The Duplicate (Novel)

Ordered this since I could not find it on Kindle. Great book and arrived fast!

I read this book as a teenager and was thrilled to find it and read it now as an adult. Told from a first-person perspective in present tense, the story is fast paced and the characters are developed enough to make you care about their resolution during the climax at the end of the book. Action is straightforward and doesn't get bogged down in too many details. You can finish this book in a day or two.

I was a kid when I first read this book, somewhere around sixth grade. It was fun story to read back then, but it hasn't aged very well. I would still recommend the book, by all means, but just keep in mind that it was clearly written for a younger audience.

Extremely satisfied! Will do business again!

great

A delightful little horror book about a boy who finds a duplication device washed up on a beach and ends up creating a duplicate of himself. But the duplicate has a mind of his own! Perfect little horror story for beginners in the genre. Definitely recommend 👍

All of William Sleator's books are good science fiction for young people, even though most of them take overdone subjects for yet another ride. Sleator somehow does it differently and in a more character-oriented fashion.In this one, the main character finds a mysterious machine and clones himself. We're then swept up in an amazing tale of what happens when there are two of this kid coexisting, how they get along, and how they can tell which one of them is the original since they both think they are. Who has to go to school? Who gets to go on the date? Cloning yourself and receiving a complacent human slave is the fantasy. This is the reality. OooOoo!

I guess it is normal when a book is reviewed by a lot of people that some will love it completely, and some will dislike it completely. But what interested me in reading the reviews was the ones who thought the book was slow and boring until the last two chapters where it got exciting. I found practically the opposite was true and it was the ending that disappointed me.I felt the story started out as a sort of psychological sci-fi story: setting up the premise and gradually building the suspense as the story develops. If you allow the main premise that the Spee-Dee-Dupe machine could clone people, I think most of the interaction between David and his clone early on is believable. Now he clones himself to be in two places at once because Angela will not be home so he can call and say he can't make it. If it were me, I would have just gone to Angela's house and left a note! But then we would not have a sci-fi story, would we?Anyway, I thought the writing was good and mainly plausible through most of it, but the final two chapters to me seemed unbelievable and rather abrupt. What starts out more psychological turns into an action thriller, but I am not convinced Angela would act the way she does, and David writing notes to communicate in order to keep from making noise seems weird to me. (I am trying to stay vague so as not to give away anything important.) And then the cliffhanger feel of the last sentence almost appears to be setting up a sequel, though I don't know if there ever was one.But even though that ending disappointed me, some reviewers thought that was the best part of this book, so if the premise sounds interesting to you, I would recommend that you give the book a try and decide for yourself.