The Subject and the Scientist

By: Montana Stayer

Narrated by: Jason Burkhead

The scientist’s daughter was dying, and he was desperate to save her by any means necessary. He illegally and artificially created the subject, the perfect donor body, but was taken by surprise when the subject turned out to be a fully conscious child.

Faced with the choice of taking care of the child he accidentally created or saving his daughter, the scientist chose the latter. He kept the subject locked in the basement with full intent to kill her to save his daughter. The scientist’s plan ultimately failed, and his daughter died, leaving him with the “thing” meant to save her.

It’s been years since his daughter died, and the scientist has kept the subject locked up alone in the basement, refusing to acknowledge she is a child and treating her strictly as an experiment. He keeps a rigid routine when visiting her and attempts to be completely objective, which proves to be difficult as the subject has grown to be a very friendly child who insists on trying to build some sort of relationship with him.

Nothing’s changed in a long time. The scientist begins losing sleep because of his worsening mental and emotional states, and his exhaustion leads to mistakes, which cause problems with the subject. When the subject’s health starts rapidly deteriorating because of him, the scientist’s forced to reconsider his objectivity, but he is adamant about remaining indifferent, endangering the subject’s life.

©2018 Montana Stayer (P)2019 Montana Stayer

This is everything.

Jason is such a good narrator for this amazing book, it recordings the story to life a lot more than reading it yourself. Montana is a great storyteller and this book is so awesome. So much hard work went into this and I'm amazed by the book, and the narration. Jason's portrayal of voicing the Subject is very spot on, and throughout there's a very cool feature that comes up when the Scientist does his voice logs. Highly recommend.

A few drafts underdeveloped.

The bones of this story are excellent. the idea behind it of a donor body with sentience remaining after the intended recipient passed is an interesting one to explore. The space opened by this initial concept is enormous and intricately filled with obstacles to investigate and Stayer explores just enough to feel like a story. Which I do like.

The meat of the story, the pacing and structure, are developed but lacking. The prolog is unnecessary and the deep dive by chapter 3 is far too fast. It genuinly feels like a few honest beta-readers and a few more drafts would have corrected these structural mistakes. Instead, as it stands, the story feels rushed.

The finish of the story. As mentioned in the meat of the story, a few blunt beta-readers would have been a boon for Stayer. There is little polish to be found. Which is a shame. There are some genuinely great moments here. Interesting passages to really think about. But the smudges on the glass make seeing them difficult. A few polishing drafts, again, would have pretty easily found this out and made correction easy.

The performance of the script. Burkhead does an excellent job with what was provided. Not exceptional, but high grade for certain.

conclusion: this is not a finished story. The pacing is not great and some sections can be completely omitted without loss to the story. Some sections that should provide an emotional payoff simply don't for lack of setup. For avoidance of spoilers I'll keep my example early. the Scientists mini-breakdown in the third chapter has next to zero impact because it is almost completely unearned.

Final thoughts. With a little rearranging and a lot more built tension could have made this a great book. Not blowing the premise in the prolog, instead revealing it slowly with careful hints to build that tension for earned emotional payoffs instead of the ultimately limp pacing and I have little doubt this could have made the top 500 for the release year.

Sensational!

I couldn't pause it; well worth every penny; exceptional narrating and story! I loved it.