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A review by elusivity
Alien Taste by Wen Spencer
3.0
Steady-paced beginning, fascinating premise, leading to frantically-paced, far less interesting action-thriller type ending.
Ukiah is a good-hearted young man apparently raised by wolves then taken in by his lesbian-couple moms, who now works with his partner Max as private detectives. He has uncanny abilities, such as photographic recall, rapid healing, and ability to analyze things by touch down to DNA level. I started off thinking this may be another werewolf story, but quickly found things are much stranger.In fact, Ukiah is genetically engineered product of human and an alien, Hex, intent to taking over Earth. Hex comes from a species that propagate itself by injecting DNA into living beings, which then transforms into Hex clone, with Hex's thoughts and memories, which are then capable of creating more Hex clones. Ukiah and the Pack that eventually finds him are all descended from one such clone who was somehow able to maintain its own thoughts, hated Hex, and opposed it in every way possible, whose legacy is its memories and cell-level hatred of Hex, which were passed down to the Pack and to Ukiah.
The alien species is very original in that their very cells mimic life, and have memories encoded down to DNA-level. When aliens /clones bleed or suffer dismemberment, the blood and body parts still strive to survive, and immediately mutate into different sized animals according to the amount of cells they contain -- i.e. field mice, mongoose -- a creepy-cute detail I've never seen elsewhere. These smaller life forms can be absorbed by other clones to share the original's memories, to change to the original's appearance, or be tortured then fed to grow into a full clone of the original. All of which happens to Ukiah's poor mice, as Hex attempt to thwart Ukiah.
I really liked the details and well-established relationships this book began with: Ukiah himself, quiet and pure, Max, his lesbian mothers, his little sister, his strange abilities and how they are used in his daily work. At mid-point, however, a switch is thrown and and the sense of depth and solid-world quality took a sudden backseat to plot. New characters are hastily introduced, mostly very thinly sketched. Events pull back sharply from the careful close-up of Ukiah's life, the mystery of his origin, to a global conspiracy spanning hundreds of years, involving a huge crowd of people, expanding outwardly all the way to Mars. The transition is jarring, and I think to the novel's detriment.
Still, an interesting read.
Ukiah is a good-hearted young man apparently raised by wolves then taken in by his lesbian-couple moms, who now works with his partner Max as private detectives. He has uncanny abilities, such as photographic recall, rapid healing, and ability to analyze things by touch down to DNA level. I started off thinking this may be another werewolf story, but quickly found things are much stranger.
The alien species is very original in that their very cells mimic life, and have memories encoded down to DNA-level. When aliens /clones bleed or suffer dismemberment, the blood and body parts still strive to survive, and immediately mutate into different sized animals according to the amount of cells they contain -- i.e. field mice, mongoose -- a creepy-cute detail I've never seen elsewhere. These smaller life forms can be absorbed by other clones to share the original's memories, to change to the original's appearance, or be tortured then fed to grow into a full clone of the original. All of which happens to Ukiah's poor mice, as Hex attempt to thwart Ukiah.
I really liked the details and well-established relationships this book began with: Ukiah himself, quiet and pure, Max, his lesbian mothers, his little sister, his strange abilities and how they are used in his daily work. At mid-point, however, a switch is thrown and and the sense of depth and solid-world quality took a sudden backseat to plot. New characters are hastily introduced, mostly very thinly sketched. Events pull back sharply from the careful close-up of Ukiah's life, the mystery of his origin, to a global conspiracy spanning hundreds of years, involving a huge crowd of people, expanding outwardly all the way to Mars. The transition is jarring, and I think to the novel's detriment.
Still, an interesting read.