Cloning Freedom
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
In the early 21st century, Rowan is fighting a secret war against alien pirates bent on subjugating all of mankind.
At least, that's what she thinks. In reality, it's a thousand years later, Earth has long been part of an interstellar and interspecies republic, and she's a character on Angel Black, an e-entertainment that allows viewers a complete sensory experience through her perspective. Who needs actors when you can clone famous performers and splice in some alien DNA? Since studio clones have no rights, their lives and experiences can be tailor-made for the program.
It's just too bad the clones don't know that.
Ryan Chandler was a decorated war hero until he was cloned to save his life. His career options died with his original body and the best job he can get is a technician on Angel Black. He's planning to escape to a newly colonized system when Rowan is scheduled to be killed off.
With help from unexpected allies, Ryan stages Rowan's rescue, but getting her off the set is only the beginning. To succeed, they must evade a manhunt supported by the state that fears Rowan's liberation might be the triggering event of a clone rights movement that could cost the establishment billions and shake the foundations of human society.
Can two clones find their freedom in a society that treats them as second-class citizens?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Life imitates art a little too closely in this frenetic space opera caper from Pearl (Havens in the Storm). Ryan Chandler, a veteran spaceship engineer, is cloned and forced to work as a technician on immersive entertainment programs, manipulating unaware casts of clones to create compelling reality show viewing for the wired-in audience. When Ryan learns that Rowan, one of the stars of the hit show Angel Black, is set to be killed off (literally), he forms a plan to extract Rowan and take off for alien space, outside of the United Earth Systems, where clones are treated as people, not property. He believes he has an ally in studio head Mike Strongbow but Mike's reasons for helping Ryan are not purely altruistic. And studio security chief Mildred Tallman is not about to let a pair of "fakeys" get away, even if stopping them starts an interstellar war. On their dash to freedom, Ryan and Rowan fall in love. Pearl plays a confident game with his multiple worlds-within-worlds, running parallel scenes from the entertainment programs and the bridge of Ryan's restored spaceship to wryly comment on how, even when his characters think they are in charge, their strings are being pulled by others. Though the plot twists are at times too obvious, Ryan and Rowan's flight and kindling romance is sure to draw in readers.
