On the toxic world of Cyteen, the research complex of Reseune is the engine of a spacefaring civilisation called Union, which perpetuates and controls its population through human cloning and psychological conditioning. Ariane Emory, one of a handful of certified geniuses and a power on Union's ruling Council, presides over it all until she is found dead, her rejuvenation already failing, suspicion falling on the dissident researcher Jordan Warrick whose son Justin she has abused. Reseune's answer is to grow a clone, Ari, and engineer her upbringing to reproduce the dead woman's life as faithfully as possible, in the hope that genius can be manufactured to order. Cherryh, who structures the book as a slow accretion of memoranda, transcripts and interior monologue rather than incident, is less interested in the science than in the ethics of making a person, and the prose demands patience for its rewards. As the second Ari matures, precocious and watched, she begins to grasp the shape of the original's buried designs and the damage done to those around her. It is a study of identity, consent and institutional power - a meditation on whether a self can be inherited, and what is owed to the people used to build one.
