimi spread the word about the chimeras’ contagious immunity (to help all the people), and he sided with Chimerica. Loser! 

CONCLUSION

After all of that, I would recommend the first two books; I really enjoyed them. The third book was not a good time, and you should save yourself some heartache and a lot of wasted reading hours by giving it a pass. My recap above shares all the closure (not a lot) that I got from reading the book, so it’s all you’d get anyways. Now imagine a pretty picture in your head of a much better ending with a strong Rex and a whole lot less stupid Jimi. Yeah…that’s better.