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Spin Control by Chris Moriarty
01/07/2007 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Bantam Spectra. 450 page enlarged paperback. Price: $12.00 (US), $16.00 (CAN). ISBN: 0-553-38214-4 596 page paperback. Price: $ 6.99 (US), $ 8.99 (CAN). ISBN: 978-0-553-58625-1 . Buy Spin Control in the USA - or Buy Spin Control in the UK  check out websites: www.bantamdell.com
There is also a need for caution when reading a book from a series without starting from the first. Can the story threads make sense? Does the author explain enough or at least allow you to continue? If you're very lucky, the author might even hint enough to justify going back to read the earlier books. I suspect the latter is more a reviewer thing. Generally speaking, a normal reader facing a bookshelf in a shop would opt for the first book or not start at all.
I have a feeling this would also apply to Chris Moriarty's 'Spin Control'. The strongest impression I came away from this book is two sets of characters talking their way through events and when anything remotely actionable happens, it gets hidden and, unfortunately, you end up either not caring or wandering back in the pages trying to find some significance to it.
There are two stories within the contents. The first is set in the future where a selection of paired clones are sent to terraform a world. The second is back on Earth with some shenanigans between Israel and Palestine although set sometime beyond our current reality. I'm still not quite sure what that was about other than possibly nearer the start of the cloning programme and the hunt for a traitor amongst them. Moriarty also seems to bog down with complexity theory. No doubt the first book would have been more enlightening.
If you are going to try these books, start with 'Spin State'. No doubt you'll be better prepared to read this one. As a standalone, no. I don't like giving bad reviews. Moriarty can certainly write well but I went in expecting something and not sure what I found. Its not so much 'bad' but more a question of depth without knowing why.
GF Willmetts
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