"Evil Genius" by Catherine Jinks

Cadel Piggott is a child prodigy. After being caught hacking into high security networks, he is forced to go to therapy. His therapist Thaddeus Roth seems to be as evil minded as Cadel and gives him ideas on other networks and systems he could master, such as the railways and roads. Cadel eagerly looks into these systems due to the fact that he is fascinated by them as well as the fact that they are the only things he considers a challenge. As he grows older he becomes more separate from his busy adoptive parents. They don’t think much of him and don’t pay any attention to him, which Cadel thinks is a blessing. Cadel being a prodigy and being 2 to 3 years younger than most of the kids in the class makes him one of the last people someone would suspect to be behind the incidents he causes. As Cadel reaches the age of 10 he starts to manipulate social networks to his advantage. As he moves through the grades he becomes more daring as well as making stupid mistakes. He causes many incidents such as the collapse of the new gymnasium, and the day that the teachers came to school 3 hours late.

After finishing the 12th grade he almost is carted away to a boot camp where he can become more disciplined. However, Thaddeus manipulates his adoptive parents into taking a look at another college called the Axis Institute. Upon looking at a different version of the brochure than the one that Thaddeus had given his adoptive parents, Cadel sees that the school has several classes such as Infiltration, Assassination, Contagion, and Disguise. After taking a tour of the modern facilities the Piggott’s agree that Cadel will go to the institute. After joining the school he meets several weird and crazy characters. Everyone seems to be at each other’s throat, including the teachers’. As chaos breaks out around Cadel, he has nowhere to run as some of his “allies” disappear. Cadel realizes that the school is tearing itself apart. Several cases of blackmail, murder, assault, poisoning, and disappearing happen around Cadel, which slowly drives him away from the underworld lifestyle that Thaddeus had always planned for him. As he realizes that his life has basically been planned out for him he tries to escape what he’s done and try and fight back against it. He believes he can do it but no matter how smart you are you can’t calculate what will happen in the future.

Cadel is a pretty well-rounded character but I think the adoptive mother really didn’t express enough emotion toward the beginning of the book. I think that his somewhat cheerful mood at the Axis Institute does help him but for the most part it doesn’t give him any allies that are to helpful. Cadel has some of the aspects of Artemis Fowl in the way that he is a mastermind and is smarter than most of the people in the book, but he doesn’t go out and steal important artifacts like Artemis Fowl does throughout most of his books. The school situations are a bit exaggerated since you can’t see how someone could individually cause the entire school staff to be late.

One of the other things that really makes the book interesting is the genetic powers that some of the kids have—such as the twins that have a psychic link and the boy who is at risk of spontaneously combusting because of a special fluid in his body. The powers are more believable because they are based on genetics and not something out of the blue like the ability to fly or run faster than a car. In fact, you wouldn’t even want some of the powers that some of these kids have. There are no Supermans, Flashs or Wonder Womans here.

“Evil Genius” is an excellent book that will excite anyone who has read the “Artemis Fowl” series or loves a good fictional book.

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