Review:
In the future depicted in this book, cloning was invented a long time ago and is now used to help people with the money for it be functionally immortal. You get a "mind map" made and, when you die, your mind map will be put into a new body, and you'll continue on just as you were, minus whatever experiences you had since your last mind map.
This book stars six newly awakened clones on a ship traveling to a new planet, hopefully a new home. The six clones are all criminals who were given the option of being the "awake and aware" crew on the ship, making sure nothing goes wrong with the ship or any of the passengers in stasis, in exchange for full pardons once their work is done. However, something very clearly has gone wrong.
Maria, the ship's cook and janitor, is one of the first to wake up, surrounded by evidence of a bloody struggle. There's also Wolfgang (the intense security chief), Katrina (the captain), Joanna (the crew's doctor), Paul (the ship's engineer, an absolute mess), and Hiro (the pilot). Neither Maria nor any of the others have mind maps that go back further than the start of their voyage, despite evidence that the ship has been traveling for decades. Most of their previous bodies show evidence that they were attacked, but there are a couple details that add to the group's confusion and concern. For one thing, Hiro's previous self seems to have committed suicide - according to the rules of cloning, those who commit suicide aren't supposed to be brought back via cloning and mind-maps. What are they supposed to do now that Hiro's already been brought back? Also, Katrina's previous self is grievously injured but not actually dead. She could be an important witness, but, at the same time, two instances of a person aren't legally allowed to exist at once.
There's no evidence that any of the passengers in stasis were affected by whatever happened, and the only awake and aware humans on board are the six clones who recently woke up. Their ship's AI is damaged, and their route has been changed. It seems likely that one of the six crew members was responsible for everything that happened, but, if so, which one of them killed everyone, and why?
I love me a good sci-fi mystery, and this was definitely one of the good ones. It was twisty, with a limited cast of characters, and it made full use of the fact that it was science fiction - this is not a mystery that could have been transplanted into a contemporary setting.
Every crew member had secrets, and the fact that they all had a criminal background of some sort (their fellow crew members weren't allowed to know the specifics of their crimes, although they could sometimes guess) meant that any one of them could be hiding means and motive to kill the rest. Hiro might have been responsible for changing the ship's route, but he'd died before all of the rest of them. Maria, as the cook, might have been responsible for the deadly changes to the food printer, but it wasn't poison that killed most of them. And was there a hidden reason why Katrina wanted her previous self immediately killed, or was she simply justifiably horrified at the thought of having two instances of herself in the world?
Readers gradually learned everyone's secrets via sections from everyone's POVs and flashbacks to their lives prior to coming on to the ship. Seeing everything come together was a lot of horrifying fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment