Devoted by Dean Koontz *****

Devoted by Dean Koontz is a battle between silent geniuses. There are two good guys. Woody Bookman “had never spoken a word in his eleven years of life.” He “was the ultimate autodidact. He taught himself to read only a few months after his fourth birthday and was reading at college level three years later.” Kipp would have talked if he could. He was a golden retriever. He understood English and could read. He communicated with others of his kind (the Mysterium) telepathically over the “Wire.” There were fewer than one hundred of them.

On the other side was solitary Lee Shacket, in the employ of billionaire, entrepreneur Dorian Purcell to develop immortal transhumans. Lee was experimentally augmented through horizontal gene transfer to have all the best genes of all species at Refine. When the Refine laboratory was destroyed, Lee was the sole survivor. With his augmentation, he is ready to take all the power and hot women that he’d been previously denied. His obsession is Woody’s mother Megan who refused him to marry Woody’s father-subsequently murdered by Purcell.

Thus, the battle lines are drawn. A boy and his dog against the evil billionaire.