The Daily Monocle

How does a terrorist kill four million people? He stops them from being born.

So reads the ominous tagline for Mike Hogan's The Ovary Wars, a book which admittedly has loads of potential, but suffers from poor execution.


Professor Kirby Wadsworth is a radical advocate for population control. His students often come away shaken from his lectures. He bends the lines between moral and amoral with uncanny ease, and wants to share his opinions with the world.

Soon an opportunity comes along to fufil his dream. Wadsworth helps develop Ovamort, a drug that shuts down the ovaries. But how to carry out this dream? How to convince most of the young women of the world to destroy their bodies? Well, for Wadsworth, it's simple: you don't tell them what they're taking until it's too late.

Perhaps what's so chilling about this tale, is that it could happen. I have no doubt that medicines capable of Ovamort's effects could be made. This borderline science-fiction is usually my forte, but this time, I just couldn't finish.

Hogan clearly knows what he's talking about. He is an expert in his field, and this shows in the prose. The story itself was well-developed; the plot solid. Even the characters seemed to know who they were.

However, after 100 pages, I had to leave The Ovary Wars on the shelf. Why? Simply because it was too technical for me. The prose lacked the emotion that I prefer to read in books. I could not bring myself to read it, when I felt that the writing was dry.

This could be easily remedied by another run through with a red-pen, perhaps. One final edit. A lot of times, this final edit is the difference between a good book, and a great book. And I feel like The Ovary Wars had tons of potential. Unfortunately, it just wasn't the book for me.

Buy it on AmazonAuthor's Website