The Baby Merchant: Kit Reed

Take a premise or two, say the birth rate is down in the US and the borders are closed enough to prevent an inward "baby flow". Add in just a touch of RFID chipping to newborns and the scene is set for perhaps a Sci-Fi tale ala "Blade Runner". That simply doesn't happen here...

Kit Reed doesn't take us into the far future; instead she places us in the 'just ahead' and proceeds to accept those basic changes as the basis for an underground "baby market", one inhabited by a true professional busy at his trade, a set of prospective parents, one mother-to-be, one thoroughly loathsome newscaster (whose wife wants a baby), several other characters to keep things interesting, and the slow realization of the "merchant" that he isn't getting out of the business in quite the manner that he had planned. Somewhere along the way, the book turns from what could have been a simple enough story line into a series of psychological deconstructions of all of the main and most of the minor characters.

No, not my usual fare, but just about the time I had to make a decision about continuing the read, I found I was caught up in the internal dialogues and backgrounds of each of the people the author had placed 'just so' in her story. By then, I simply had to know what she was going to do with them as the story drove itself to a finish.

Yep, trapped just like the characters: I simply had to finish this one out! Nicely done. ...and a 'must read' if you need to know why some people are the way they are.

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Publisher: Tor (June 1, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0765315505
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