The Fox Inheritance

by Mary E. Pearson
December 2011




This is a sequel to The Adoration of Jenna Fox.
About 250 years after the events in the first book, Locke and Kara's minds have been uploaded into new bodies. Their bodies are completely synthetic, made up of a substance called BioPerfect.  Locke narrates the story of his and Kara's quest to escape the scientist who would use them as "floor models" for potential clients.  This is also a quest to learn how to live in a society so completely different from the one that they left two hundred fifty years before.
As with the first book, The Fox Inheritance explores the themes of medial ethics, the soul, and what it means to be human. Locke and Kara were prisoners in a dark, isolated world for two and a half centuries. Are they old or are they still the teenagers they were when they "died" in a car accident so long ago?

A worthy sequel.   Will it become a trilogy?  The author hints that it will be.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary E. Pearson

I wanted to read a science fiction book. Browsing through the Teen section at the library I found this one. The title attracted me. The description hooked me.

"Seventeen year old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a year long coma, and she's still recovering from teh terrible accident that caused it. Her parents show her home movies of her life, her memories, but she has no recollection. Is she really the same girl she sees on the screen?

Little by little, Jenna begins to remember. Along with the memories come questions - questions no one wants to answer for her. What really happened after the accident? In this fascinating novel, acclaimed author Mary E. Pearson presents an unforgetable look at one human life and a glimpse into a possible future that may be closer than we think."

I like stories of the "near future" - stories in which the world is recognizable, but changed.

It didn't take long to suspect that something strange had happened to Jenna during her coma. I was close, but I made the wrong guess, however. I thought that he body had been replaced by a robot. What actually happened to Jenna was the stuff of science fiction but it was close enought to reality that it generated lots of thought in my mind. This book would be great for a book discussion group. Medical ethics...the nature of the Soul...possibilities of scientific experimentation....what it means to be authentically human.