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Cryptid #1
Cryptid: Discovery
The Cryptid Trilogy
Adam St. James, software genius and savant Chief Technologist of the massive American DataLab Project, had just returned to his home in Barrows Bay, British Columbia from Tucson, Arizona. He had spent the better part of the past month working on a pro bono assignment for his father's friend Peter Berg, Regional Director of the FBI, working out of the Seattle field office. His favor for the FBI was to secure the mother lode and Holy Grail of the FBI's Joint Organized Crime Task Force that Berg believed he had accidentally stumbled upon. Mere fortuity had led him to what he thought was fifty years or more of Mafia financial books and records detailing organized criminality from Seattle to Miami and all points in between.
What Adam found was nothing even remotely resembling what Regional Director Berg was looking for. It had been a small clerical error made by a temp transposing a letter or two in a last name that led Adam St. James to his incredible discovery. But this discovery was too incredible, too massive to even contemplate as being authentic. Adam himself did not believe it could be true. Would he be proven correct or was the truth too immeasurably stranger than fiction?
If Adam had accidently stumbled upon a great discovery, it would mean that he had fortuitously confirmed the existence of the cryptid of all cryptids. Had Adam found scientific and verifiable proof of the existence of an unknown species of creatures capable of transforming to human form or was this some immense practical joke designed to annoy and embarrass him and his father, noted forensic archeologist and author, Edward St. James?
His journey will be fantastic. His discovery, if true, immense.
But will Adam and his eclectic family survive discovery? Will humanity?
Discovery chronicles the discovery of the Gens Collective, ancient and primal beings previously unknown to humanity but living among mankind as crypto humans.
They live among us.
Murder, intrigue, deception, treachery, lust and betrayal all come together in the Cryptid Trilogy as mankind faces off against an unknown species bent on its total destruction as the dominant species on the planet.
Adam continues to develop his amazing natural abilities as he seeks to understand and control them. How will this saga end?
Adam St. James, software genius and savant Chief Technologist of the massive American DataLab Project, had just returned to his home in Barrows Bay, British Columbia from Tucson, Arizona. He had spent the better part of the past month working on a pro bono assignment for his father's friend Peter Berg, Regional Director of the FBI, working out of the Seattle field office. His favor for the FBI was to secure the mother lode and Holy Grail of the FBI's Joint Organized Crime Task Force that Berg believed he had accidentally stumbled upon. Mere fortuity had led him to what he thought was fifty years or more of Mafia financial books and records detailing organized criminality from Seattle to Miami and all points in between.
What Adam found was nothing even remotely resembling what Regional Director Berg was looking for. It had been a small clerical error made by a temp transposing a letter or two in a last name that led Adam St. James to his incredible discovery. But this discovery was too incredible, too massive to even contemplate as being authentic. Adam himself did not believe it could be true. Would he be proven correct or was the truth too immeasurably stranger than fiction?
If Adam had accidently stumbled upon a great discovery, it would mean that he had fortuitously confirmed the existence of the cryptid of all cryptids. Had Adam found scientific and verifiable proof of the existence of an unknown species of creatures capable of transforming to human form or was this some immense practical joke designed to annoy and embarrass him and his father, noted forensic archeologist and author, Edward St. James?
His journey will be fantastic. His discovery, if true, immense.
But will Adam and his eclectic family survive discovery? Will humanity?
Discovery chronicles the discovery of the Gens Collective, ancient and primal beings previously unknown to humanity but living among mankind as crypto humans.
They live among us.
Murder, intrigue, deception, treachery, lust and betrayal all come together in the Cryptid Trilogy as mankind faces off against an unknown species bent on its total destruction as the dominant species on the planet.
Adam continues to develop his amazing natural abilities as he seeks to understand and control them. How will this saga end?
1276 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 7, 2016
3 people are currently reading
71 people want to read
About the author
Douglas E. Roff
4 books74 followersBorn in the United states, lived in Russia, the UK, Mexico, Costa Rica and Canada. Citizen of the US and Canada. Worked for US and Canadian governments as well as a long career in finance and trade finance. I live in Latin America between countries on and off. I am retired and now write novels full time.
I am single, have one son who was active in my first three novels, the Cryptid Trilogy. I speak Spanish fluently.
I have completed three other novels that are now in edit, and have two more novels that are in various stages of completion, will be finished in 2018 but will not be published until 2019.
I was targeted by the Russian government for arrest in retaliation for the arrest of a Russian spy in the US.
I was never a spy, but was a visible American involved in trade promotion. The Russian spy was released and I was left alone after that. I left Russia in 1998.
I moved to Canada after that and spent over fifteen years in Vancouver, BC. I lived in Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Mexico after leaving Canada.
I have traveled extensively around the world, largely with my son, and extensively in my home country of the US.
I am single, have one son who was active in my first three novels, the Cryptid Trilogy. I speak Spanish fluently.
I have completed three other novels that are now in edit, and have two more novels that are in various stages of completion, will be finished in 2018 but will not be published until 2019.
I was targeted by the Russian government for arrest in retaliation for the arrest of a Russian spy in the US.
