Mercer’s Rebellion: Derrick 7744 by Anastasia Rabiyah is a story of corporate power, duplicity, and new beginnings. Cam Sorensen is a scientist for Mercer Laboratories, a powerful multi-planetary food conglomerate. She spends her days in a laboratory and her nights in self-imposed isolation. When she hires Derrick Carnell to be her escort to a Mercer function, all she wants is an uncomplicated companion for the sake of appearances. What she gets is a whole lot more. Derrick, number 7744 at the escort service, is the perfect escort. He’s gorgeous, intelligent, and he seems to be interested in Cam. However, there is more to him than there may initially appear, and once she finds out the truth about him, Cam is drawn into a web of corporate intrigue that will change her life forever. Suddenly, Cam’s research takes on a more sinister meaning, and she must question her entire career up to the present. As she and Derrick strive toward a new beginning, can Cam undo the damage that her research appears to have caused?

...Readers are presented with a vision of a world where corporations play people like pawns in a chess game: the focus is on winning the game rather than the well-being of the individual pieces. Cam and Derrick are two of those chess pieces, and they are struggling to be free of the game. Cam’s character is sympathetic and well developed – she is defined by her loneliness, love of the animals in her lab, and her absolute shock when she finds out what her research is really doing. Derrick is not quite as real as Cam is, and the reader is not given the opportunity to know him quite as well. He is a foil for Cam and a damsel in distress character that motivates her into action. That’s fine – he looks good doing it and makes Cam happy, so he fulfills his role in the story... This story is a good one and will definitely appeal to science fiction buffs.
Reviewed by: Whitney, Fallen Angel Reviews