Gene Wolfe is well, Gene Wolfe
A Borrowed Man: a new science fiction novel, from Gene Wolfe, the celebrated author of the Book of the New Sun series.
It is perhaps a hundred years in the future, our civilization is gone, and another is in place in North America, but it retains many familiar things and structures. Although the population is now small, there is advanced technology, there are robots, and there are clones.
E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person. He is a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library, and his personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human.
A wealthy patron, Colette Coldbrook, takes him from the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was in the possession of her murdered father, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth. It is lost, and Colette is afraid of the police. She borrows Smithe to help her find the book and to find out what the secret is. And then the plot gets complicated.
Review:
The writing is brilliant, I refuse to use any lesser adjective. It looks so simple, but he can say so much with so few words. It is a mystery with scifi elements - do not expect any complicated world-building, but I would argue that with the few touches of his pen he still portrays a pretty clear picture of what humanity is and where humanity is at when this story unfolds. And I have to admit that I did not really like the picture he painted.
It is not a new theme in scifi to explore the humanity of "clones", artificial intelligence and other human beings which were artificially created. I was very amused by amazon review which claimed that Gene Wolfe does not explore this premise. Um. Yeah, he does, in between all that mystery plot. I felt bad for main character and his brethren, but overall the resolution of the story made me want to take a shower.
3