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Dark Genius: Volume 1

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Breaking the glass ceiling in science wasn't going to be easy for Emma, even with Lawrence's help.

After his troubled past, Lawrence hoped for a fresh start at MIT when he met Emma. But before they could begin, their world turned into a lie.

Everything was torn away from them and they were embroiled in computer hacking and murder. Dodging the FBI while hiding from cyber-terrorists, they were forced into the underworld of the dark web, anonymous encryption, and AI finance.

While trying to throw off the ghosts of his haunted past, Lawrence had to run faster and faster to evade the shadowy forces that were after him and Emma.

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First published November 9, 2017

101 people are currently reading
2004 people want to read

About the author

H. Peter Alesso

75 books473 followers
I love words, but that wasn't always true. I grew up with a talent for numbers, leading me to follow a different path. I went to Annapolis and MIT and became a nuclear physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Only after I retired was my desire to tell stories reawakened.

In recent years, I have immersed myself in the world of words, drawing on my scientific knowledge and personal experience to shape my writing.

As a scientist, I explored physics and technology, which enabled me to create informative and insightful books, sharing my knowledge with readers who sought to expand their understanding in these areas—contributing to their intellectual growth while satisfying my own passion.

But it was my time as a naval officer that ignited my imagination and propelled me into science fiction. After graduating from the United States Naval Academy and serving on nuclear submarines during both hot and cold wars, I witnessed firsthand the complexities and challenges of military operations that seamen face daily.

This allowed me a unique perspective, which I channeled into creating Henry Gallant and a 22nd-century world where a space officer fought against invading aliens. Through this narrative, I explored the depths of human resilience, the mysteries of space, and the intricacies of military conflict.

My stories let me share the highlights of my journey with you. I hope you enjoy the ride. (www.hpeteralesso.com)

H. Peter Alesso Amazon Author Page"
https://www.amazon.com/H.-Peter-Aless...

'The Henry Gallant Sage' Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/TheHenryGall...

website: https://www.ai-hive.net/

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5 stars
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34 (32%)
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26 (24%)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
Profile Image for Coco.V.
50k reviews129 followers
Want to read
May 21, 2019
🎁 FREE on Amazon today (5/21/2019)! 🎁
11 reviews
December 19, 2017
I found the book to be very interesting. Loved the plot and characters. The only thing I would have done differently is to not add so much technical jargon that was the only part that slowed me down. The ending was a good surprise. I would recommend this book highly. All in all I loved it. Good work.
240 reviews2 followers
December 19, 2017
A fast paced and captivating read

I consider this a light read - the characters are interesting, the interactions they have with each other realistic but the obfuscating physics discussions distracting.
The underlying storyline has enough twists and turns that should satisfy any reader of mysteries and is set in a plausible enough world to accept any distractions.
Profile Image for Alexis Harper.
5 reviews2 followers
April 4, 2024
I had a hard time following this book, seemed to jump scene to scene, and the “romance” between the two main characters was not built up well. There was also a lot of scientific terms that made the flow of reading a lot harder.
8 reviews2 followers
April 28, 2018
Well written interesting storyline and ending. I would like to see more about these characters
Profile Image for Alexandra Phillips.
163 reviews3 followers
February 4, 2018
Andrew Lawrence returns to MIT to continue his research and re-conciliate with professor Prost. On his first day on campus he runs on Emma Franklin with whom he will become involved not only erotically but scientifically, too. Prost is fuming for his return and he is obsessed that Lawrence will ruin him and his plans. So though he accepts him in his team he burdens him with tons of work leaving no time for his research. Will Lawrence stand all this burden - workload and psychological pressure? Things will become more complicated when Lawrence will be accused for being involved in a cyber attack to the CERN quantum system as a hacker. Is he indeed innocent? Will he be able to prove his innocence?

An amazing fast-paced sci-fi thriller around the scientific community. I cannot but comment positively how plausible it was the story and the world around which the plot was evolved. The author really captured the competition between universities and professors in the academic research field, the exploitation of Phd candidates, even the world of computer science in the field of algorithms and artificial intelligence.

I was impressed how true it all seemed. Great research on the area by the author and great depiction of this world into a fictional story. I assume if you are studying, working or simply you are acquainted with computer science and physics you will enjoy this book.
Profile Image for Cath.
950 reviews17 followers
July 24, 2019
This story involves a young man called Lawrence, who was a child genius, having gone to MIT while in his young teens. He has a degree in physics and was working on his PhD when he began having problems with his professors, his classes and then a monumental family incident that greatly affected him. He ended failing all his classes and being kicked out of MIT. A few years later he gets back into MIT and on his first day, bumps into a young woman called Emma, knocking everything out of her hands. She is studying maths and finalising her PhD.

