Title: False Memory
Author: Dan Krokos
Pages: 327
Publisher: DAW
Rating: Worthy
Perspective: first person present
False memory is the first in what promises to be a series. Apparently with that in mind, some production company has apparently option it for a TV show. It begins with a 17-year-old girl named Miranda North, who apart from her age and name, pretty much can’t remember anything about herself, but she does know enough to ask a mall cop for help. He thinks she's messing with him and refuses aid and when she's insistent, he grabs her as though he's going to walk her out of the mall! He doesn't even read her Miranda rights! (Yeah, I went there!). Miranda immediately throws him right over her shoulder to the floor, and at that point something emanates from her like a wave, a psychic vibe, heading out in all directions across the mall, inducing real panic in everyone it touches around her. People even jump blindly over the rail from the second floor to escape, evidently killing themselves as they hit the floor below.
When the wave passes, the only person seemingly unaffected by it is Peter, sitting there in the food court. He's a stranger to her, but Miranda talks with him, and he cryptically tells her to come with him, she's 'special' and they need to go 'home'. Again with the zipped lips syndrome. Krokos (which sounds suspiciously like the Dutch word for crocus!) seems to not know that there's a difference between the characters not knowing anything and the reader not knowing enough. It's annoying and I haven't warmed to his style yet.
Miranda leaves the mall, led by Peter, which is kind of intriguing in a gender-confused manner, and they escape the immediate environment in a stolen police car. Shortly, they park by some warehouses, climbing a steel ladder to the warehouse roof (which is just as well because cops show up at the car they left below before too long). Peter explains a little about what's up, but again nowhere near enough. Miranda doesn't remember him or anything about him, yet still she follows him. She finds she can run effortlessly, leap across the gaps between the warehouse roofs, and jump from wall to wall down between two warehouses to get back down to the ground as they make good on their escape. Peter takes her to a training facility where she meets the head, Dr Brett Tycast (is that like typecast? He's wearing a white lab coat, after all!) and learns of a tutor, Phil, whom we never meet! Not so far as I've read, anyway.
That night, she dreams of herself, Peter, and their two fellow trainees, Olive and Noah, with whom Miranda evidently had something going on since they're seen kissing and they share a bed (against the rules), but have not been any more intimate than that so we're told. There's actually a video of them kissing the night she left the building with Noah and Olive, right before she lost her memory, which is evidently due to her not taking regular injections of a chemical which helps her to retain memories which would otherwise be "pushed out" by her psychic abilities. Her dreams are short glimpses into her previous life, so she understands, but it’s not likely she will ever recall all of it, she's told.
I suspect that what she's remembering may well not be her real memories, but the false memories of the book's title, implanted in her to delude her into thinking she had a life that she never did. But we don't know at this point. The book also has this weird electronic circuit motif, not only on the cover, but also with black and white logos repeated on every page and as chapter marks. I have no idea how relevant, if at all, that is to the story. Is she some sort of robot or cyborg? Only further reading will tell! But not if Krokos doesn't offer a bit more than he's hitherto been willing. There is another thing: the hardback I'm reading is set in 12pt Cochin, which isn't a bad typeface except that the italic form of it is weird; it looks like script and it's really distracting.
My impression so far is that I'm nowhere near as into this story as I ought to be by this point, so I may end up not liking it. Why do I feel this way? I think it’s because there's too much teen-romance-love-triangle going on with Peter and Noah (even if he is a false memory!). For as paranoid as Miranda is depicted at the start of the story, she falls into trust with Peter way too fast, especially given how little he's giving her.
One weird incident is where she goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night, for a drink (why there and not the fridge?), and Peter is standing there in the dark, and he checks out her legs and she tries not to check out his slim hips disappearing into his pants. I'm sorry, but she has way more on her plate than this, and she isn't ringing true to me yet. This precipitous sexual tension seems way out of place; she's seventeen, not thirteen! Maybe she forgot some of her training, too?! I don’t honestly feel that a female writer would have gone there; unless, of course, it was Laurell K. Hamilton or Joyce Carroll Oates. But seriously, contrast this with what Michelle Sagara did in Silence; only distant hints of a love triangle, nothing overt going on, and the reason for that was Emma's preoccupation with far more pressing matters.