I was never a spy, but was a visible American involved in trade promotion. The Russian spy was released and I was left alone after that. I left Russia in 1998.
I moved to Canada after that and spent over fifteen years in Vancouver, BC. I lived in Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Mexico after leaving Canada.
I have traveled extensively around the world, largely with my son, and extensively in my home country of the US.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 6, 2018
This is a unique and interesting story. The author blends historical and current events into a intriguing and entertaining tale. The characters are well developed and interesting. As the story unfolds it is akin to a Dan Brown novel in some aspects, only a bit more frightening in nature. I recommend this book as it is a very interesting and different type of story.
September 3, 2018
This wasn’t a bad book, but it could have been better. The premise is intriguing, and the characters are well-drawn, if not entirely consistent. The problem is that there is entirely too much of it. The book is three times the size of a normal book, yet, while it isn’t entirely without action, we never really got to the point where whatever the main action of the story is supposed to begin. Almost everything looks like backstory.
A group of creatures who behave sort of like aliens, although they have supposedly evolved on Earth along with humans, is accidentally discovered due to one of their libraries falling into the hands of the FBI. The FBI initially thinks these records are the accounts of some Mafia outfit. But they aren’t. Instead, these creatures are some sort of shape-shifters who in their natural form are like animals but who can change shape so that they look and act exactly like humans. Doing this, however, requires the use of human blood. It is believed that this circumstance has given rise to the legends of vampires.
These people call themselves the Gens – a word which means people. They have apparently been mingling with humans actively and on purpose since at least the time of the Roman Empire.
They are convinced that humans are the worst thing that has ever happened to the planet, citing violence, environmental degradation, and the like. A great deal of time is spent discussing the various factions of the Gens and their preferred strategies for dealing with humans – everything from peaceful coexistence to all-out war. However, since there are billions of humans and only a few hundred million Gens the preferred plan of the most powerful group of Gens is some form of biological warfare that would wipe out most of the humans. So far, the options they have tested would also wipe out most of the Gens too, but this doesn’t seem to bother them too much.
Most of the book is devoted to discussing the man who is apparently destined to have the main role in stopping the Gens, computer geek Adam St. James, his father, and the additional family they have adopted to keep themselves some degree of sane. All of these people are phenomenally intelligent, and many of them are super skilled in various martial arts and/or weapons as well. They do computer work for various law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world – a very lucrative business apparently – and operate sort of above or outside the law much of the time. Adam, his father Edward, and the adoptive “cousin” Misti, whom he eventually marries, in particular, are portrayed as borderline psychotic at least sometimes. It seems to me that what they actually are is more like hyper-intelligent vigilantes.
The other wild card in this scenario is a project called the Data Lab, a massive computer network containing all the data that can be put into it. It began as a project of a group of universities to put their libraries online to share, to aid students and faculty in their research. But then it was gradually taken over by governments, particularly the U.S. and Canadian governments, and put to use in law enforcement and intelligence gathering. There is a long, long explanation of how access was revised to safeguard these operations from people using the Data Lab for just regular research, as was originally intended, and a separate diatribe, also very long, about the evils of this system as it relates to privacy. Adam St. James is the head programmer of the Data Lab, and he, and only he has access to all the levels of security. You are not safe from Adam. I suspect that this will eventually be crucially important in helping to defeat the Gens, but we don’t get that far in this book.
Amid all the long-winded exposition there are two sections that I thought were well done and wouldn't want to see cut, at least not too much. One was the part near the beginning of how Adam lost his first girlfriend, Hannah, because he could not bring himself to consider that her plans and her family were just as important to her as his were to him. Even when she tells him plainly in so many words, it still seems to make no impression. But curiously, later on, when he hooks up with Misti, he reveals himself not only willing but eager to change his ways for her.
The other good sub-story is the tale of Alan and Jimmy in part 2. These two young men, whose main interest in life is in hiking, hunting, fishing, and the like, are hired by a mysterious company, supposedly interested in environmental preservation, who send them into an area called The Preserve, ostensibly to do research on its environmental status. It turns out that this Preserve is a protected area for Gens in their natural state, and when Alan and Jimmy meet up with them, the results are not pretty. This is the most action in the whole book.
In short, the book covers a lot of ground, much of which I suspect we could get along just as well without knowing. It seems to me that it ought not to take three books worth of material just to get to the point where a smart man like Adam is finally convinced that the Gens are real and that they really are a threat.
A group of creatures who behave sort of like aliens, although they have supposedly evolved on Earth along with humans, is accidentally discovered due to one of their libraries falling into the hands of the FBI. The FBI initially thinks these records are the accounts of some Mafia outfit. But they aren’t. Instead, these creatures are some sort of shape-shifters who in their natural form are like animals but who can change shape so that they look and act exactly like humans. Doing this, however, requires the use of human blood. It is believed that this circumstance has given rise to the legends of vampires.
These people call themselves the Gens – a word which means people. They have apparently been mingling with humans actively and on purpose since at least the time of the Roman Empire.
