LITERARY TITAN

D. T. Levy’s Genluminati is a nervy “what-if” thriller disguised as a confessional novel. What if a handful of clever, disillusioned grad-school types decided, half as satire, half as experiment, to manufacture a faith based on science, and then discovered that belief is a force you don’t get to control once you’ve unleashed it?

The story is framed by Matt, the narrator, hiding in the Mayan jungle in Chiapas, running a small B&B, and trying to write down everything before the past catches up with him. This structure works well. The jungle calm gives the book a haunted stillness, and Matt’s voice, at once analytical and self-justifying, keeps the reader in that uneasy space between confession and rationalization.

At the center are five friends whose intimacy becomes both their strength and their blind spot. The early chapters capture the particular chemistry of smart young scientists who feel allergic to inherited dogma, bonded by private jokes and a shared disdain for proselytizers. That anti-religious posture isn’t just characterization, it’s the novel’s ignition source. Their contempt for fanaticism curdles into a challenge: if people will believe anything, why not prove it?

The spark comes after they encounter protests outside a research institute: anti–stem cell rhetoric mixed with mystical claims about souls, punishment, and “reincarnated scientists.” From there, in a boozy, half-serious brainstorm, Matt blurts the idea that becomes the book’s central sin: “We should create a new religion… A religion based on scientific data.” The author nails the moment when irony crosses into commitment: everyone laughs, but the laughter is the mask that lets them move forward without admitting what they’re doing.

As a concept, I think Genluminati is deliciously contemporary. A pseudo-spiritual path built on DNA as scripture, with techniques that blend meditation, chanting sequences, and guided fantasy, self-help language with a biotech sheen. The novel’s best satirical bite comes from how plausible the packaging feels. The author understands that modern devotion often arrives wearing the costume of wellness, optimization, and insider knowledge.

But the book refuses to stay a satire. Once Daniel is in the mix, the project gains the one ingredient that turns a movement into a religion: a charismatic figure. The text makes his function explicit; he becomes “Our Guide,” the “Spiritual Leader,” the centerpiece of gatherings marketed to followers hungry for an embodied authority. This is where the story’s interpersonal dynamics matter. Emma and Daniel appear as a couple for a time, and that relationship becomes a fault line inside the founding group. Meanwhile, Ben’s long-simmering love for Emma and Daniel’s possessive reaction create a pressure-cooker atmosphere that threatens not just friendships but the stability of the religion itself.

I think the author’s sharpest insight is that power doesn’t only corrupt through greed. Here, the founders insist they aren’t driven by ambition. They claim it began as “a confrontation against fanaticism… a joke, to see how far people would go, how far we would go.” That “how far we would go” is the chilling part. The experiment becomes a mirror, revealing their own appetite for influence.

And then come the consequences. The book’s darker, more urgent second life. Daniel begins to believe his role on a deeper level. Matt and the others start talking about him as someone who thinks he’s a prophet, and the group’s fear shifts from embarrassment or exposure to real-world harm. Matt voices the dread plainly: it’s not only about Daniel’s mental health, but what he might do “with his followers.”

That fear culminates in an extreme act: they remove Daniel from the movement, effectively holding him in captivity, with the stated aim of protecting him and protecting the public from him. The ethical knot here is the novel’s most provocative tangle. The founders started by playing at gods of meaning; by the time they’re isolating their own “prophet,” they’ve drifted into the logic of authoritarian control, deciding who gets freedom, who gets silenced, and what risks justify coercion. Even their strategic calculus has an eerie realism: will Daniel’s disappearance weaken the faith, or make him a martyr and strengthen it?

The book also widens its lens to show collateral damage. Followers spinning theories, offices overwhelmed by calls, people unsure how to proceed without someone “dictating the agenda.” In other words, belief doesn’t evaporate when the founders panic. It mutates, decentralizes, and keeps moving.

Genluminati succeeds most when it leans into that escalation from witty premise to grim inevitability. The friendships feel textured and messy, the Boston-to-jungle framing gives the narrative urgency, and Daniel’s transformation into a focal point of devotion is handled with believable menace. The novel sometimes explains its themes as directly as it dramatizes them. Matt can be self-aware in ways that smooth over ambiguity. Still, that’s also consistent with a narrator trying to justify himself while confessing.

Genluminati is a cautionary tale for an era addicted to viral ideas. You can invent a religion as a prank, but you can’t prank people into believing. Belief is already waiting for a container. Levy’s five friends build that container, and the novel’s sting comes from watching them realize, too late, that they’ve built something that can build back. If you like the morally fraught, idea-driven suspense of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, the philosophical sci-fi edge of Blake Crouch, or the cultish social unease of Dave Eggers’ The Circle, you’ll find Genluminati a smart, darkly propulsive read, and an easy recommendation for anyone drawn to stories about belief, influence, and the dangerous consequences of playing with power.

Pages: 480 | ASIN : B0FZ998JBT