Chance, a review by Joanna

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Chance

Matthew FitzSimmons

Published February 14th, 2023

Thomas & Mercer

313 pages

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Chance is the sequel to Constance, about how human cloning can go wrong when technology is controlled by bad people. I think it’s crucial to have read the previous book, as while the protagonists are different, much of the complex plot here won’t make sense without the background. I’ll confess I enjoyed Constance more – partly for the much more likeable main character, and that story was better paced, while this one took quite a while to get going and only really grabbed me towards the end. It’s still an intelligent twisty mystery which taunts the reader with the ethics of the cloning debate, without offering any definitive opinions either way.

Set in LA a couple of decades into the future, this introduces Chance, a billionaire’s son who was murdered as a teenager in a kidnapping gone wrong, and brought back as a clone with his consciousness restored. This wasn’t enough to stop his family disintegrating, and his brother from committing suicide, while Chance deals with his trauma by filming crazy stunts for his online fans, safe in the knowledge that if they don’t work, he can be reborn as another clone. Then he wakes from his latest restoration and is arrested for murder – but with no memory of who he has killed, or why. With an anti-clone mob baying for his blood, and evidence that his previous self actively hid things from him, Chance must return to scene of the crime which started it all – his own murder.
This was an accomplished thriller, but which tried a little too hard to be clever, leaving me feeling that not all the knots got untangled by the end – it’s possible that this will continue into a third instalment, although it doesn’t need to. I liked the nearish-future aspects, like the way climate change and technology have altered LA and the way people live, without it being a major part of the plot. While the concept of people’s entire personality and memory being seamlessly transferred to a quantum computer and then back into a new body is medically implausible within the time frame suggested (actually, ever) if you let that part go, the implications are intriguing. Some of this one covers ethical issues raised in the first book, but then explores the reactions of ordinary people who can’t afford their own clone being faced with a spoilt brat happy to literally throw his life away without consequences.
Amnesia plot-lines have been done to death in psychological fiction in recent years, and this uses the  same storytelling device as Constance to achieve the effect, which at least is more original than the usual head injury or repressed trauma – the protagonist investigates the murder of themself, but in a different body. It’s clever, but you have to pay attention for it all to make sense. I’m rounding up from 3.5 stars, for some ingenious twists and because I liked the way Constance was brought back into the story, and probably would carry on if this does become a series. Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC.

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