An odd, underdeveloped, and highly graphic tale of an attack of the clones.
In Mikheyev’s novel, a teenage inventor clones his murder victim and opens the floodgates for a secretive cloning industry with calamitous consequences.
This often gory tale centers mainly on the gifted pupils and alumni of upscale Middlebrooks high school in Los Angeles. In 2031, Vince Nilsson, one of its students, is the son of one of the richest men on Earth due to his heavy investment in Ethereum, which is the world’s most successful cryptocurrency in this version of the future. The teen is a science enthusiast whose main emotional connection is to his classmate Melissa Price. After she tells him that she doesn’t want to continue dating him, he creeps up to her bedroom window and shoots her dead along with her friend Ashley Carr. Using his wealth and dark-web connections, he manages to perfect human cloning in a lab in his family’s mansion, and he creates clones of both girls. It isn’t long before the new Melissa tries to kill him after having sex with him, as it turns out that the clones eventually recall all of the original person’s memories. He ends up murdering clone after clone during his many experiments, which lay the foundation for Vince’s new company, Emergence, where he is ultimately consumed by guilt and paranoia. A generation later, cloning continues on, which sparks a second Civil War; this time around, it’s the conservative South that disapproves of making property out of people. Nonetheless, cloning thrives as an underground industry, as dissatisfied spouses slay and replace unwanted husbands and bereaved parents create new versions of deceased children. By 2049, there’s a conspiracy to replace politicians and power brokers with clones worldwide.
Although Mikheyev name-checks Quentin Tarantino early on, it would be a little hasty to classify the material as tongue-in-cheek splatterpunk. The moments of ultraviolence instead set a nihilistic tone, especially in a late subplot when a few Middlebrooks misfits plan a massacre of popular kids in school. In an author’s note, Mikheyev calls the book “a kind of catharsis,” with story essentials coming to him in a dream. The latter quality may or may not explain such peculiar characters as a fire-scarred former pastor and a White House adviser with a pet bear who serves as a sort of voice of reason, conscience, and morality—when he isn’t taking a life himself. The author also states that he was particularly inspired by an Anthony Burgess quote about marriage (“To destroy, wantonly, such a relationship, is like destroying a whole civilization”); the author’s critique of discarded relationships has a real body count to match this metaphorical one as he tries to convey the fruitlessness of striving for relationship perfection. In the process, though, some of the wider SF–speculation aspects, including characters’ telepathy, unsatisfyingly recede into the background; indeed, an entire Civil War happens offstage with no useful details offered, and the fate of the clone empire remains ambiguous in favor of a more muted ending.
An odd, underdeveloped, and highly graphic tale of an attack of the clones.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.
Travel writer Lo Blacklock is back. Ten years after the events of The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016), she's attending the opening of a lavish Swiss hotel when, once again, a mystery intervenes.
A decade after she almost died on a luxury cruise and ended up exposing a murder plot, travel journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock is trying to get back into the business post-Covid-19 and post–maternity leave. When she's invited to an exclusive hotel launch by the Leidmann Group on the shores of Switzerland’s gorgeous Lake Geneva, her supportive husband, Judah, insists that she should go, and her old boss, Rowan, says that if Lo can score an interview with the reclusive Marcus Leidmann, she’ll publish it in the Financial Times. Leaving Judah and the kids at home in New York, Lo is surprised by a last-minute upgrade to first class, which kicks off her trip in style. The hotel is appropriately awe-inspiring in both scenic location and effortless luxury, and Lo starts to put the memories of last trip’s trauma behind her, thinking that maybe she can just enjoy the experience this time. But then, at dinner, she's surprised to see at least three guests who were also on that original cruise, and when she finds a mysterious note in her room saying "Please come to suite 11 as soon as possible," she gets another shock. To quote William Faulkner, she realizes that “the past is never dead,” and soon Lo is careening across Europe on her way to England, only to find herself embroiled in another murder. The back half of the novel offers her the opportunity to continue her amateur sleuthing, and while she avoids much of the physical danger that plagued her on the cruise a decade ago, she is in very real legal trouble. This is the prolific Ware’s first sequel, and it's fun to spend time with Lo again, as she's both savvy and kindhearted. Unfortunately, the mystery is not as atmospheric and gripping as usual for Ware, though even a lesser Ruth Ware thriller is still worth reading.
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781668025628
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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