The Face Transplant by R. Arundel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Face Transplant is a medical action thriller. It is set in a society where total and partial face transplants have become nearly perfect. The technology has advanced to the point where only thick scarring betrays that work has been done. Naturally this means that the technology is not only being heavily financed by the government but that it is being used for covert warfare. In the first few paragraphs, we learn that the protagonist, a world-renowned facial surgeon, is being forced at gunpoint to perform a total face transplant on an unknown person. Days later he finds out that his mentor is dead, and while it was made to appear natural, it was probably a murder by the same people who previously took him hostage.

The remainder of the book is the story of the protagonist trying to find out who and why. His search takes him around the world, including the top of an inhospitable Himalayan mountain and into the death zone. Several organizations are hunting him, and brushes with death are quite common. In fact, without the help of friends he'd already be dead. It certainly lived up to the promise of being a thriller.

I'm hoping that because the e-book that I read was an uncorrected proof from NetGalley that the formatting will improve in the published edition. As it was the formatting made it difficult to figure out what was going on, there were sections where the action jumped around without any segue. There is also an error at location 2063 on my Kindle where it says "The bullet has sliced through Jason's colon" Except that it wasn't Jason who had been shot at that point. Jason was still alive and well and plotting. So the book really does need serious editing before publication.

I gave it three stars because I really wanted to enjoy this story. The medicine was fascinating, and I really liked the artificial intelligence, Alice. The ending had a lot of promise, but ultimately the book failed to deliver completely. Part of that was due to the limited readability but part of it was due to the stilted and not quite believable dialogue. It was very hard to follow and I had to keep scrolling back and forth to figure out what was going on.

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