The first pressing matter here is that of recovering Noah and Olive. Peter and Miranda set off early morning to find them. They're in Indianapolis - or at least were, the last time their tracking devices identified where they were. M & P each put on a one-piece body armor suit under their regular clothing and set off on Ducati motorcycles. Miranda's first rebellious question is that if the four of them are supposed to be a force for good, how come so many people got badly hurt when Miranda unleashed at the mall? Peter doesn’t have a good answer.
I was thinking that her first pressing question should be: if she and Noah were an item, then how come he left her in Cleveland and took off with Olive? This doesn’t seem to have even entered Miranda's consciousness, let alone impinged on it significantly, although she does ask about it later and is not at all pleased with the answer she gets!
They track the other couple down to a Holiday Inn, where they find two more bikes like theirs. When Peter lifts up his bike seat and pulls out two automatics, Miranda doesn't even question it! They're going to meet with the other half of their team, and Miranda had strong feelings for at least one of them, yet she never questions, not for a second, the need for both of them to pack guns! They're wearing body armor and going to meet their friends! I'm not saying they should have left the guns behind, although it probably, in these circumstances, would not have hurt, but the fact that she doesn't even question it smells wrong to me.
When no one answers the door, Peter kicks it down - no subtle attempt to pick the lock here, no hi-tech entry system. This isn't wise because it draws the police to their room shortly thereafter. Inside, they find that both Noah and Olive have guns trained on them. After some tense minutes, they put the guns away and sit and talk.
Noah feels guilt for leaving Miranda but explains that it’s because he didn’t want to get her hurt. Miranda wisely doesn't buy this cheap excuse. No one honestly grills Noah, who has made a startling discovery that all is not well, as to why he didn’t simply tell the other three about it. Yeah, there's a limp excuse that since Peter is their leader, he might be in on the plot with Tycast, but really? There are other 'Roses' (the group's name for themselves), and the four of them are supposed to be getting sold to foreign interests (which is what triggered Noah to take off).
This team seems really unable to avoid police attention, which is pretty sad. A cop arrives at the hotel room door, and Miranda zaps him with a small dose of her 'fear wave', causing him to retreat. Instead of going down the back stairs, they ride down the elevator, wherein Miranda has a fit of anger against Noah and socks him a solid one on his jaw, and when the elevator door opens, they immediately run into another cop (or the same one) and they have to zap him. Noah then takes off on his bike with Miranda in hot pursuit and the other two lagging behind, and she gets into a fist-fight with him after she knocks his bike over using hers!
She may not remember having a relationship with him, but she sure as hell is toting the baggage from it somewhere in her subconscious. She appears at this point to be very much a loose cannon, but why she is so intensely pissed off with Noah is a bit of a mystery to me! Feeling abandoned? Check! Feeling angry? Check! Feeling Betrayed? Check. But is any of that any rationale for repeatedly getting into violent physical confrontation with him? I can see it if she were a guy instead of a girl! Would a woman have written her behavior differently from what Krokos has portrayed? I think it’s likely. Not that girls don’t fight; not that they can’t be aggressive, but I'm looking at this in context of what we've learned of her and her past so far, and in these circumstances with this girl and this guy with whom she supposedly had been rather intimately involved? Krokos hasn’t sold this to me yet. It’s possible, of course that there's something we haven't learned of yet (perhaps the false memory thing I alluded to earlier?) which explains this. We'll have to see. I'm willing to let it play, so far.
