It’s not often I disagree with other reviewers (LeaF), but hold your nose: Hybrid stinks. The first couple of reviews on Amazon are favourable – too favourable to be creditable, according to Karen’s review.
The errors… Good grief! “to” instead of “too”, “latter” instead of “later”, typos like “threeyear-old”. I just typed that and Word gave me a red squiggly line under it. How the hell Brian O’Grady missed it and every other case where he mentioned the age of a person, I have no idea. There were even several cases where O’Grady forgot which way his inverted commas were pointing. That’s not easy to do with Word or similar word processors. What was he using? A brick?
The Plot
There’s a new virus on the loose, a survivor or two, a terrorist plot (why oh why does it always have to be the Muslims?), and a psycho. Throw ‘em all together and you have Hybrid in a nutshell. Sort of. O’Grady turns his psycho and survivor into superhumans thanks to the virus.
This is where the plot started to get dumb. Granted viruses can have unusual effects, but they don’t turn people into demigods. Then it got dumber. The body-count is ridiculous as is the sudden eruption of war late into the book. Dumber still, the various US government departments O’Grady mentions; CDC, FBI etc, just don’t behave the way he wrote them.
The Characters
Okay, we have Amanda Flynn, the original survivor of the virus as demigod number one. Haunted by all sorts of terrible in her past, yet somehow on the ball and of course, beautiful. Oh please.
Then there’s a German assassin called Klaus Reisch. He’s our psycho and demigod number two. O’Grady writes Klaus as a nut-bag quite well actually, despite the demigod stuff.
Father John Oliver becomes demigod number three. The dude may as well have been a cardboard cut-out. Lame.
Phil Rucker is an autistic coroner – yeah, like that can happen in real life – who gets exposed and becomes demigod number four.
Nathan Martin is a bigwig at CDC who originally encountered Amanda years before and now is trying to get to the bottom of things. Perhaps the most balanced character.
Greg Flynn, Amanda’s father in-law and retired cop who manages to get more done than all the other cops combined. Oh deary, deary me.
Lisa/Linda Flynn Amanda’s mother in-law. O’Grady even mixed up this character’s name, spoiling her beyond redemption.
Rodney Patton was a big-city cop who came to Colorado Springs for a simpler life. These doozies keep on coming, don’t they?
The Setting
Could have been anywhere, but O’Grady chose Colorado Springs. In winter. Doesn’t make sense. If a psycho wants to release an airborne virus for maximum spread, he’d choose a bigger town, frequented by more travellers, in warmer weather. Shtoopid.
The Style
O’Grady tries for fast-paced but falls short. The errors in the text alone would ruin that. Unfortunately, those errors aren’t alone.
The fight scenes are silly and over-the-top. There’s even one bit where the force of a few bullets blows our bad guy out a window. Thanks to Mythbusters, everyone knows that sort of stuff doesn’t happen. There’s a handy little equation brought to us by a guy called Sir Isaac Newton: ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’.
Another fight scene towards the end, this time in New York, is just plain confusing. I read it three times and it still didn’t work for me.
There's supposed to be a race-against-time element in Hybrid, but it just doesn't work either. Characters wind up flying from Colorado Springs to LA and New York as if these paces are just around the corner. O'Grady could have at least checked how long it actually takes to fly from Colorado to Los Angeles.
Conclusion
I downloaded Hybrid to my ereader out of curiosity. The reviews, both good and bad, got me interested. It didn’t take long for me to want to delete it and move on to something else, hopefully written by someone who at least gave his work one out-loud read before he published it.
But, I hung in there. A fair number of reviews for Hybrid have the reviewer admitting to not finishing the book. So, to be fair, I did. Don’t bother with Hybrid. It’s just not worth it, even if you manage to get it for free. 1/10.
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