Lock In by John Scalzi

I like the cover of Lock In better than the book.  Huh. I usually love John Scalzi's writing. Granted, the final section (the three codas) of Redshirts lessened the reading experience for me. But, I always feel like I'm in the hands of a brilliant mind when I'm reading Scalzi's work. So, why didn't Lock In work for me? Well, let's look at the elements.

Lock In is a detective story (mystery) set in a future (sci-fi) that takes place after a pandemic (health/politics). Shane came down with the disease as a child and is well-known as the "poster child" for Haden's Syndrome, the virus that locked him into his body without the ability to move or respond to stimuli, like many other survivors of the virus. He has an implanted neural net that allows him to get around in an android-like body with all sorts of computerized features. He can record and store video and other information and refer back to it, transport his brain into other "threeps" or android bodies, view additional information in a Google-glass manner that streams across his vision or hang out in a virtual agora, where he can mingle with other locked in "Hadens".

Shane is also a brand spanking new FBI agent. His partner had Haden's but without loss of mobility and was, at one time, an "integrator" -- a person who has an implanted neural net for the sake of allowing locked in Hadens to access a human body, move and feel, while the integrator is still present and aware but suppressed, having ceded the ability to control his body to a client.

There's a lot of complex world-building in Lock In and it's very, very well done. You can't help but be impressed by the level of thought that went into this world. However -- and this is a big "however" -- I thought there came a point that the details of the world got in the way of the story, itself. Halfway into the book, I found myself irritated that Scalzi was still explaining his world to me. Maybe I didn't need to know everything or some of what he explained was intuitive enough that the author should have given the reader a little credit for understanding without detailed explanation? I felt like he was trying to show the reader just how well he'd thought out his backstory by shoving it into the narrative or dialogue at every opportunity.

There's also the problem that Lock In is a detective story with a boat-load of characters. I burned out on mysteries years ago -- at least a decade ago -- so a mystery/detective novel is a hard sell for me. When I pick up a John Scalzi book, I do so in anticipation of a good sci-fi read. I do occasionally read mysteries but I've never returned to loving them. The number of characters added as the story progresses amounted to yet another road block; they made my head spin. I managed to keep most of them mentally sorted but it would have helped if I'd read the book in paper form rather than electronically because it's a nuisance to flip back through an e-book to locate previous mention of a character.

Otherwise, my only problem with the book was that I didn't feel like Scalzi did an adequate job of describing the threeps. Were they basically hollow plastic shells or more flexible and closer to human in appearance, like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation? I never had a fully developed image of a threep in my mind, although I leaned toward the former (hard plastic shell). I do believe the fact that Shane was independently wealthy and could rent a new threep at any time if, say, a borrowed threep didn't work out or was damaged, made things a bit too easy. But, his wealth also did serve a purpose so the ways in which he avoided certain barriers to action due to access to money didn't bother me as much as my inability to fully visualize how the character was represented each time he switched threeps.

Recommended but not a favorite - I didn't expect this to end up such a lengthy review! There were a lot of things that bugged me about Lock In that are personal issues, like the fact that it's basically a detective novel, so I would not dissuade anyone from reading Lock In. However, even with personal prejudices aside, I don't think it's Scalzi's best work; and, since I also found Redshirts disappointing, I'll go back to Scalzi's earlier works in the future, rather than eagerly awaiting new releases.

Cover thoughts - The cover image is an excellent graphic representation of the fact that only a fraction of the population ends up permanently damaged by the virus. It's both eye-catching and a good fit for the storyline. I really do love it more than the book. But, I liked the book; I just didn't love it.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

A few minis - The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, The Returned by Jason Mott, Redshirts by John Scalzi

A few minis, today, to help me catch up on recent reads (so many!) that have tossed me into backlog hell.  
The Rosie Project is a book I read in electronic form because I saw  so many effusive tweets and reviews that when it became available for $1.99 I figured fine, I can do without the paper for the sake of reading it sooner.  I really do hate e-books.