From an interview he gave, he apparently had several women acquaintances reading early drafts of this and they made suggestions. Now, one woman's opinion I might challenge over a fictional women's behavior, but when there seems to be a consensus from several, then I have to bow to their judgment over mine, so we'll stay with it and see how this turns out.
That interview led me to this page which carries some funny and disturbing details of the year 2012 in YA fiction! I must have slept through it, but then I wasn't blogging last year, just writing my ass off. I do intend to read more on it, however. It sounds really interesting, so snaps to Ashleigh Paige for summarizing it all so ably and providing links.
Now where were we? Oh yeah, when the other two arrive, they have a big go-around about what to do next - whether they should pursue the rogue agent Rhys, which is what Noah was trying to do, and which is a non-starter since no one has any clue who or where he is, or they can go back 'home' (which even Miranda is thinking of as home now) and have it out with Brett Tycast. They decide on the latter, planning on meeting him somewhere they will not be trapped so they can bug out if things look bad.
When they arrive at the compound, it’s ablaze, having evidently been attacked by someone! They hear a helicopter approaching, so they retreat into the woods nearby, not one of them thinking of wheeling their bikes out of sight. Hiding in the woods, they find Brett Tycast, who is dying from injuries received in the bombing. He spews out a few intriguing gobbets of info, including where they can find more of the drug they need to retain their memories, but he tells them no real details at all! Again with the pointless and absurd secrecy! He should have blabbed everything, but we do not learn who is behind this. We do not learn who he talked to on the phone that night that Noah overheard him. We do learn that the Beta team is coming after them with a kill order, but we do not learn who is on that team, nor how good they are, nor how many other teams, if any, there are out there.
Apparently the B team is better at sneaking up on people than the A team is at spotting them because suddenly, Peter is zapped by a knock-out dart (why, if they've been sent to terminate the team would they just knock him out? We don’t know!) We're supposed to fear that it’s perhaps a death dart, but I doubt that Krokos is going to kill him off, so no tension there. They get into a short fight with the B's, which ends up with Miranda and Noah bugging out leaving poor Olive, who is Asian, we learn and has, wait for it, rather olive skin (I am not making this up!), alone with Peter and the four betas hunting her. That's inexcusable and cowardly.
Miranda and Noah jump into the water and swim to the bottom, carried along by the current. When Miranda can no longer hold her breath, Noah kisses her and lets her have some of his, not that his has any O2 left in it either. This of course turns into a kiss, but eventually they surface, and then they surface and hide downstream, apparently free of the Betas. Having witnessed them whining about romance for way too long, all we learn is that Miranda is way too dominated by Noah. In fact both she and Olive take second place to the boys, which is odd is a novel that's supposed to have a strong female protagonist.
We learn that their memory problem will disappear as they age, as will their psychic power, and we learn that Miranda is desperate to stop the "dry run", but we don't learn why they're calling it that! It's not a dry run, it’s the actual thing, even if the actual actual thing they plan is far worse.
After wasting sufficient time in existential angst that Peter and Olive could have been captured or killed, they finally decide to start back to help them! They find they can track Olive by a tiny fear wave which she has put out. When they find her, she demands that Miranda verify that she's Miranda! Miranda doesn’t do this at all, but Olive accepts her anyway. She explains that the B who attacked her was a clone of herself! Finally, there's an unexpected twist in the plot! But whether this will reveal more weaknesses in the plot or turn into a truly good story still remains to be seen.
We're pretty much halfway through this novel by now. I haven't decided yet on what I’ll rate this, but I have to confess that I am hoping it will get better. It bothers me that Olive simply let her clone go! She had her overpowered. Maybe it's too hard to kill 'yourself', but to not even talk to her is inexcusable. Clearly their training is far short of what it needed to be, and their imagination is totally lacking. So the real question here, I guess, is how much of this poor plotting and execution I'm willing to tolerate in hope of getting a good story out of this?!