Lawrence is trying to make up for his previous failure at MIT, but has been given a mentor who hates his guts and wants him to leave, before he has to push him out, after he used to embarrass him with questions during lectures. This professor already has teaching assistants, but piles all his classes to be taught onto Lawrence as well as working out all the calculations for a huge project the professor is part of with Harvard and the Swiss CERN centre. Although this professor is not in charge of the project, he likes to take credit for it, and his teaching assistants seem to be following his lead.

Lawrence’s fresh start is being stymied, before he can even start! He has little to no time to work on his own project. He finds parts of Emma’s project fascinating and would love to use the data from it, after spotting some oddities in her results and thinks he may know what they are, but needs to be able to prove it. Add in a bit of computer hacking, a well-known group of international of hackers causing outages everywhere, murder and the FBI investigating everything, it all leads to a lot of chaos and accusations being flung about.

Lawrence ends up as a prime suspect and even his new relationship with Emma suffers under the pressure. It seems someone is feeding information to his professor mentor and even the FBI and it looks like he will either hauled into a cell or kicked out of college again. Others want Emma’s algorithm for use on the dark web and to take money from financial institutions, as well as many other illegal uses. The story brings you all the action at the end to show if Lawrence and Emma can escape the clutches of the underworld characters and avoid losing their data and projects to others.

The story has a lot of technical and high level terminology used in physics and mathematics of PHD level and higher, which can be a bit much at times. The actual story of Lawrence trying to make amends for his previous time at MIT and the important project Emma is completing, are much more interesting. Especially how they get together and the struggles to keep a relationship going with so many lies and secrets being put out there. The professor and mentor of Lawrence, seems a bit unrealistic in his hatred and treatment of Lawrence – could that really be allowed to happen and why would he have no recourse to protest against such treatment? I received an ARC copy of this book from Hidden Gems and while I might not want to read another technical book, I would read one with more of a story behind it about the actual characters. I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.
Profile Image for Jamie Bee.
Author 1 book122 followers
July 23, 2019
I found the characters of this story to be quite engaging, especially the hero and the heroine. I liked the interaction between them and their group of friends. While some reviewers thought the science was a bit much, I'm enough of a science nerd and science fiction aficionado to appreciate the digressions into the scientific aspects of this story. If you find them too burdensome, you can mostly just gloss over them. They do add to the story, but they are not integral to it. I felt like the language was overloaded with adjectives and adverbs that didn't actually add anything to the story; they more told rather than showed. Calling something alluring, when it's not a character saying it, doesn't really speak much to me; show me why it is alluring and why that matters!

Also, I think this book has a bit of an image problem. The cover on Amazon looks like a light and breezy summer romance story; I would call this a science-based technothriller with a tiny romantic element. The headline of the blurb at Amazon is nothing that really happens in the story, or at least to any appreciable degree. It feels like the author is trying to recast the story into a YA romance… most likely because these are popular. I actually prefer the old cover that you can still see on Goodreads; it more accurately reflects what the story is actually about.

I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.

Read my other reviews at https://www.readingfanaticreviews.com.
Profile Image for Scott.
305 reviews6 followers
November 13, 2018
I am a sucker for books in the techno-thriller genre because this is my area of expertise. This is the main reason I picked up and listened too “Dark Genius” written by H. Peter Alesso. This book is the author’s second book series released and be aware, this is the first released book in the series and the only one currently available in audiobook format; at the time of this review. The audiobook edition was well narrated by Jennifer Groberg, who has quite a few books under her belt on Audible. Although the book has a decent story and plot, I found there were too many holes in the author’s research and implementation of technology making it less realistic than I would have preferred. For those who are less technical and like an exciting action filled tale, I recommend you give the book a listen. If you are a fan of conspiracies, clandestine hackers, and advanced quantum computing with a distinctive AI (artificial intelligence), you may find the book enjoyable. For me, it is was good, but I was hoping it would have been great. A few changes, edits and some more research into the many technologies used might have done the trick elevating this book above many others in a crowded genre.

