This book is the second of a trilogy. It begins with a beloved nurse that had been violently carjacked ends up expiring. The series portrays our anti-hero, Brewster (JD Brewster) going thru a special program for medical school & internship both. He has certain character flaws, like playing practical jokes, practicing dark medicine, wanting his girlfriend to be morbidly obese. Brewster is whip smart. While I was expecting this second book to be about doing research on large Primates, but that is cancelled and Brewster is forced into clinical rotations at the Gulf Coast college of medicine and University hospital.
We meet other students, Wooly Mammoth, Felix (Dung) Dunhill, Russian Bear and Ben Fielder. The Rotations include the Burn unit, neurology, surgery and others. This book is very gritty about the situations the doctors are going thru. While some of the habits, (Like something called Pimp or Pone) are off-putting, we are shown people trying to do their best to learn medicine, while being taught and trained by deeply flawed Department heads. Lots of characters, oodles of pranks, a very scary thanksgiving where Brewster’s mother confesses that she wanted to kill her young boys after her husband had died and left her to raise them.
In the first book, we got to know Dr. Brewster as someone who is at the end of his career, then starting out. With this book, we get to see his progression with taking care of patients and navigating the deep waters of a teaching hospital. There are unrelenting patients with illnesses that would numb even the most sensitive person, which Brewster is not. There are also patients who come from the prison system, being taken care of by Gulf Coast College of Medicine. With Dept. heads looking the other way, Dung manages to take out a child murderer who had a life sentence.
There are many characters in this book. You have to pay attention because some of them move on in the plot, while others are there for a scene and gone. It is also filled with dense medical terminology so make sure you use the glossary in the back if you need it! This is a book that I probably would have a hard time following all the characters on an audio book.
Some of the language is rough, and racial topics are discussed. I thought that was refreshing, but some others may find it hard to take.