"We each hold a part of Peter, to carry him through the woods."! These are Krokos's words, and I almost laughed out loud when I read that sentence! Seriously. Think about this. This is supposed to be a novel with a strong female protagonist, a female-centric novel, and the leader is called Peter? How much more male-centric can that get? Both of the girls are dominated by both of the boys! Miranda is the next thing to a simpering love-addled teenager. Is this how a woman would be? Or is it how a man would like a woman would be? More to the point, is this how Miranda, in this context would be? I do have my doubts, especially given what we learn next.
The four of them get a ride to a 'safe' house where a "hot" blond lives. This is Miranda's assessment, not mine although she doesn’t put it in so many words. The Blond identifies Noah as Noah East. Miranda North is stupid not to figure out their last names now. When Olive tells her (Peter West, Olive South) and Miranda asks how weird that is! Olive claims they never thought about it, which means that all of them are nowhere near as observant as we've been led to believe they're supposed to be.
Olive claims that she remembers Miranda's mom and Peter's dad visiting them or being there at some point in the past. Does this mean that Olive and Miranda are the originals - not clones? If so, how can the cloned team be the same age as them? We also learn that Olive is in love with Noah. So now we have the love-triangle trope. Honestly, this is pathetic. Worse, not one of the four seems interested in taking a shower after the day they've had! Maybe the guys might want to appear macho and pretend they're not bothered that they smell, and are dirty and sweaty, and have blood on them, but I find it hard to believe that neither of the girls wanted to, especially given that Miranda makes a big show of trying to clean herself up in a well-stocked bathroom.
One thing these geniuses have not even considered is that if the B team is a cloned A team, then perhaps if they talked to them, the B team would join them. Note that just because they're clones doesn't mean that they are quite literally exactly like each other. Even if they'd been brought up side by side and had the same experiences and environments all their lives, there would still be differences, but given that their genome is almost exactly the same (yes, even cloned genomes are not exact duplicates even if the differences are only in methylation), and they’ve had similar training, I would think that there's a good chance that they would be predisposed towards trusting each other, or at least to give each other a fair hearing before judging. If they are clones, then their clones may very possibly be convinced by their arguments, but no one seems to have even considered that at this point.
So halfway through the book, it seems obvious now that what’s going to happen is that Miranda will get with Peter and Olive with Noah. Or will we be surprised in this? Let’s see! The romantic arrangements (or lack of same) seem to be a more overriding concern to the author than the mission at hand, but eventually, the team does head out to the docks to recover the memory-retaining medication. They do a lousy job of surveillance, and when Noah dives (not lowers himself quietly, but dives blindly into the murky water in the dark), half of the B team shows up on the roof where Peter and Miranda are ensconced, lying side by side, touching shoulders in the dark, and the two they face are the clones of themselves...!
Krokos pulls a chestnut or two out of the fire with the next section. On the roof, Miranda does try talking to Grace, her doppelganger, about what’s going on, but Grace is not to be won over. Neither is Tobias, who is Peter's clone. I have to ask, what the heck is with these names? Three of the four A names are Biblical , but that doesn’t seem to be a motive, given that Miranda is the exception. OTOH, her doppelganger is called Grace, whilst Peter's is named Tobias, another Biblical name. Maybe it’s just the two Miranda types who are exceptions? Maybe it means nothing?
Call me obsessed, but I can’t help but wonder why such unusual names for people in their peer group. Miranda was the 57th most common name in 1996 which is around when these guys were born. Olive isn't even in the top 100; Grace almost isn't, just like Noah, and Peter is way down there. So why those names? Clearly they were not meant to blend in. Are these their real first names, maybe being telegraphed to us by Krokos? I often put a lot of thought into my main character's name. In Saurus, for example, the two lead female characters, Joanne Ross and Cora Graigh, both have had their names especially chosen, particularly Cora. The same applies to Janine Majeski in Seasoning, so bad names or odd, or unexpected names really perk up my interest.
