Taylor Five

March 15, 2004
This mostly taut but ultimately disappointing sci-fi thriller opens with a complex, riveting set-up. Taylor Walker, 14, lives with her parents, wardens of an orangutan refuge in Kandah State, an independent nation "squashed" between Malaysia and Indonesia. A year and a half ago, Taylor learned that she is actually a clone—as are four other children born at the same time, to parents who worked for the same company as the Walkers. As the novel opens, news of the company's success in cloning has been announced to the media, although Taylor's identity has been kept secret. Taylor's genetic "mother" is someone she's known for years, a famous scientist. Before Taylor can come to grips with this development, regional fighting intrudes upon the refuge and the story takes a very dark turn. Soon Tay is on the run with only the super-intelligent orangutan Uncle for company, and—anguished about the fates of those in the refuge, as well as hungry, exhausted and desperate to reach safety—she begins to speculate about the source of his mysterious intellect. As in her Dr. Franklin's Island
, Halam (a pseudonym for Gwyneth Jones) conjures the atmosphere so tensely that readers will be white-knuckled. Unfortunately, she also leads the audience down one too many garden paths, planting suspicions which she then uproots much too easily. Readers may wish for a more focused approach to the many provocative issues and premises here. Ages 10-up.

April 1, 2004
Gr 5-8-This fast-moving novel explores timely questions from the point of view of 14-year-old clone Taylor Walker. Tay is named after scientist Pam Taylor, her clone mother, someone she used to admire but from whom she has grown increasingly estranged since finding out the truth about her birth. She lives with her adoptive parents and their biological son, Donny, on the island of Borneo, where they operate a private reserve and study orangutans. After rebel forces attack the refuge, Tay and Donny escape with Uncle, an orangutan that she believes is superintelligent. While Uncle can't save Donny, who dies from a gunshot-wound-induced fever, he does lead Tay close enough to civilization so that Pam can rescue her. The two eventually reconcile as Tay, one of five now-teenaged clones, learns more about the discoveries made long ago by Pam and her parents, and the fact that these breakthroughs were able to finance the important conservation work that had occupied them in recent years. Scientific background and issues about the ethics of cloning are easily incorporated into an action-packed survival story.-Ellen Fader, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2004
Gr. 8-10. Taylor, a 14-year-old living on the island of Borneo with her scientist parents, was "a special sort of test-tube baby." Special, indeed. She's one of the first successful human clones, a fact that fills her with resentment. Her angst quickly recedes into the background, though, when rebels attack her family's compound, and she must flee through the jungle with her wounded younger brother and a partly tame orangutan. Her battle for survival is gripping, but as in Halam's " Dr. Franklin's "Island (2002), the ordeal is just part of the story. Once rescued, Taylor faces a welter of new challenges: numbing grief, an awkward relationship with her guardian (her genetic "mother"), and uncertainty about the fate of her faithful ape companion. The teen-as-biotech-experiment premise will remind many readers of Peter Dickinson's " Eva "(1988)" ," although this novel isn't as cohesive. Though the harrowing losses Taylor suffers may prove too much for some readers, the taut suspense and Taylor's gritty intensity will compel many YAs, especially those who gravitate to dense, philosophically minded sf.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)