Chasing Victory

Chasing Victory is a contemporary drama with some sci fi elements, and it sells the setting and characters fairly well. One character is in major danger of being a magical scientist, but the character with Down's Syndrome is well rendered, and not an insult. Until the very last moment, when it is. I was a bit worried about that, going in. Turns out, I was right!

As a biochemist I found the central mcguffin to be absurd. Heating a mixture of neurotransmitters to 400° F (not C?) before injection would almost certainly cause a polycondensation reaction, resulting in a random and racemic mixture of phenolic rings. That's well above the vaporization temperature for most neurotransmitters, she could have had her uncreatively named mouse vape the stuff! The resulting mixture, injected, would almost certainly be lethal. But this is sci-fi, and a premature baby costs only 10 grand in this fantasy world, so what the Hades?

There were also some odd characterization choices. Maria loves her husband, yet doesn't realize he has become much more intelligent overnight? Two (2) intrusive thoughts and the psychiatry professor has the main down for medication induced psychosis? No CBT, just straight to antipsychotics on top of the experimental meds? I'm not trained in this field, though I do have family members who work in that field. It was what interested me in the book in the first place. This seems like a very strange choice.

I was actually delighted when everything went so perfectly sideways for the mains in the third act. Tragedy or comedy is a matter of perspective, after all. I'm fairly sure the whole thing was played for tragedy, but also it painted a terrible picture of mental disability that was borderline slanderous to countless people who do not suffer from violent episodes while being cognitively disabled. The vast majority of violent outbursts people have are not so associated. Really, the violence in the last chapters is both appalling and only barely justified.