Last night, I was in a great mood. I’d filed one set of pretrial papers and two summary judgment motions (collectively approaching 500 pages, probably) that day and the day before, I was taking off the night and the next day to relax, and the library had promptly provided me with the new J.D. Robb, Origin in Death.
Unfortunately, Origin in Death is terrible. It is so bad that I am strongly considering not buying it when it comes out in paperback, even with my completist tendenices.
I’ve said before that I didn’t think this series was science fiction; and then I recanted and said that it is, it’s just bad science fiction. Well, by the setting (about fifty years in the future) and subject matter (genetic maniuplation and cloning), it is science fiction. If you use the definition that a genre is books in conversation with each other, though—well, not only is this book not in conversation with books like Cyteen and Mirror Dance, but it would probably cut them direct on the street if it happened to meet them.
In other words, “ewww, it’s cloning, how icky!” does not impress me. Especially when it was obviously supposed to be the thing that tipped the villains over into Pure Evil, but only by virtue of the knee-jerk ick reaction. What the villains were doing was more than sufficiently wrong no matter what method they used, but their use of this particular method was obviously supposed to repulse and digust any right-thinking person, Just Because. Pfui.
(Speaking of methods, I am pretty sure that our heroes did something exceedingly sporkworthy late in the book, but I was skimming pretty fast by then, in disgust, and refuse to go back and look. ROT13: V guvax gurl yrg cresrpgrq negvsvpny-jbzo grpuabybtl penfu naq ohea nybat jvgu gur erfg bs gur onq thlf’ jbexf. V’q ybir gb fvp Pbeqryvn Ibexbfvtna ba gurz vs V’z evtug.)
Fortunately, I’m off to pick up the new Harry Potter, which will certainly distract me from how bad Origin was.
Wow, so Origin was that bad? runs off to cancel order.