They are convinced that humans are the worst thing that has ever happened to the planet, citing violence, environmental degradation, and the like. A great deal of time is spent discussing the various factions of the Gens and their preferred strategies for dealing with humans – everything from peaceful coexistence to all-out war. However, since there are billions of humans and only a few hundred million Gens the preferred plan of the most powerful group of Gens is some form of biological warfare that would wipe out most of the humans. So far, the options they have tested would also wipe out most of the Gens too, but this doesn’t seem to bother them too much.
Most of the book is devoted to discussing the man who is apparently destined to have the main role in stopping the Gens, computer geek Adam St. James, his father, and the additional family they have adopted to keep themselves some degree of sane. All of these people are phenomenally intelligent, and many of them are super skilled in various martial arts and/or weapons as well. They do computer work for various law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world – a very lucrative business apparently – and operate sort of above or outside the law much of the time. Adam, his father Edward, and the adoptive “cousin” Misti, whom he eventually marries, in particular, are portrayed as borderline psychotic at least sometimes. It seems to me that what they actually are is more like hyper-intelligent vigilantes.
The other wild card in this scenario is a project called the Data Lab, a massive computer network containing all the data that can be put into it. It began as a project of a group of universities to put their libraries online to share, to aid students and faculty in their research. But then it was gradually taken over by governments, particularly the U.S. and Canadian governments, and put to use in law enforcement and intelligence gathering. There is a long, long explanation of how access was revised to safeguard these operations from people using the Data Lab for just regular research, as was originally intended, and a separate diatribe, also very long, about the evils of this system as it relates to privacy. Adam St. James is the head programmer of the Data Lab, and he, and only he has access to all the levels of security. You are not safe from Adam. I suspect that this will eventually be crucially important in helping to defeat the Gens, but we don’t get that far in this book.
Amid all the long-winded exposition there are two sections that I thought were well done and wouldn't want to see cut, at least not too much. One was the part near the beginning of how Adam lost his first girlfriend, Hannah, because he could not bring himself to consider that her plans and her family were just as important to her as his were to him. Even when she tells him plainly in so many words, it still seems to make no impression. But curiously, later on, when he hooks up with Misti, he reveals himself not only willing but eager to change his ways for her.
The other good sub-story is the tale of Alan and Jimmy in part 2. These two young men, whose main interest in life is in hiking, hunting, fishing, and the like, are hired by a mysterious company, supposedly interested in environmental preservation, who send them into an area called The Preserve, ostensibly to do research on its environmental status. It turns out that this Preserve is a protected area for Gens in their natural state, and when Alan and Jimmy meet up with them, the results are not pretty. This is the most action in the whole book.
In short, the book covers a lot of ground, much of which I suspect we could get along just as well without knowing. It seems to me that it ought not to take three books worth of material just to get to the point where a smart man like Adam is finally convinced that the Gens are real and that they really are a threat.
July 7, 2018
Cryptid. What is a cryptid you may ask? Something that certain walks of life wholeheartedly believe in, but that others pass off as myth. Examples: Bigfoot, Lochness, etc.
What Douglas and Jacob Roff have done is bring a cryptid to life. One that can morph into human form. One whose sole purpose is to move among humankind and set in motion their plan for pure and total domination. That is until someone, some human, discovers their existence.
Adam, our main character, has stumbled across proof, but what will the naysayers do to his reputation as well as that of his father, a forensic archaeologist.
This book puts that little seed of thought into our minds yet again. Do these things really live. Can these things really live?
Characters are well thought out and the storyline is written as such to be easily followed and you won't get bogged down with fancy wordage.
Follow Adam on this adventure of discovery and intrigue.
A 6 out of 10 on this reviewers scale!
What Douglas and Jacob Roff have done is bring a cryptid to life. One that can morph into human form. One whose sole purpose is to move among humankind and set in motion their plan for pure and total domination. That is until someone, some human, discovers their existence.
Adam, our main character, has stumbled across proof, but what will the naysayers do to his reputation as well as that of his father, a forensic archaeologist.
This book puts that little seed of thought into our minds yet again. Do these things really live. Can these things really live?
Characters are well thought out and the storyline is written as such to be easily followed and you won't get bogged down with fancy wordage.
Follow Adam on this adventure of discovery and intrigue.
A 6 out of 10 on this reviewers scale!
April 5, 2018
Adam has discovered something new, something nobody knows about, yet. They will soon enough though. Will Adam's and his father's reputation be ruined?
Science is about to be cracked wide open and your mind is about to be blown! You will be questioning whether or not your neighbors are human, maybe they are Cryptid. Adam has a fantastic, wondrous, and compelling journey ahead of him.
Douglas Roff and Jacob Roff have taken science fiction to another level of awesomeness. I can't wait to be amazed at what is yet to come.
Happy reading 💞
Science is about to be cracked wide open and your mind is about to be blown! You will be questioning whether or not your neighbors are human, maybe they are Cryptid. Adam has a fantastic, wondrous, and compelling journey ahead of him.
Douglas Roff and Jacob Roff have taken science fiction to another level of awesomeness. I can't wait to be amazed at what is yet to come.
Happy reading 💞
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews