The Clone Elite [Mass Market Paperback]

"The Clone Elite" is the fourth in the series from Ace scifi author Steven L. Kent. It's more of the same...but that's a good thing. The story of interstellar civil war expands to intergalactic invasion as a mysterious army of aliens takes the Milky Way by storm.

Kent further develops the conflicted cloned character of Wayson Harris in a heroic tale where the fate of humanity is held in balance. There are new enemies (both foreign and domestic) to kill and lots of new hardware to help do the job.

"The Clone Elite" weaves a compelling plot that explores more of clone culture. The introduction of a new extra-galactic alien threat and the inventive path that the characters use to defeat it, provides for a very entertaining read.

If you're a military scifi fan, this series is a must read. I already can't wait for the next three books!

This is a decent, readable book. Average but not up to the standards of the previous three. It strikes me as several good ideas thrown into a book with none of them fully developed as if the author was in a hurry or a bit disinterested.
In this book our hero Harris is leading a civilian life that, I guess, was not fulfilling. The military sent a - for some reason - formidable force to bring him back into the military, something that he accepted without much question. I think the author was trying to develop the 'killer' reputation our character has developed but that effort fell rather short in execution.
It seems the galaxy is being invaded by bad guys and they are invading at warp speed. They are an unstoppable juggernaut. So the authorities are scraping the bottom of every barrel to fight them. Our hero is sent off as part of a force to fight the enemy short of earth itself.
Several questions arise here. First, the transport system that sustained commerce was destroyed several books and quite some time ago. Yet, there seems to be no impact on commerce except for the main concourse of the central transport facility no longer being full. Also, there is a vast scarcity of transport that can function without the transport system, yet there is enough to put millions of men and tons of material on each planet being readied to resist the enemy. And, again, what is sustaining the commerce system needed to back such a military effort? Back to the plot.
Once on the planet our hero is a company XO who acts independently while pursuing the inevitable defeat of the enemy. Why an XO position? Other than being a poor plot set up for a bigoted CO who is inconsistent and artificial till Harris kills him, there seems to be no reason for this. He acts more as a platoon leader than XO. Plus, why not put him on detached duty instead of maintaining a fiction of him working as an XO? This does not make sense other than being a poor path for a sub-plot.
At one time, I thought this was going to be a grand space opera fighting against incredible odds. It may have been meant to be that but it is poorly carried off. I simply did not get that sense of grand peril and adventure that good space opera provides.
Besides, the strength of this author is the characterization of his characters. This drops to the level of stereotyping in this novel. The senior officers are all inept, quarreling, bigoted against clones, children in the main. The 2 scientists are also parodies - one a super pencil necked geek and one a dwarf. Everyone seems to operate on the principle of being the alpha dominant vice professional relationships. Shallow characterization vice the superb development of previous novels.
The military part is also of lower quality than previous books. One item that stands out is the mission prep and briefing that takes place. These actions seem to consist more of testosterone challenges and/or pep rallies than actual mission prep. Soldiers just seem to 'know' what to do without much if any preparation in carrying out complex operations. Not realistic.
Even the culminating - allegedly epic - battle lacks that gripping feel that stems from the previous novels.
It is my hope that the author was merely distracted or in a hurry while putting this together. Given that there are three more novels coming, I hope that this is the case. If not, this series has already peaked and is heading downhill fast.
In summary, this is a readable book. It is not terrible - merely average, pedestrian. It suffers much in comparison with the previous three novels on this character. Not all authors can handle a continuing series. We will see if this is the case for Mr. Kent here. I hope that he rises to the challenge and returns to the excellence of the previous novels.

"The Clone Alliance", the third installment of Steven Kent's chronicles of a cloned space warrior who discovers he is different from all the other clones hit a speed bump for me. I've followed his Wayson Harris character ever since "The Clone Republic', and enjoyed the fresh look at military Science Fiction and the unique perspective that Kent brought to the genre. But "Clone Alliance" felt flat to me. The story was starting to get old, perhaps, and the science didn't make a lot of sense. By the time Harris made his final escape from certain destruction again, I was getting a little bored.

But the good news is that in Kent's "The Clone Elite", Harris is back, and with an attitude. This book has a great unexpected first sentence that grabs your attention, and then the following pages pull you into a contest for nothing less than the survival of all humanity, with Kent making it believable and suspenseful. This time, the science is intriguing, and for the first time, aliens are on the scene, and they are trouble. It isn't that they can't be beaten, but that they are obnoxiously persistent and resourceful.

Wayson Harris also gets himself back into more of the class warfare that was a promise of the first couple of books, with incompetent officers and corrupt politicians who don't give a damn about the armies they deploy, because after all, they're just clones, aren't they? Harris has his hands full, and gets some help from some new characters, along with bounty hunter Ray Freeman and a couple of other characters from the previous books. No one really trusts Harris except his fellow clones, but the officers and politicians can't seem to find anyone else to turn to in solving this seemingly unwinnable battle. I found this volume likable and compelling, with some promise that this series still has some great life left in it. I'm now waiting for volume 5, which I think means Wayson Harris gets some payback time!

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