Books

_Clone Republic_
_Rogue Clone_
_Clone Alliance_
_Clone Elite_
All by Steven L. Kent (not the IPsec Steve Kent)

Problems.

The government raises clones in "orphanages"; each one believes that he is a real orphan being raised with a group of clones, but that he is not a clone himself. There is programming to prevent them from seeing themselves as looking like all the others, which speaks of a level of brain mastery which is nowhere else apparent. There is an automatic "death reflex" if a clone ever believes that he is a clone. All the clones harbor deep suspicions that they are clones.

There is no further philosophical or psychological exploration. I, personally, would not want my armies to fall over dead when someone puts up a camera view on a large projector and shouts "You are all clones! None of you are real orphans!"

Apparently there are planets filled with retired clones. There's a massive gender imbalance, because the government only makes male clones... ignored.

The communication system completely ignores the speed of light inside a solar system.

There is no such thing as communications security for the first 2-2.5 books, then someone presumably pointed out that flaw to the author and he announced that suddenly military ships would start censoring civilian comms. A pair of videoglasses left on a shelf in the enemy HQ became an undetectable bug...

Even for a book where plot portions depend on the characteristics of an FTL drive, none of the physics makes sense.

The doctrine of weapons use appears not to have progressed since 1970 or so. Grenades are arbitrarily powerful, scaling from "kills the guy who leaps on top of it" to "destroys city buildings" without anyone, including the author, noticing. Guns do not run of bullets or need to be reloaded; particle beam guns do not run out of charge. Armor is useless, but everybody wears it.

There are not many infodumps, because that would require the author to think about the universe in more depth.

These are popcorn books, and it's not freshly made real popcorn with real butter and a sprinkling of parmesan; this is movie-theater popcorn, three weeks old with hot salted soybean oil and artificial flavors.

Books

_Clone Republic_
_Rogue Clone_
_Clone Alliance_
_Clone Elite_
All by Steven L. Kent (not the IPsec Steve Kent)

Problems.

The government raises clones in "orphanages"; each one believes that he is a real orphan being raised with a group of clones, but that he is not a clone himself. There is programming to prevent them from seeing themselves as looking like all the others, which speaks of a level of brain mastery which is nowhere else apparent. There is an automatic "death reflex" if a clone ever believes that he is a clone. All the clones harbor deep suspicions that they are clones.

There is no further philosophical or psychological exploration. I, personally, would not want my armies to fall over dead when someone puts up a camera view on a large projector and shouts "You are all clones! None of you are real orphans!"

Apparently there are planets filled with retired clones. There's a massive gender imbalance, because the government only makes male clones... ignored.

The communication system completely ignores the speed of light inside a solar system.

There is no such thing as communications security for the first 2-2.5 books, then someone presumably pointed out that flaw to the author and he announced that suddenly military ships would start censoring civilian comms. A pair of videoglasses left on a shelf in the enemy HQ became an undetectable bug...

Even for a book where plot portions depend on the characteristics of an FTL drive, none of the physics makes sense.

The doctrine of weapons use appears not to have progressed since 1970 or so. Grenades are arbitrarily powerful, scaling from "kills the guy who leaps on top of it" to "destroys city buildings" without anyone, including the author, noticing. Guns do not run of bullets or need to be reloaded; particle beam guns do not run out of charge. Armor is useless, but everybody wears it.

There are not many infodumps, because that would require the author to think about the universe in more depth.

These are popcorn books, and it's not freshly made real popcorn with real butter and a sprinkling of parmesan; this is movie-theater popcorn, three weeks old with hot salted soybean oil and artificial flavors.