Randomize ME

About the Book:

As America reels from the bizarre presidential assassination committed by a child, seven men are abducted from their normal lives and delivered to a secret government facility. Each man has his own career, his own specialty. All are identical in appearance. The seven strangers were grown — unwitting human clones — as part of a project called 7th Son.

I found out about J.C. Hutchins’ 7th Son: Descent since it was featured as a FREE serialized installment on BoingBoing starting October of last year. How the book came to be published is a very interesting story in itself – the author, J.C. Hutchins, after being frustrated by multiple rejections of his manuscript, decided to release his book into the wild world of the internet as serialized podcasts. Well, lo and behold, it gained a cult following and was so popular that it finally attracted a real publisher to offer him a deal. Cool, huh?

I can understand why the novel captured the imagination of so many people – I mean, I just read that little blurb about cloning and I sure as hell got very interested! The concept is very intriguing – seven strangers are kidnapped and brought together in an underground secret government facility. There, they discover that they are all clones (or betas) of a certain man called John Alpha. Unfortunately, John Alpha has turned rogue and now threatens national security, not to mention the safety of their (collective) mother (who John Alpha has kidnapped). For reasons of his own, John Alpha is cocky enough to leave clues behind. The mission of the seven clones? To crack John Alpha’s clues, rescue their mother and capture John Alpha. Can the seven men band together and use their expertise to achieve this? Well, I sure wanted to find out!

The novel is actually more thriller than sci-fi – I mean, the author does take the time to explain the cloning technology, but adds sci-fi elements like the ability to essentially treat the brain like a hard disk and upload/download memories and personalities. It was a bit hard for me to suspend disbelief however since the explanations were pretty much fantastical, especially since I had to believe that cloning technology of such advancement was available essentially in the decades after World War 2. I would have preferred it if Mr. J.C. Hutchins had set the novel even just like 20 years in the future maybe. Also, I found the cavalier explanations for modern events like 9-11, Iraq War, etc. not to my liking really. Conspiracy theorists may enjoy them though – I found the treatment very simplistic and not up to par to the quality of the novel as a whole.

Taking those stuff out though, I have to say that Mr Hutchins did a great job creating his characters. I wasn’t quite happy with the non-explanation of why John Alpha turned into such a bad nut of a person – but I really appreciated how Mr Hutchins was able to present each of the seven betas as distict persons with their own personalities. When we first meet them, they are just the gay military guy, the priest, the geneticist, the criminal profiler, the peace-maker, the hacker and the musician – but we really get to know each man & appreciate how they are similar or different from each other.

The last third of the novel is all action – written very well, I must say – very fast moving, very suspenseful and I was never quite sure who would survive or what would happen next. I didn’t quite expect it to end on such a cliff-hanger though and I was quite upset that my favorite character didn’t survive! Oh well, on to the next book of an expected trilogy – which I hope the author will release soon since I kinda really really want to know what happens next!

All the chapters are actually still available on the author’s official website (http://jchutchins.net) where you can read them onsite or download as pdfs. Or you can read them on BoingBoing. Or and I’m sure the author will appreciate it if you go and actually buy the book!

7th Son: Descent is available on Amazon as a Paperback ($10.19) and Kindle Edition ($9.99). My suggestion is to read the first couple of chapters and if you like it, support the author so we get books 2 and 3!

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