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Old 10-11-2018, 10:46 AM   #149
Catlady
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Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl View Post
As I understand it the author had characters in mind, and wanted to write a story about people facing their own mortality. The setting was simply used to create a background to examine this. He created a group of people with a compressed lifespan and wrote about their characters and interactions, which is all I think he wanted to do. There are any number of settings which he could have used to achieve this. But he created this particular world which to me cried out for explanation and development. He chose not to give any. To me, he failed with this book.
Yes. This.

When an author chooses something so out-there and so morally questionable as clones created specifically as a donor class, how can a reader not be primed to want details and explanations, even brief ones? A more mundane backdrop would not have been such a distraction.

And if there's going to be a lengthy and annoying information dump, it ought to provide more substance and answer more questions.
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