Review by Bill Kirton
This is one of those books that’s both a page-turning read and
an intelligent depiction of serious subjects and issues of real importance which
keep us thinking long after we’ve closed it. It’s set in the relatively near
future, with new subcultures and ethical factions creatively imagined and
realised and yet reflecting contemporary preoccupations with the medical ethics
of practices such as cloning, tissue cultures and harvesting organs for transplants.
As one of its characters says ‘We’re in an era capable of great medical
advances but crippled by ethical debate’.
It’s true that these are the book’s concerns and yet the
elements of its narrative – action,
psychology, politics, investigations, medical research, conflict between
warring factions – are so skilfully unified by the writer that, even as we’re
made to confront the ethical issues and question where our own sympathies lie,
we’re driven on by a plot whose tension never slackens. I’m making it sound as
if it’s dealing in abstractions – it isn’t. It’s the characters who drive it.
They’re powerfully realised and we care what happens to them, we’re fascinated
by the animal grafts some of them sport and the positions they occupy in this
brave new world, and we’re dragged along by the conflicts and resolutions, the
shifting allegiances and, yes, even the love story that manages to emerge
despite the excesses to which the central couple are subjected. The narrative
threads are woven skilfully together at a pace which never lets up. It delivers
a gripping story with a brilliantly sustained climax.
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