Anyway...we learn why the clones are not amenable to persuasion after the A team once again is beaten by the B team and taken prisoner. How the B team beats the A team so consistently is a mystery, but the A's are cuffed and bundled into a van where Noah and Olive already await them. Alone in the van, Noah subtley reveals that he has four vials of the memory enhancer in his mouth. Why he doesn't dole it out there and then is as much of a mystery as is why they don’t dissolve in his mouth. Instead, he waits until they're in a cell which has a glass window/door though which they're being watched, then he kisses Miranda, giving her two vials. She then kisses Peter delivering one to him, and Noah kisses Olive so they all have one. Or so we're led to believe, but in seeing Olive's subsequent behavior, I have to wonder if Olive didn't get one. If so, she mentions nothing about it. Of course this behavior results in an immediate mouth cavity search by the watching guards, but by then they've each broken their vial, swallowed the med, and swallowed the vial. So it seems. Why would Noah deprive her of a vial? So that Olive will forget that she loves him, perhaps? Is Noah a traitor here? A bad guy? Is Noah really Rhys, the rogue?
Miranda is taken to a room where she's interviewed by Grace, who shows her that she has some electronic circuitry (now we learn why the book was so decorated!) embedded in her neck, which looks like a tattoo on the surface. Apparently this circuit deadens them to emotion and compassion. Grace has Noah and Peter brought in and threatens to kill one of them unless Miranda agrees to cooperate. Miranda make no decision and thinks Peter has been shot while her back is turned, but neither one is harmed. It's notable at this point that we do not get to meet the clones of Olive and Noah, only those of Peter and Miranda. Olive and Noah were already int eh van and we do not learn who gets into the front of the vehicle when it drives away. Is it possible that the two we see in the van are actually not the Noah and Olive from team A?
The next morning they all pretend that their memories have failed. The head doctor takes each of them out to her office to discuss their 'condition' with which they have to play along. For inexplicable reasons, the doctor gives each of them a shot of the memory enhancer. Why this was deemed necessary right then, when their memory was already gone and nothing new had yet started to form in any meaningful sense, is another unexplained mystery except, of course, that it has insured that they maintain their real memories. Maybe they needed it to store the new memories they were supposedly making? Who knows?!
They're put into a room very like the one they shared at their original compound. Why the new doctor is so trusting of them is a mystery, but in case they're being watched, they have to continue to pretend, even to each other, even when alone, that they have no idea who they are, which makes it a surprise when Miranda deliberately chooses the same bunk she slept in at the other compound! Shortly after this, the doctor tests them by having them each try to project a fear wave, although she doesn’t tell them what it is they're actually doing. Apparently she has some resistance to it, because she wears no protection from it and seems to be largely unaffected, yet not a one of them tries to zap her with a full-power fear projection. Again, no explanation for why they didn't seize this golden opportunity to cut off the head of this organization and disable the 'dry run' right there and then.
Instead, they resolve to bide their time until they can learn where the B team is, so they can stop the 'dry run' (which the doctor is referring to as an 'experiment' to retrieve their memory). but there's nothing they can do to prevent the dry run going ahead - since they failed to take out doctor Conlon when they had their chance. So they're taken in two vans, Peter with Olive, and Noah with Miranda. They're dropped off individually, but Miranda quickly overpowers the two guys who are with her, killing one and disabling the other. She fails to take the gun which one of them had, but she takes a map from his pocket conveniently showing where all eight of them are supposed to be stationed. The closest is Grace, so Miranda takes the van and drives there.
This is a stupid decision. She's unarmed because she's stupid and she's alone because she's stupid. Why didn't she go to Noah first, so the two of them could then find and overpower Joshua (we've learned that Noah's clone is called Joshua - another biblical name: the guy who supposedly brought down the walls of Jericho, although those walls were long down before his time). The two of them could then go up against Grace.