The book opened with a good prologue and ramped up the action rather quickly. I also enjoyed that the book took place in the Boston area, which I’m quite familiar with, and that it was often between classmates from both Harvard and MIT. There was quite a bit of the well-known banter between the students of both campuses as each of them feel they are better than others. The story at times felt predictable and the conversations seemed forced. There was a lot of action, but little depth and substance when I step back and think about the story. The sentence structure and dialogues had a feeling of being younger adult (YA) and at times even childish. This for me felt out of character for these geniuses as I would have thought their vocabulary would have been more advanced and complex. Even some of the conversations between the professors of the campus and the students felt immature at times.

Any modern-day technology thriller needs to have either a quantum computer or artificial intelligence; or both. This story had both with a good portion of the action and activity occurring around CERN and the two Boston campuses. There is some great discussion and topics involving statistics, probability, and research which one expects from a book in this genre. However, the areas that are more focused on computer attackers and their activity felt weak and less realistic. I do not expect one-hundred percent realism in these subject areas, but I would like to have something that feels right and still has a sense of mystery. Something like the TV series Mr. Robot, but this story had too many technological issues for me to fully enjoy it. Systems were to easily compromised and their passwords stolen with very little effort. As much as this seems the case by reading newspapers or news media, the actual effort is quite tedious and time consuming. Add to this, one of the most modern and state of the art quantum computers requiring me to suspend belief to accept its use and ability. At times, I felt the author would toss in a few computer terms just to make the book feel more realistic, yet for those in the know, it often had the opposite effect.

I did like the areas where the author has some conversations involving physics, but this may have been my lack of knowledge making it seem realistic. The book felt more like a serious take on the movie comedy “Real Genius” released in 1985. The characters lacked a level of depth I would have expected from those in their field of expertise. There was some light romance which also did not feel as smooth or natural. The movement between the dark web and the campus activity was not as smooth of a transition as I would have expected and the events from the bad people from the dark web were experts in cleaning up their tracks by simply deleting logs. In the real world, things are much more complex than this and even more complicated when speaking of a quantum computer. For me, it came down to how much I could believe and what I knew was fantasy or simply misunderstood technology by the author.

The audiobook’s narration was performed quite well, and I do not recall any issues with the audio or any background artifacts while listening. The narrator’s voice was crisp and clean, and she did a decent job of giving each of the characters unique personalities via their voice. The only thing I would have preferred would have been to have a male voice the main character. I understand this is simply a personal preference and many may enjoy the book as it is currently narrated.

For parents and younger readers, not only does the book contain some light scenes of romance, but it also has a few descriptive sexual scenes that may be inappropriate for younger readers. Even though the writing style is more simplistic which could be comprehended by younger readers, the mature subject matter is something that I would only recommend for mature readers.

In summary, the story was average and overall enjoyable. I did have a few issues, as stated above, around the use of technology and the writing style being more YA, but for those who may not case about these items, the story is not bad. I liked the premise and the direction, but the issues with researching and my knowledge of technology made it difficult for me to truly love it. If this type of book sounds interesting, please give it a try as I know it can take a few book for an author to find his stride.
1,062 reviews18 followers
August 1, 2019
I actually rated this book a 3 1/2 stars. This book by H Peter Alesso was a slow developing thriller involving way too much technical details for me to understand, and they interrupted the flow of the story. It was also a slow developing love story between Emma and Lawrence. The characters weren't that developed for me to identify with, plus they were way tooooo smart for me to understand everything they were talking about. The hunt for the cyber attacker as well as the murderer tended to take a back seat to all the scientific information. This is a voluntary review of an Advanced Reader Copy of this book from Hidden Gems Books.
Profile Image for Jocelyne.
4,929 reviews22 followers
September 20, 2018
This was my first H. Peter Alesso's book and this won't be the last! Wow! This technothriller was really entertaining, fast-paced and action packed and I loved it! The ending was also great! This was my first listen to Jennifer Groberg's voice. She has the perfect voice for this story and I really love her voice. I really enjoyed my listening and I totally recommend this audiobook. I'm looking forward for more books written by this author and narrated by this narrator. I received this free review copy audiobook at my request and I have voluntarily left this review.
484 reviews2 followers
October 23, 2018
Fast paced and full of action, Dark Genius is full of fun & surprises. It's a great story and done by a great narrator, I really enjoyed it. So full of intrigue, action and suspense, I almost dropped my coffee! :)

Some of the tech stuff went right over my head, but I'm 50 now and a lot of things do that ;) I recommend this for anyone looking for an exciting thriller!

