Gabino Iglesias Reviews Baby X by Kira Peikoff
Baby X, Kira Peikoff (Crooked Lane 978-1-63910-633-2, $30.99, 336pp, hc) March 2024. Cover by Nicole Lecht.
Kira Peikoff’s Baby X is a solid technothriller that feels very timely while also delivering great entertainment. At once a novel of big ideas that will satisfy fans of science fiction and a fast-paced narrative about crimes that might become a reality sooner rather than later, Baby X pulls readers into a future in which making a baby is a thing you do in an office, and everyone with a hair from your head or a small saliva sample picked from an abandoned glass can have a baby with you.
In the near future, technology has reached a point where a person’s cells can be turned into eggs or sperm. Once that’s done, several potential babies are created, their DNA profiles written, and then parents are asked to select a winner. Simply put, people can design their dream babies and give them the best possible set of skills for a bright future. Unfortunately, a shady enterprise known only as ‘‘the Vault’’ offers people this service, but with stolen cells from famous people. Famous singer and guitar player Trace Thorne is one of the Vault’s victims, and he paid a lot of money to make the possibility of some random person having a baby with him go away. Tired of being afraid of others stealing his DNA and on the verge of heading out on a massive tour, Trace hires Ember Ryan, a bio-security expert, to protect him. Their arrangement works, and while on tour, Ember and Trace fall in love. When the tour ends, they move in together and start planning a future. Unfortunately, their bliss is short-lived, and a woman named Quinn shows up claiming she’s pregnant with Trace’s baby. Quinn is a surrogate mother working for a gay man she thought was a good friend, but he turns out to be a man full of secrets. Meanwhile, a young woman named Lily is trying to get a job at her favorite publication. Her big break might come from a story about women who are denied motherhood by the system. Her own mother was in prison for a decade for shooting a man during a home invasion and Lily, who was conceived naturally, struggles with her new pregnancy. But Lily’s mother wants no part of her story, and that might cost Lily her dream job.
Baby X weaves together the stories of several characters, but the big ideas at the core of the narrative are the same. Piekoff sets her narrative in the future, but she tackles some timely issues like bodily autonomy and the relationship between socioeconomic background and opportunities. She also looks at things like the dangers of DNA theft and the intricacies of a society in which some people are normal and some have a plethora of advantages because they were created in a lab. Yes, this a futuristic science fiction novel, but it’s one that feels very prescient and that, on top of being entertaining, also serves as a warning.
Not every character has a strong voice, but the interwoven narratives are never muddled, and the action never slows down in this narrative, which blends elements of science fiction and thrillers very well. Also, the short chapters and tight dialogue help the action always move along at great speed.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the June 2024 issue of Locus.
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