Amazingly, Grace very kindly waits until Miranda strips down to her body armor! Not likely given the character she's been presented as hitherto; she would have attacked as soon as Miranda had her pants around her ankles! Neither do the B teamers apparently have any weapons at all! Grace, who'd evidently warned the others that she was not convinced that the A team had actually lost their memories, inexplicably fails to take any weapons even for herself.
Miranda manages to overpower Grace and kill her by her usual means of dropping her victim onto concrete from a height. She then goes to Noah, but she's fooled by Joshua pretending to be Noah. Did none of these geniuses think to share a secret code word or phrase so they could readily identify each other? No! That ought to have been the first thing they did as soon as they learned they each had identical twins out there. I'm finding myself torn between wanting this to be good so I can keep reading it as the new vols come out, and being, frankly, disgusted at how stupid parts of it are. Even the fight scenes are poor.
So Joshua, impersonating Noah quite literally stabs Miranda in her back, but her armor protects her. As he's about to close in for the kill, Noah shows up conveniently and breaks his neck. So they then decide to take off after Peter, instead of going to get one of the other two B teamers. How weird is that? They're so misfocused as to be really annoying at this point. Noah isn't even thinking of stopping Tobias and Nicole (who is Olive's clone - not a Biblical name there!), he's thinking of running! Either their training was lousy, or they were lousy at being trained.
Miranda finally talks him into doing something. They look at her map and decide that the 'buyers' the people for whom this so-called dry run was arranged, at at a marked location. They decide to head there. This time, finally, Miranda takes two knives as weapons, but inexplicably, she throws one at Noah - not to him, but at him so that it actually sticks in his shoulder. WTF?!!! He thinks it's a joke and laughs as he pulls it out o his body armor.
I'm really trying to like this novel but Krokos seems to be as determined as he possibly can to induce revulsion in me! So he has Miranda and Noah head over to where they expect to find Conlon, and they do, but before they can get much info from her, she poisons herself! She left them with a cryptic warning to the effect that Tycast had no idea what he was getting into. Next they're approached by Rhys who is with Olive and Olive; she's done precisely what Krokos telegraphed she had done earlier: shes lost her memory.
Amazingly, Miranda immediately suspects that this may not be Olive but Nicole, but after making that smart leap, and instead of going to look for Nicole's tattoo, she just assumes, because she hasn't yet been attacked by this girl, that it actually is Olive! Stupid, stupid, stupid! So Rhys eventually reveals that Peter is fighting the other two B's at the baseball stadium, so they race over there, only to have a helicopter arrive, shooting at them with a minigun, and then haul out Nicole, Tobias, and Peter. Rhys declares that he's happy about this because now they have a common goal because he knows where they're taking Peter.
I don't know if Krokos is doing this deliberately as some sort of joke, but he has Rhys say, "If you want your Peter back, you'll help me destroy them."! Seriously?! Okay. But next comes inexplicable again. Rhys wants them to get moving. So urgent is his drive that he refuses to answer their questions and he pretty much orders them to start moving before another helicopter shows up to pick them up. Yet as they jog down the street, they check everyone for a pulse. Honestly? Why? Either they're escaping quickly, or they're not. If they find someone with no pulse, what will they do? Nothing. If they find someone with a pulse what do they do? Nothing! They keep moving. Why even add that line about checking pulses?
They arrive at Rhys's luxury apartment and Noah takes Miranda to the bathroom to stitch up her wound. She realizes that she doesn't love him because she isn't the Miranda who did. She wonders if she and Olive will have a lot in common now. She has another flashback which tells us nothing that we didn't already know. Then finally we get to the false memory. Rhys examines Miranda closely, and is especially concerned about the changing color of her eyes. His are a similar color to hers. He asks her when she last used the machine, but she has no idea what he's talking about. He then tells her that she's had someone else's memory implanted into her.
