The Clone Redemption.
Well, as the saying goes, all good things (must?) come to an end. And so it is with the ‘Clone’ series of books. I have now read each book in the series at least twice, a couple of the early ones probably three times. (earlier posts on this series are here and here.) Just finished the second reading of the final book: The Clone Redemption, which came out in late Oct. of this year (had been waiting several months for it eagerly). How did it come out? Let’s discuss. I will try to talk about this book in light of past plots and also try not to give things away, but can’t guarantee anything :).
So first and foremost, i was glad to see the Japanese Fleet and SEALs get their due. While this is probably the bleakest book of the entire series for many reasons, the SEALs and Japanese fate was met with strength, dignity and a couple interesting twists (e.g. the encounter with the shipboard Yakuza contingent) that served to bring more humanity to these mysterious characters. In earlier books we had only really seen Master Chief Illych for any significant time, so this gave us a chance to see at least a couple more in a bit more detail, which was nice. And it was also interesting to see the inner workings of the Japanese command staff and its fleet more than before.
The Unified Authority, true to form over the past few books, defies belief in its ability to sink ever ‘lower’, both morally and in the various battles where they show up. While we don’t see anymore of the previous fleet commander(s) that bedeviled Harris (and occasionally Freeman) in the past, their own ‘evil’ boss, Tobias Andropov, head of the planetary Linear Committee, makes his own presence felt by implication several times and then directly at least once.
The scientists Breeze and Sweetwater provide an ultimately bittersweet but necessary ‘conscience’ to the story in some ways, and while they may have ended up being subtle manipulations of the U.A. against Harris and the clones, they help him enormously in spite of this, and that’s definitely a good thing.
Which brings us to Harris and Freeman. I think the former does even more maturing as a person in this book, especially given its increasingly bleak morality play as the plot continues to the end – but he’s still got a ways to go (the interlude(s) with Ava G. and the continued soul-searching around saving natural-borns that otherwise would prefer him and the other clones dead are proof of that) and he knows it. Freeman actually becomes much more of a ‘human’ in this book vs. the past books. Like before, we largely see him through Harris’ eyes and perspective, so aside from his actions and (still very few) words, he’s still very much an enigma, but he lets down his guard (and in some ways, semmingly his will to continue living at all) at points in this story, and it’s a bit weird to consider.
So some quibbles. I liked this book, and very much enjoyed the entire series, but would have liked a bit more of:
1) Avatari back story. We see what happens here (mostly) but if there was a story component even MORE of an enigma than Freeman, it’s the Avatari. Maybe just providing more text from the Morgan Atkins Bible at some point earlier would have been sufficient, I don’t know – but it would surely have been interesting to learn.
2) Did the ‘sleeves’ on the various human colonies persist post-Avatari? If there are other future books, that might be interesting to explore.
3) As noted to the author in an earlier discussion on the SadSamsPalace blog last year – what about that secret Mogat base in DC discussed several books ago? It never comes up here for obvious reasons – but maybe there are more Avatari clues there?
4) Finally – when will Harris have his ‘say’ in front of Congress, the Linear Committee and others who ultimately betrayed humanity via banishing the clones and taking control of the U.A. the way they did – when will the truth come out? I guess this is future book material too?
What might be an interesting next step here – instead of say, another book series or simply another sequel – might be to take an ‘art’ or ‘major events’ timeline approach. I’m thinking here of past Chris Foss-illustrated books like the old Spacecraft, 2000-2100 A.D.: Terran Trade Authority Handbook. Those books were largely a vehicle for putting out an art book – AFAIK, they made up the stories to explain the paintings therein – for the most part it works, although in the later Great Space Battles they get a bit too far afield (the painting of a giant ‘space cereberus’ is simply too silly to take seriously).
But with a pre-written and far more cohesive narrative like the Clone books, this approach could be pretty cool – the author could go back in time across the entire series and fill in/retell details he had to leave out first time around (due to space, editing, deadlines, etc.) – and – you get the chance to enlist some artists to ‘visualize’ some of these events too? Certainly the ‘destruction of the Doctrinaire’ would be a great one, as maybe the first encounter of Morgan Atkins’ science team with the Avatari? I could see a smiling portrait of Sweetwater, Breeze and Freeman presenting to the U.A. command ‘rabble’ during the battle gaps while fighting the Avatari on Terraneau, etc.
Another example of such an ‘external’ book to tell related stories and details would be the (also originally from the 70s) Starfleet Technical Manual describing the Star Trek universe. In any event, there are a lot of possibilities.
To sum up, I liked the series very much, there were a few things I quibbled with here and there, and of course hated waiting months between books (not much you can do about that one – when you write them all at once you can definitely end up with a horrible third story and beyond – ask The Matrix :)). Quality demands time, despite our lack of patience as readers.
candybowl
Tags: '10s, 00's, books, computers, fantasy, fun!, malevolence, sci-fi, technology