The Human Technology by Erik Rodgers

Adam is a first generation clone with prescient abilities getting by on a crap job as a zone guard. It's up to him to stop fellow clones from "zone jumping" and trying to contact their identical models in other areas. After a newly-developed clone with the ability to move through time is kidnapped by a radical sect called Gertrude's Gardeners, Adam is recruited by the government to help get her back.

The Human Technology, Part One of the Wetwire: Visionaries trilogy by Erik Rodgers, is an interesting mix of noir, sci-fi thriller, and human (clone?) drama. It's a short book, and I found it easy to get through. The prose was effective, and balanced well between narrative and scenes.

That fluid, easy-to-read prose is what I appreciated most about this book. As a reviewer, I have to attempt to read a lot of books I'd really rather not. And The Human Technology was easy and enjoyable to read. While the plot doesn't provide any shocking twists, the world he's created caught my attention and held it until I was finished. I'm looking forward to finishing the series.

My only real issues with this book were the beginning and end (and the typos). The book opens with a transcript of a clone's confession of murder. It explains some of the issues the world is experiencing, but I found it clunky and out of place. And the book ends at what I would consider the 2/3 mark of the average novel. All the disparate narrators have been drawn together, the action is just starting to pick up... and then it ends. The decision to end the book where it does seems dictated not by the story but by a need to create a cliffhanger and draw the audience towards the second book. Indie authors churning out trilogies as a marketing strategy is becoming more and more common.

But beginnings and endings aside, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it as a solid indie effort, well worth more than its modest 99 cent price tag.

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Copy source: provided free by the author
Genre: science fiction
Format: e-book