DNF Review: Project Cain

Project Cain
Geoffrey Girard
Series: None. Hopefully.
Release Date: September 3rd, 2013
Publisher: Simon & Schuster BFYR
Number of Pages: 320 
Star Rating: 1 star, DNF
Word Rating: Mierda 

Fifteen-year-old Jeff Jacobson had never heard of Jeffrey Dahmer, the infamous serial killer who brutally murdered seventeen people more than twenty years ago. But Jeff’s life changes forever when the man he’d thought was his father hands him a government file telling him he was constructed in a laboratory only seven years ago, part of a top-secret government cloning experiment called ‘Project CAIN’.

There, he was created entirely from Jeffrey Dahmer’s DNA. There are others like Jeff—those genetically engineered directly from the most notorious murderers of all time: The Son of Sam, The Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy . . . even other Jeffrey Dahmer clones. Some raised, like Jeff, in caring family environments; others within homes that mimicked the horrific early lives of the men they were created from.

When the most dangerous boys are set free by the geneticist who created them, the summer of killing begins. Worse, these same teens now hold a secret weapon even more dangerous than the terrible evil they carry within. Only Jeff can help track the clones down before it’s too late. But will he catch the ‘monsters’ before becoming one himself?

I can't do it. I just can't. I read up until about 40%, and the entirety of what I read--literally, all of it--was one huge info-dump.

There were three to four pages dedicated to just the main character telling us the characteristics and likes and dislikes of a man. Here are some examples of the likes and dislikes of this man:

He preferred brunettes over blondes, but his last girlfriend, the first he'd ever truly loved, was blonde.

His favorite band was Pearl Jam.

He disliked snow.

If any of that information is proven to be useful as the novel progresses, I would give the author my right arm. And I am right-handed.

And then there's another three pages or so on the history of cloning.

And why exactly are they making teenage clones of serial killers? Which scientist thought this would be a good idea? Yeah, send him off a cliff. Like now.

And then there's some horribly inaccurate statistics of men and rape and death and suicide and domestic violence.

And don't even get me started on how the main character asks the reader questions and speaks to them directly.

I'm not five years old, and you're not Dora; you can stop asking me questions like, "Have YOU ever felt the urge to kill someone?", book. Ay dios mio.

I can't.

I really just can't.

DNF.

God.