BookView Review rated it:

Create Destruction: A Novel in Verse 

Ryan A. Kovacs

Coming soon

A young boy becomes the target of a psychopathic doctor’s scientific manipulations in Kovacs’s heart wrenching latest novel written in verse. Doctor Larson is a maniacal genius bent on harnessing the parapsychic powers of twelve-year-old Thomas. Trying to do something for humanity, Thomas agrees to Larson’s experiments despite his father’s apprehensions. When Larson begins to use a “thought terminating process” to catalyze Thomas’s parapsychic abilities. The young boy finds himself stripped of personal choice and self-control. Will Thomas realize that he actually has a choice? The themes of genetic manipulation and repression in the story are familiar ones, but Kovacs’s immersive storytelling effortlessly weaves SF elements with a tormenting and surprising coming-of-age tale. Woven skillfully into the narrative are tiny but significant details, such as Thomas’s parents’ backstory, Doctor Larson’s unethical genetic experiments, governmental explorations, keeping the reader invested. The background of Thomas’s parapsychic powers is somewhat hazy, but readers’ hearts will race and break right along with the courageous yet vulnerable boy’s. The heartbreaking ending beautifully passes along the message of how the biggest changes often begin with the smallest rebellions. A moving exploration of personal choices and the power within.

***