Channeling Cleopatra
Cleopatra, no. 1
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- $5.900
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- $5.900
Descripción editorial
“Get the past life of your dreams!”
Leda Hubbard, a forensic pathologist, gets the job of her dreams when an old school friend hires her to collect and authenticate the DNA of the famous Cleopatra. It’s all great fun for Leda until, during a massive disaster, her colorful dad, the dig’s security specialist, is killed by a group trying to hijack the precious material for a “blend,” a process in which the queen’s DNA is used to import her memories, personality, and character traits to a new host. They screw up, however, and get Leda’s dad’s DNA instead. To keep the queen from going to the murderers, Leda blends with Cleopatra herself, learning a lot more about Egypt than she ever wanted to know.
“A bright, sometimes humorous, often dark, but always innovative speculative fiction. . . Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is always a treat to read but with this novel, she takes readers where nobody has gone before.” BookBrowser
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Forget Dolly the sheep: genetic engineering goes for the gold and takes on historical figures namely Cleopatra in a process that is not quite cloning and not quite the channeling of the title of this light fantasy from Nebula Award winner Scarborough. The geniuses at Nucor company have perfected a computer-based program that can insert DNA from one person into another, thereby giving the second person the personality and thoughts of the first. It even works on the DNA of people long dead thus the DNA of the famed queen is the target of the archeological quest driving this story. Leda Hubbard, a closet Egyptologist and lover of antiquities whose day job is in forensic sciences, gets involved in a semi-shady assignment for Nucor to find Cleopatra's remains so her DNA can be injected into a wealthy client. Leda doesn't particularly approve of the channeling process, but getting to go on an archeological dig is the thrill of a lifetime. In the course of her adventures, she experiences a natural disaster, gets kidnapped and ends up taking Cleopatra on as an internal passenger. It's an interesting concept, but Scarborough's (The Lady in the Loch, the Acorna series with Anne McCaffrey) scattershot approach which includes tributes to metaphysics, Egyptology (especially Elizabeth Peters mysteries), gumshoe detectives, channeling and action adventure never quite allows the story to coalesce into something more than readable and occasionally humorous bits and pieces. Striking jacket art incorporating an ancient Egyptian double helix elegantly conveys the book's theme.