Buckle your seat belts and hold on, it's going to be one helluva ride. Great listen!
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
Profile Image for Rosemary Hughes.
4,192 reviews23 followers
September 8, 2021
He battled those of lesser minds, trying to bully him, intimidating him, using their perceived power over him.
However, what they didn't realise was, that this genius wasn't interested in wealth, or prestigious recognition but more in facing a place and situation that had defeated him previously, and achieving a better outcome, this time.
There's espionage, super computers and pure scientific theories involved, all making a very intriguing read.
Profile Image for Tara Lee.
40 reviews
March 31, 2024
Unfortunately this was a DNF for me. I made it to about 60% and just couldn't anymore. The story is very slow and overtly detailed. I felt like the author was trying to make sure each chapter achieved a certain word count and included as many word variations available in a thesaurus. While I'm slightly sad I don't know the resolution to the story plot it wouldn't be worth wading through so many unnecessary words and details to find out.
Profile Image for Carol Keen.
Author 9 books122 followers
October 7, 2018
This is an awesome read with enough science for me to totally sink myself into it! I really appreciate that about this book! It's fascinating and not fluffy. With a Sci-Fi feel to it, this book was immersive for me. From the dark web to the twists and turns, I give this book 5 stars.

My copy came from Net Galley as an ARC. My review is my own, left of my own free choosing.
Profile Image for Linda Romer.
866 reviews60 followers
March 18, 2019
Dark Genius was an okay read for me. I found the plot interesting, but all the Physics jargon was beyond my understanding. I'm sure others that have a better understanding of Physics would appreciate it. The characters fell flat for me, I just couldn't relate. I was surprised by the villain reveal at the ending, it was unexpected.

576 reviews6 followers
December 6, 2022
A very exciting academic story

Cyber crime at the highest level, coupled with a sweet romance between two brilliant university graduates. Skiing, dancing, dining, and loyally helping each other, despite their doubts at times, fostered by an unexpected enemy all make for a good story. I enjoyed it!
9 reviews
January 5, 2018
Captivating twists

Story and mystery were captivating, but the apparent lack of a good proofreader left me wondering how someone with this much knowledge could not have done a better job serving it up to the public...
Profile Image for Ashley Hedden.
5,259 reviews43 followers
August 30, 2018
Dark Genius by H. Peter Alesso was a great read. Andrew is looking to have a fresh start when he meets Emma. Unfortunately things go wrong before they can really begin. I enjoyed reading this story and enjoyed reading their troubling relationship.
1,056 reviews15 followers
September 9, 2018
Complicated thriller

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this thriller. It was intense and kept you guessing as to who was doing what. The characters were interesting and their interaction was good. It got a bit to technical at times but was an enjoyable read.
13 reviews
Read
April 23, 2020
Dark Genius

I enjoyed the book even if all of the typos and grammatical errors were a bit distracting. I even figured out who the culprit was early on in the story but it was still a fun read.
384 reviews5 followers
October 30, 2020
I really enjoyed the characters in this book. They seemed well developed. There were those that you would root for as well as several villians. I would have liked more background on Andrew though the bits and pieces did give a decent amount of information.



Profile Image for Erica.
21 reviews6 followers
April 20, 2023
The book was all right. I had a hard time with a lot of the science jargon. To me that took away from the enjoyment of reading. It was hard to discern what the plot to the story actually was and there were parts that seemed that the author just rambled instead of summing up the situation.
13 reviews1 follower
February 29, 2024
I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys sci-fi & thrillers. You're drawn into a world where the lines between genius & madness begin to blur, leading you to question the true nature of intelligence.
Profile Image for Vivian Allen.
55 reviews2 followers
December 18, 2017
Dark Genius

I got bogged down in the physics details, but liked the characters so completed the book. This author shows promise.
Profile Image for Paul.
70 reviews
April 10, 2018
Couldn't finish it. Halfway through and you don't get a sense of what the book is about. It just plods on with a lot of excess words
Profile Image for Agnes Muscoreil.
1,252 reviews16 followers
April 28, 2018
Thanks to NetGalley for this most interesting read. I have to admit a lot of it was over my head, but the basic story kept me interested. I never figured it out, but did have my suspicions.
120 reviews
August 29, 2018
Intrigue

The book was very well written. I was surprised when I found out who the bad guy or girl was. I'm excited to read more by this author.
Profile Image for Amber.
1,481 reviews49 followers
November 10, 2018
Great story and plot but a little too much technical lingo for my taste but a good story
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews

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