Jackson Riley has it all – a fortune, a girlfriend he adores, and the healthy glow of youth. But he is haunted by the notion that it won’t last forever, and his father’s painful death from cancer only reinforces his fears. So he invests a substantial chunk of money in two laboratories: the White Room, where scientists work to slow down his mortality, and the Black Room, where they fight to reverse aging altogether. A major breakthrough brings him publicity and the promise of results, but also deadly danger. Mysterious agents are out to arrest Riley, discredit his research, and take away everything he’s been working for all these years. But why are they after him, and what do they really want? And can Riley escape their clutches, remaining a young man forever?
COUNTERFEIT YOUTH is a fast-paced novella, full of action and thought-provoking questions. Riley is given substantial motivation for his obsession, and the scientific discoveries made are plausible enough for easy belief. Riley’s relationship with Nicole is portrayed affectionately, and she is an independent, intelligent character in her own right. Both sides in the central conflict are rational actors, who firmly believe they are doing the right thing according to their knowledge and beliefs, and both sides are given a hearing by the author.
The novella does feel rather more like the outline of a story than like a fully-fleshed tale. It could use some additional detail, some fleshing-out of both the main story and the romance between Nicole and Riley – Avanessian really raises too many interesting questions for his book to be confined to novella format. It could also use a bit of an edit for some awkward phrasing and for some misused and/or misspelled words, like “principle” for “principal” and “telemore” for “telomere”.
COUNTERFEIT YOUTH offers the core of a captivating science fiction story.
Reviewed by Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader