VITRO Blog Tour: "Vitros Unveiled" Guest Post

Vitro
Jessica Khoury
Series: Vitro (Companion)
Publisher: Razorbill
Buy: Amazon / Book Depository

You can read my review here!

 

When Sophie is summoned by her long-absent mother, a scientist who works in a classified lab, Sophie throws caution to the wind and heads to the South Pacific. She sweet-talks her way onto a tiny supply plane piloted by Jim Julien, who lives on Guam with his alcoholic father. Jim is captivated by Sophie and against his better judgement agrees to take Sophie to the secretive and tropical Skin Island where her mom has been working for so many years.

There Sophie and Jim are met not by her mother but instead by Nicholas, a handsome, brilliant boy who leads them to Lux--a girl who looks exactly like Sophie. Lux is Sophie's genetic twin and was bred using in vitro fertilization. But why? And just what have the scientists created Lux to be capable of?

With lyrical writing and ever-increasing tension, Jessica Khoury draws out the explosive answers in her much-anticipated followup to Origin.

Welcome to the VITRO blog tour! Jessica Khoury, the talented author of Origin, is back with a death-defying tropical adventure. Follow along over the next two weeks as Jessica takes readers behind the scenes of her latest novel.

VITROS UNVEILED

As you may have deduced from the title, the Vitros are what Vitro is mainly about. So what are they? Here’s a spoiler-free description: The Vitros are test tube embryos raised in a lab and implanted with computer chips in their brains. What these chips do, exactly, you’ll have to find out for yourself. But I’ll say this: this technology is not so farfetched. Researchers are currently exploring the benefits of implanting electrical nodes in the brain and using carefully timed electric impulses to correct things like dementia, seizures,  and blindness—which is brilliant! I am really excited to see where this goes in the near future, because so many lives could be changed for the better! As a writer, when I read this, my imagination not only envisions the countless good things that can come from such technology—it also inevitably asks what similar neuroscience could do if used by the wrong hands for nefarious purposes.

So why the name Vitro? Vitro is the Latin term for glass, and the phrase “in vitro” is used to describe a procedure taking place outside of a living organism (such as in a Petri dish or test tube, hence the reference to glass). The Vitros were originally created in such a way, through an actual real-life process in which doctors artificially split a normal human zygote into two, creating two identical zygotes that grow into identical embryos. This is the same thing  that happens naturally in the womb when a woman has identical twins—the only difference is that it’s caused purposely…and also in a Petri dish.

There are two Vitros who take center stage in their eponymous story: Lux and Nicholas. Lux, you’ll get to meet firsthand as she has several of her own viewpoint chapters. Nicholas, you’ll meet in chapter four. He’s one of my favorite characters, because I got to explore some pretty freaky psychological stuff in developing his character (*veers wildly around yet more spoilers in the road*).

Nicholas and Lux

Jessica Khoury is 23 years old. She has red hair. She was homeschooled. She's an avid soccer player and was a three-time All-American striker. She is of Syrian and Scottish descent. She went to college in the same tiny Georgia town in which she was born and raised. And she's a prodigiously talented writer with a huge following. Jessica Khoury lives in Toccoa, GA with her husband, Benjamin. You can visit her online at www.jessicakhoury.com.