Customer Reviews

Cloning

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Monica Payton's novel, Cloning has broken new ground for Black authors by bringing a medical theme to fiction while educating her readers. She has created a wonderfully monstrous character in California native Dr. Kevin Diamond who is on a business trip, quite coincidentally, in New York City on September 11, 2001, during the 9/11 terrorist attack on America. The intrigue of this doctor transporting human embryos, and the suggestion that terrorists seek to take control of his highly coveted cloning research, forced me to keep turning the pages.

The story's premise is built around Dr. Diamond, who is hell bent on getting his human embryos to various infertility clinics. He fights his way through a long list of adversaries, including the government officials who sponsored him, and his own natural clone, who I stumbled upon while racing through Payton's novel. It's a medical thriller unlike anything I've ever read.

It's unsettling to discover how close to reality this novel approaches. The plausibility of the government's involvement in financing a human cloning experiment is very convincing (shades of the Tuskegee experiment).

Payton scares me, writing about such things as cloning (people), stem cell research (growing body parts) and bio-banking (the ability the live forever)...all of which just happen to parallel much of today's headline news. Consider California's proposition 71, wherein a $3-billion bond to finance stem cell research was recently passed. This means California will soon become established as the stem cell capital of the nation (exporting body parts).

Life truly imitates art, as Payton, one of our newest novelists explains away many of today's, difficult to decipher, hot button issues and spins a web of fiction and reality in Cloning that I found unable to put down until I found out the fate of the outrageous Dr. Kevin Diamond and his human clones.

Cloning is suspenseful and action packed, with many surprises throughout. I would say futuristic, too, but it really isn't.

I hope it makes the big screen. Cloning is a must read.

With genetic engineering, eugenics, and stem cell research getting top billing on various newscasts and special news reports, it's not really too unbelievable to think that somewhere in the future, human clones will exist and a few deadly diseases will be cured. Author Monica R. Payton has taken some of these speculations and mixed them in her new medical thriller CLONING. Adding a dash of romance, a bit of suspense, a government cover-up, and even the evil villain of all evil villains, the action starts immediately as our main character rushes to get out of the World Trade Center alive during the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Dr. Kevin Diamond, a gene therapy physician and surgeon, has created the one thing that would make him famous throughout the world. He altered human tissue, created his very own clone, and watched him grow for nine years with no apparent side effects. Financed by the federal government, he is on the verge of producing his own brand of mankind and is confident that they are perfect, just as he sees himself. Once he makes it safely out of the WTC, he has even more of a focus to mass produce his clones and get them distributed to infertility clinics. However, there are several big problems. For one, the research time allotted by the government (over a decade) is gone. Secondly, other countries are after his research, and thirdly, his partner Aaron, and a former employee are finding out some of his secrets.

Aaron is Kevin's identical twin and the "good one" caught up in worshiping his brother. He's centered his life around Kevin's dreams and has even taken on a fake identity as not to compete with him. When things start happening that make him question what type of person Kevin really is, he's not sure which way to turn. While he does believe in their initial research, he's convinced Kevin has a God-complex and has taken his vanity to another level. Angela Butler worked for Kevin, but found out about some of his illegal handlings of biomedical products and filed a case against him which she dropped to save the life of a patient who needed him to perform surgery. She has started her life over, but things take a turn when she runs into Aaron and later find out his connection to Kevin.

While I did enjoy the novel quite a bit, there just seemed to be too much going on at times and I wasn't sure which storyline to be more interested in. Just as I immersed myself with Kevin, Angela popped up; then when I was stuck on her, Aaron would be back. Some of the scenarios were just a bit drawn out and made the book a much longer read than I felt necessary. In spite of this, Payton did a masterful job drawing it all together, without the neat bow and it would make an awesome movie. The characters and their actions were fleshed out, the plots made sense, and the medical jargon and dialogue were not too far above my head to keep me from understanding the book.

Payton has successfully melded issues of relevance in the medical community with the lack of constraints fiction provides to present a story that is eye-opening, entertaining, and educational. What role is the government taking in the advancement of stem cell research and other similar practices? Are people protected from having their DNA snatched and used to further medical practices? CLONING, though fiction, leads one to ask these questions and many others. From the bold actions of Kevin Diamond, to the strong commitment to the quality of life shown by Aaron, Angela, and other characters of CLONING, the reader will question the moral, ethical, and legal rights of both doctors, researchers, and the federal government.

Reviewed by Tee C. Royal
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

Monica Payton's new thriller is exciting and informational combination science and power, lust and greed. She uses her knowledge of "what's up" in medical science for the layman while giving a chilling warning about things that could happen in the future if left ucchecked. Monica's love of humanity shows up strongly in her heroine's and hero's who fight with all the charecter and moral values needed to keep the masses free of tyrants who would try to rule the world, riveting and spellbinding, a must read