Some stories seem to lend themselves to lots of clones, others not so much.  These are the clones examples I’ve noticed in the books I’ve read lately.

1. James Patterson’s Hope to Die
In Hope to Die, where protagonist Alex Cross is trying to rescue his kidnapped family, Patterson uses clones for stakes purposes.  Every person the bad guy kills is a clone for what could happen to Alex Cross’s family.  Also, the woman and boy who are first thought to be Cross’s wife and son become clones when it’s revealed that they are stand-in victims. They are clones for what horrors, specifically, could happen to Cross’s family.

2. Andy Weir’s The Martian
This story doesn’t have too many clones, since it’s mostly one guy on Mars who’s trying to stay alive until he can be rescued.  But, Weir uses references to real-life space missions that ended in disaster and astronaut deaths as clones that reveal the stakes and risks for the main character and his mission mates who attempt to rescue him.

Well that’s it for me.  How about you?  What clones do you see in the stories you’re reading?

UP NEXT, ON FRIDAY

We’ll look at what kinds of clones we can add to our own stories.

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