“Most of life is lived to be forgotten. That was the way of things, cruel though it felt when it was your life that would be lost.”
Matthew FitzSimmons, Constance
Clones; not too distant future; amnesia; murder mystery.
Did I get your attention yet? Constance was my pick on Amazon’s First Read E-Book program for August. The description was jammed packed with great Sci-Fi and mystery troupes that I couldn’t turn down.
We are at a point in history where technology is moving so rapidly that the idea of backing up your memory doesn’t seem so crazy and I’m sure someone, somewhere is working on it.
Overview: Dealing with the trauma of a fatal car crash, Constance D’Arcy decides to take her elusive aunts offer for her very own clone. But after a routine upload, Constance wakes up in her clone’s body and no recollection of the last eighteen months.
Constance quickly realizes that whoever went after her original might be after her as well. Tracking down her lost memories, Constance must figure out who is friend or foe to solve her own murder.
My thoughts: The existentialist crises throughout this book gets your mind spinning easily. How do you know you are your original person and not just an imprint of someone? You have your memories and they seem so real to you but can you really be transferred into another body or is it just a poor imitation?
It is human nature to want to survive. Since modern medicine, we have been trying to fight death and disease to prolong life. The idea is even more prominent now with so many awful things causing many people to lose their lives prematurely.
Ever so often I would wonder if clone Constance was really Constance or just an imprint of someone that once was. This made me question whether or not to actually care about her which is exactly the main conflict of the story.
I thought the legislation part of the story was fascinating. The fact that some states did not consider clones to be people and allowed for violence to happen without recourse speaks a lot to human rights.
The story does get a little messy when there are multiple versions of the same person but then also, some of those versions are actually mentally someone else. Even the main character gets a little confused and has to assign her own names to the characters in the same body. I just kept thinking of the Spiderman meme where he’s pointing to multiple copies of himself.
If you take the cloning aspect out of the plot, it is still a really compelling story. Someone loses their memories and has to solve a mystery be retracing their steps and not knowing who to trust along the way. Defiantly something I would read but the Sci-Fi addition of the clones puts a good spin on it.
Overall, I enjoyed this books and even more due to the fact that it was a free E-Book. Not sure if I would continue with the series as it comes out but I will have to play it by ear.
Rating: 4/5 stars
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