Rating: 
Summary: A Defintie Page Turner
Review: "Following on the heels of his critically acclaimed and highly original alternate history novel ORBIS, Scott Mackay now pens an intriguing, complex, and compelling science fiction thriller. He depicts a uniquely disturbing future for North America, where alien nanogens have infected much of the human race. Some nanogens limit life span to thirty years of age, while others disintegrate the body bit by bit, all the while keeping the victim alive. At the center of the story is Dr. Alex Denyer, a man who has spent his whole life fighting the nanogens, and who is now infected with Nanogen Number 17, the one that disintegrates human tissue. Omnifix, a human-designed nanogen, replaces disintegrating tissue with cybernetic equivalents. Alex slowly undergoes the transformation from human to machine. Mackay's grasp of extrapolated science is pitch perfect and convincing. This is a riveting book from first page to last, written in clean and engaging prose, full of twists and surprises, a definite page turner. As a deft portrayal of a man undergoing catastrophic bodily change, OMNIFIX ranks right up there with Kafka's THE METAMORPHOSIS, and should quickly become a classic of modern science fiction. Five stars all the way!"
Rating:
Summary: A Defintie Page Turner
Review: "Following on the heels of his critically acclaimed and highly original alternate history novel ORBIS, Scott Mackay now pens an intriguing, complex, and compelling science fiction thriller. He depicts a uniquely disturbing future for North America, where alien nanogens have infected much of the human race. Some nanogens limit life span to thirty years of age, while others disintegrate the body bit by bit, all the while keeping the victim alive. At the center of the story is Dr. Alex Denyer, a man who has spent his whole life fighting the nanogens, and who is now infected with Nanogen Number 17, the one that disintegrates human tissue. Omnifix, a human-designed nanogen, replaces disintegrating tissue with cybernetic equivalents. Alex slowly undergoes the transformation from human to machine. Mackay's grasp of extrapolated science is pitch perfect and convincing. This is a riveting book from first page to last, written in clean and engaging prose, full of twists and surprises, a definite page turner. As a deft portrayal of a man undergoing catastrophic bodily change, OMNIFIX ranks right up there with Kafka's THE METAMORPHOSIS, and should quickly become a classic of modern science fiction. Five stars all the way!"
Rating: 
Summary: Hack writing in the sci-fi genre
Review: Before reading Omnifix, I enjoyed Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton and Broken Angels by Richard Morgan. What a massive letdown Omnifix proved to be after the other books. Hamilton and Morgan know how to deliver interesting characterizations, page-turning plots, and are conversant in the fields of science germane to their respective novels.Omnifix's characterizations are juvenile, and calling major stretches of prose "stilted" is an understatement. Adding insult to injury, the plot is at best snore-inducing; at worst, outright silly. This book needed an editor in the worst way. Placed roughly 400 years in the future, the technology descriptions made it obvious that the author is woefully lacking in the science background necessary to make a hard science fiction story believable. The explanations given for the "nanogens" at the heart of this story are laughable. My advice: look elsewhere for reading enjoyment.
Rating:
Summary: Awful characters, awful book
Review: Completely unbelievable characters in an unbelievable world. The whole book reads without any excitement, even during battle scenes. In fact the largest "battle" in the book, the climax, gets about 2 pages. The main character never really seems to be in danger. His relationship to the other characters makes him seem like a robot, which would have been an interesting literary device (considering he practically is one through most of the book) if I actually thought the author intended to do that.
I've never bothered to write a review before, but this book was so bad I felt I had to.
Rating: 
Summary: Truly Excellent
Review: I can't quite give 'Omnifix' 5 stars; I actually give it a 4.5, and that is due solely to a few sections of dialogue that come across as stilted and repetitive, especially one segment where the protagonist explains what a telomere is, using almost the same wording he used to explain it to another character earlier in the story. And that's really the only flaw I can find in this novel. It presents a strangely hopeful and familiar dystopia set some 400-odd years in the future, where alien nanogen terror-weapons have wiped out most of Earth's population, leaving the remainder to dwell in massively-fortified city-states scattered here and there, many of which are united in a war against an independent Mars - a hostile nation which is attempting to use a derelict Alien Weapons Platform to wipe out the remaining Earthers. The setting will reach out and grab you; its really something to behold. The characters are a little under-developed, but not exceedingly so, and their motivations are logical and consistent. Mackay is also not afraid to pull any punches with his character's lives - if inflicting them with a mutating nanogen or even killing them off is necessary to advance the story, he doesn't flinch - the hallmark of a great writer, in my opnion. I'll be eagerly awaiting more from this writer.
Rating:
Summary: First Rate Sci-Fi!!
Review: I do not normally read hard core sci-fi, but I saw the cover and read the back of the book and read Harriett's review and thought I would give it a try. This is a deep book. In the sense that the author delves deep into the nanogens and genetics of the human body - the catch?? He makes it interesting and creates characters that are dimensional and you care about whether or not they are going to get infected with these little itty bitty nanotech creatures. Check it out, I bet you enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: First Rate Sci-Fi!!
