Just finished reading the newest Steven L. Kent Wayson Harris novel – The Clone Empire. Read it twice cover to cover, actually. Here’s what I think.

1) Good continuation of the main storyline from the earlier 5 books. There were definitely a few surprises (plot and character-wise) I didn’t see coming, which are always nice to see, especially in a fairly long series (sci-fi or otherwise).

2) I’m not sure what to think about Wayson’s state of mind at this point. On the one hand, he definitely seems like a man trying to escape his own past (and genetic heritage of being a programmed killing machine) but on the other hand, he can’t escape the violence when it starts, and because of that same internal programming, really can’t avoid liking it and feeding off of it, either. But unlike the many clones around him who have similar programming – he is given much more capability to ‘decide’ about what he believes in (or doesn’t believe in), which makes his decisionmaking (and ultimate mental anguish) that much tougher to bear in many situations.

3) There were two major plot ‘loose ends’ I believed I had caught as having been overlooked by the author over the past several books. One was answered at the end of this book – kudos. The other I’m still waiting to see if it gets addressed. Rather than spoil either one for people who haven’t read the books (or read them all twice like me) I would welcome a direct chat with the author on the latter – Mr. Kent, are you out there? 🙂 I simply couldn’t find an email address/form on Sad Sams Palace or i’d have pinged you directly…..

4) Stepping back to Wayson – I’m also a bit unsure about his ‘deference to authority’ seen more frequently in this book (especially as concerns Warshaw and Doctorow – Andropov seemed to light the fire just like in previous books, no love lost there) versus before. While there is an actual sentence directly mentioning this attitude mid-book, I just wondered whether Wayson was getting tired of ‘leading the charge’ every time no one else seemed capable or willing to solve major crises – yet gets perpetually dumped on and ostracized by most others the rest of the time. It may be that most other major authority figures see him as a complete threat, one that cannot be contained or stopped by anything or anyone (short of killing him), but that he’s too useful to simply execute (although that’s been tried unsuccessfully too). Hmmm…I wasn’t completely convinced of Warshaw’s motives in trying to ‘replace’ Wayson with Hollingsworth – but I’m not sure I was meant to get inside Warshaw’s head really either. Hmm….

5) One thing that occurred to me – Several books back, we got a brief glimpse (mostly through ancillary conversations) at the Mogat ‘bible’, written by Morgan Atkins about his encounters with and negotiations to hold off the Avatari. Can we see more from that? It may be too late at this stage given the next book may be well near done by now – but it would be very cool, and help understand the aliens a bit more? And why several thousand (million?) people chose to follow Atkins in the first place at that stage in the story? That was always a bit unclear to me too – They seemed to give up a LOT (as described during Harris’ invasion of their homeworld in an earlier book) but it didn’t seem that they were ‘racial isolationists’ (like Shin Nippon) or Freeman’s Baptist family (religious ‘back to basics’ farmer colony). Did I just miss the discussion of their motivations, or?

Looking forward to the next book – as I understand it – possibly the last one? doh! 🙁

candybowl