Getting information out of Rhys is like pulling teeth but not as much fun. He eventually comes up with yet another hilarious one when he talks about going after their 'Creators'. When asked who they are, he says, "The ones who made us. They have your Peter." Honestly?! Okay. So Rhys reveals the machine, which is nothing but a headband used for transferring memories. Miranda puts it on and she perceives herself as Rhys, talking to herself and Peter, which must be weird. There's no explanation as to why she starts with this particular memory. Maybe it's the first of a limited selection which Rhys has on the band.
Rhys is telling the other Alphas that something is seriously wrong. Mrs North interrupts them, sends them all out, and confronts Rhys. There's a brief struggle and he shoots her but evidently doesn't kill her. That's when he split from the Alphas and went rogue. So I may have to revise my Olive with Noah and Miranda with Peter guess at what Krokos is up to; now I'm wondering if Peter is lost and Krokos is going to lump Rhys with Miranda, but we'll have to see.
As Miranda sees more of these memories she discovers that Rhys killed all of the initial A team, and that Miranda, the last one, was apparently in love with him, but she still wanted to take him in, so he killed her, too. The actual Miranda opens her eyes at this and hugs Rhys. Noah and Olive are nowhere to be seen. Rhys explains that he has sent them to recover his cache of H-9 explosive and also memory enhancer. This does not at all ring true. Noah has been suspicious of Rhys all along, and very protective of Miranda. It makes no sense that he would abandon her alone with Rhys, especially when she was under the influence of the headband machine. At that time, he had no idea what it was doing to her; it could have been wiping her memory for all he knew, yet he left her alone!
Again, the writing is weak, but for some reason I'm still reading this to find out what happens. I'm very near the end of it, so that's one reason, and despite all its flaws, it's not as awfully bad as some other novels I've read - although it sounds pathetic to phrase it that way, doesn't it?! At the moment I feel like I will still give this a worthy rating, but it has only barely earned it, with the good outweighing the bad only marginally. I may read the next in the series, but I make no promises!
They plan on attacking the HQ which is a tall tower in Cleveland. They have to attack at night and they have to scale the outside of the building. Miranda has not told Olive or Noah about Rhys shooting the original A team. So they arm up for the assault, taking knives and swords. Seriously? What the heck is with the swords? Miranda does take an assault rifle. They head out and climb to the 57th floor, but as they break in, alarms go off everywhere and they're in a running fire-fight as they plant the H-9 and try to find out where Peter is.
The first one they find is a clone of Miranda. They take her with them but run into Tobias and Nicole, who opens fire, killing Olive before the two of them are killed. There goes my plan to pair her off with Noah, but at least now with two Mirandas, Noah can have one of his own! lol! Maybe if they can find a third one, then Rhys and Peter can each have one as well? Peter is evidently in the basement, so Miranda goes after him alone (yeah, more thé stupide) whilst Rhys gets Noah and Miranda 2.0 out through a hole they blew in the outside wall of the building. Conveniently, very conveniently, they brought three parachutes with them and have three people to get out. Hmm.
Miranda has a sword and a revolver. yes, a six-shot revolver. Meaning there's going to be a sword-fight. In the basement, she enters the tank room which has rows and rows of tanks containing replicas of the A team, all at different stages of development. This is right out of The 6th Day; nothing new here at all.
Miranda finds Peter there with Mrs North, who promptly disarms her. Then we get the inevitable sword fight. Miranda attaches the last block of H-9 to the basement to destroy all the clones, but we don't get any definitive proof that Mrs North died. Miranda gets her Peter out (no, Krokos didn't say that I did, but can you blame me?!). Frankly I skipped much of this last scene because I was bored. It offered nothing to interest me and was entirely predictable.
So we end up with one Peter, one Rhys, no Olives, two Mirandas (Rhys calls the 2.0 Sequel) and Rhys's apartment as their HQ. And vol two coming out, no doubt. Which I may end up reading if only to find out how it plays out with two Mirandas! So yeah, I'll give this a worthy, but with the caveat that there's mucho estúpido.