Review: I do not normally read hard core sci-fi, but I saw the cover and read the back of the book and read Harriett's review and thought I would give it a try. This is a deep book. In the sense that the author delves deep into the nanogens and genetics of the human body - the catch?? He makes it interesting and creates characters that are dimensional and you care about whether or not they are going to get infected with these little itty bitty nanotech creatures. Check it out, I bet you enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: An awesome outstanding story!!!
Review: I feel Scott Mackay is an ultimate genius!!! This is the 2nd book that I read by him. Orbis was the first but I feel I like Orbis alot better!! Mr Mackay has a habit of putting you in the middle of the story, even though you don't know what the heck is going on, you are wanting to find what more of what is happening!! The main character Alex Denyer, a scientist, is being put through the most craziest situations that I, myself, couldn't phanthom going through. There were times I felt for the character.
Originally, in the begining, I thought I knew who was the villian in this book, then Mr Mackay did a twist on me, then later on he did another twist and I realized I should stuck to my original guess. I felt Mr Mackay did a great job writing about the relationships Alex had with the other characters like his ex-wife & her new husband, his son and ex-girlfriend. There wasn't much action going maybe near the end. I felt the author wanted this book to be written by a scientist point of view. Like for example, if this happen to a scientist what would he do in this situation. No bang, bang shoot up type of violence happening here. In this case, it honesetly work for me!!
Rating: 
Summary: Good story hampered by literary pitfalls
Review: I saw this at the bookstore and it looked interesting. In fact, it was interesting but not exactly what I had in mind. I enjoy books that use Science Fiction as a backdrop for a story about the human condition or romantic relationships, i.e. Fires of God, Hercules Text, Contact. The trouble is that the hero is never authentic nor are the situations that profound. Someone said it best when they noted the whole thing appears to be a draft of a novel.
As always, I note that even 350 years in the future, people still go on job interviews, have physical computers, and that strangely all the current historical sites (Congress, monuments, White House, etc) are still standing and intact. The reason for the alien attack is finally disclosed but I had LOTS of trouble with the boarding and exploration of the vessel. I mean, the descriptions were so esoteric and unclear that I could barely follow them on their journey.
I would have preferred two novels - one with alien contact, the other about the personal/political situation. Combining both in the same story only lessened the intensity of each. One sees the idea of a budding Martian-Earth romance between the scientists but for some reason this is side-tracked and we meet the snippy ex-wife. In fact, there are way too many characters for so short a book. I have railed against authors who introduced a myriad of folks, assign them a small task and forgettable dialogue before they sink into oblivion.
The ending was exactly what you guessed half way into the story. Everyone is healed, peace breaks out, true love conquers all. There is nothing bad with this (I am a romantic, at heart) but when you offer a pat conclusion, the preceding action must be sufficiently invigorating to withstand the mundaneness. In this case it was not.
Rating:
Summary: Good story, scientifically not profound, rushed at the end
Review: I usually don't buy books without having read a few comments before because there are just too many good stories out there and I don't want to waste my reading time. However, in this case I got intrigued by the cover, because it looked really cool (a very cheapish criterion, I know). In addition, the synopsis on the back side of the book looked interesting and promising and reminded me a bit of Ship of Fools (Richard Russo) in regards to the unknown alien species: "Ten years have passed since an unknown alien species invaded Earth. Hundreds of unmanned alien weapons platforms armed with deadly nanogens were unleashed throughout the solar system...a new weapon platform enters the solar system and is heading towards Earth...." When reading the synopsis of this book, someone might expect a story mostly concerned with this new alien weapon platform. My expectation was certainly headed in that direction. However, as it turned out, the weapon platform was just a small piece in the puzzle and the actual story was much broader and went beyond a simple 'stop-and-destroy-mission'. A vicious conspiracy manifested itself and entered the story at unexpected stages, enriched the overall plot and created a good level of suspense. For a moment I was a bit disappointed when the actual 'stop-and-destroy-mission' suddenly ended and the main character Alex returned back to earth. The book lost a bit of its momentum at that stage but quickly got back on track and rewarded the reader with a superb, almost emotional phase, when the protagonist faced problems only known to nanogen 16 and 17 infected people. In general, the characters are amazingly crafted and go far beyond the average sci-fi character development. I wouldn't say this doesn't come at any cost, because the scientific part of the story is somewhat not comprehensive and sophisticated enough. For example, at one stage in the story, cloning comes into the picture and is used to move a human being into a new body, including memories, feelings, experience, and even the personality. This whole process is very simplified and only talks about downloading someone's existence onto a hard drive and uploading it into the new body's brain. Fundamental questions, such as are we human beings only a combination of our experience/memory, therefore we can create clones of ourselves and therefore we reach immortality? The author uses this concept without looking at least into the hypothetical issues and details of cloning and mentality transfers. He simply ignores the fact that he created the concept of immortal humans with this cloning solution! Don't get a wrong idea about the story, it is definitely not a stupid cloning type of sci-fi plot! The last thing which I found disturbing is the almost prompt ending. Mackay rushes towards the end and tries to cover too many facts in not enough pages. He could have easily expanded the book by another 100 pages without creating any bored second at all. In summary, I loved the story, the rich characters and the fast pace of events happening. It is for sure one of the better sci-fi books I have read over the last couple of years!
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