Defragmenting Daniel

The Organ Scrubber: The Defragmenting Daniel Trilogy Book 1

Fiction - Science Fiction
222 Pages
Reviewed on 06/24/2016
Buy on Amazon

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    Book Review

Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Defragmenting Daniel: The Organ Scrubber, Book 1 in The Defragmenting Daniel Trilogy, is a high-tech science fiction thriller written by Jason Werbeloff. The Orphanage is the only world that Daniel and his friend and co-worker, Hooplah, know. He has a small apartment where he and his pet cat live, and he spends his waking hours scrubbing organs at the Organ Farm, where he started working when he was twelve. But his eighteenth birthday will be different. He just knows it. It's the day when orphans are told who their parents are, and each orphan is hoping beyond hope that those parents will be thrilled to see them. It's been a long road, and Daniel has lost so much already: his knee, his tongue, his cornea, which left him with an infected and irritated eye, his lungs. They were replaced by 3D facsimiles, but they don't really perform as well as the seven real organs he’s had to give up. The woman behind the glass at the Administration building was not releasing Daniel's file that easily, however - he would have to donate a part of his brain before he could learn the identity of his parents.

Jason Werbeloff’s high-tech science fiction thriller, Defragmenting Daniel: The Organ Scrubber, is set in a chilling, futuristic world where the orphaned poor, referred to as Gutters, are harvested for their organs and live as virtual slaves. The upper class live a hedonistic existence in stark contrast to the life of the Gutters. Daniel leaves the Orphanage with his dreams of reuniting with loving parents forever gone and a new mission -- to regain those organs that were taken from him. Watching as he navigates the dizzying and privileged world of the Bubblers and has to reconcile his own morality and sense of worth with the treatment he sees given to Gutters by the Bubblers is a stark and moving experience. Werbeloff’s cautionary tale also works quite well as a psychological thriller as no one, least of all Daniel, really understands how the harvesting of his amygdala will affect his personality and behavior. Defragmenting Daniel is a classy cyberpunk thriller that had me remembering the first time I read Gibson’s classic Neuromancer. I’m looking forward to the next book in The Defragmenting Daniel Trilogy. Defragmenting Daniel: The Organ Scrubber is highly recommended.

Christian Sia

Defragmenting Daniel: The Organ Scrubber by Jason Werbeloff is compelling sci-fi that will keep readers rapt by the writing, and squirming most of the time as they read nonstop. It is a story of the trafficking of human organs and utter abuse. Daniel’s work at the Gutter Orphanage is to scrub kidneys and he started this work when he was a young teenager. Things are going well for him and he could live without complaining about the job, but then he becomes victim to the worst form of theft and abuse – his organs are stolen. Life with fake organs can be tough, but Daniel wants more than just to get his organs back. He wants revenge. Question is: does he really know what he is up against?

Jason Werbeloff’s Defragmenting Daniel: The Organ Scrubber is book one in a trilogy, a powerful opening about a problem that affects the poorer segment of society. Most readers must have heard or read about the trafficking of organs, especially in Third World countries, but Werbeloff makes this reality seem like it’s just happening next door. The author writes beautifully and the descriptions are painfully poignant; at times readers will feel the hair on their skin rising when they read some of the dramatic and gory parts of this fictional narrative. Daniel is the kind of character who will win the sympathy of many readers as they watch him develop from a docile, easily manipulated and timid boy into a man who wants to be treated with justice and dignity. This is a work of great imagination, powerful, and gripping.

Ruffina Oserio

Jason Werbeloff’s The Organ Scrubber is Book One in the Defragmenting Daniel trilogy, a sci-fi that will take readers into an unimaginable world and bring them face to face with characters capable of doing impossible things. Daniel is an orphan at the Gutter, an orphanage with a shady business in organs. At the age of 12, Daniel is already working hard as an organ scrubber, cleaning kidneys. It is the perfect job for anyone in Daniel’s situation, because it comes with advantages that other orphans may not have. But things aren’t going to be the same for Daniel. His own organs are stolen by the orphanage and he knows he’ll never be the same again. Now grown up, he decides to get his organs back and he will do anything to achieve this. The only thing is that someone will do anything to stop him.

Those who have watched and loved the movie Get the Gringo by Mel Gibson will enjoy The Organ Scrubber, and it must be said that this is not a tale for the fainthearted. A story created around a very bad business where institutions that claim to protect the lives of the poor and the organs that become their very nightmare is sure to get a lot of attention, but it is the style with which this story is told that will take one’s breath away. Who could not love Daniel? Who will not feel his pain and want to see him avenged? As you read this gory tale, you’ll feel you are plunged in a darkness you’ll never escape, but a kind of suffocating and enticing darkness. Jason Werbeloff’s characters are compelling, his plot is gripping, and the entire story is so poignantly absorbing.