Don Tillman is a professor of genetics with Asperger's, brilliant in his field but socially inept. When he decides it's time to find a wife, he goes about the process in the same meticulous way he does everything else.  Don finds, however, that even the women who pass his stringent written test don't meet his criteria for one reason or another but Rosie, a completely unacceptable woman sent by his best friend, attracts him in spite of her unsuitability. 

When Don finds out Rosie wants to know who her father is, he uses his research techniques and knowledge to help Rosie narrow down the candidates, mostly as an unconscious excuse to spend more time with her. But, the more time he spends with Rosie, the more he realizes that it is he who must adapt to Rosie's needs, rather than the other way around.

Don is very much like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. His inability to understand human interaction and his need for strict order make for some hilarious situations. I absolutely loved this wacky  romance and highly recommend The Rosie Project to anyone looking for an upbeat, smart, funny read. Highly recommended.

The Returned by Jason Mott is a book I'm pretty sure I read about in Entertainment Weekly. When dead people inexplicably begin turning up all over the world, they are at first returned to their homes if there are survivors willing to take them in. But, as the number of Returned grows, people begin to panic.  Are they really the people that died or something else entirely? Why are they coming back to life, if they're real?  Should they be allowed to continue living when the sheer number of Returned threatens to decimate the food supply and overwhelm the planet's resources?  The living people who have not died are referred to as the True Living.

It took me a while before I realized that The Returned was not a science fiction novel that was going to explain away the return of the dead but a "What if?" that asks what would happen if the people we lost were able to come back, for a time.  That changed the way I viewed the novel but since it was based on a dream the author had about his mother after her death and I had that same kind of dream not once but several times after my father died, I found the book gripping and then touching.  It makes you think long and hard about what might happen if you really could speak to your loved ones and interact with them, again, if only for a few months or a year.  

I would have preferred that The Returned was sci-fi because it was the curiosity about what was causing the Returned that made it such a page-turner, at first, and yet I really did appreciate the book for what it was, once I figured out where the author was taking the story. The Returned is in many ways reminiscent of "Miracle Day", the fourth season of Torchwood, although in "Miracle Day" people cease dying rather than returning from the dead.  Of course, Torchwood is sci-fi and an explanation (although not an entirely logical one) is eventually given at the end of the "Miracle Day" series but there were similarities in the way people reacted -- with fear more than hope, separating the Returned from the True Living, considering the eradication of those whom many think should return to being dead. It's fascinating to theorize about how people might really react.

Recommended. Not at all what I expected.  Still, I enjoyed the book even after realizing it was something entirely different from what I thought it was going to be.

I think I already mentioned the fact that I have a library due-date to thank for the nudge to pick up Redshirts by John Scalzi.  

Redshirts is a story that begins on with a prologue in which several crew members on the space ship Intrepid are killed by Borgovian Land Worms on an away mission. In the first chapter, an entirely different group of new crew members meet up as they wait to board the Intrepid. It doesn't take long into their service on-board the Intrepid before Ensign Andy Dahl realizes something strange is going on. When Chief Science Officer Q'eeng shows up seeking away team crewmen, his coworkers disappear for coffee or to do inventory. Dahl's not stupid; he can see that they're ducking out.  But, why?  

Then, Dahl begins to notice certain trends regarding the deaths of underlings and he's given a warning by an elusive crewman who promptly disappears.  Why are so many new crew members dying during missions?  Who is the hairy man who gave Dahl a warning and why is he so difficult to locate?  Can Dahl survive as a new crew member who can't always duck his duty on away teams?  

Eventually, Dahl figures out what's going on and I'm not sure whether or not it's a spoiler but I'm not going to share his conclusions or what happens, just in case doing so might ruin the reading for someone. I like going into a book as clueless as possible, myself.  Suffice it to say, there is a very crazy reason for the deaths of the eponymous Redshirts (whom any Star Trek fan will have noted as the most likely crew members to die on an away team).  

John Scalzi never fails to entertain and Redshirts is a delight.  Subtitled "A Novel with Three Codas", I think the storyline could have stopped right before the codas and I would have been perfectly satisfied.  I didn't like the first coda at all; it was a jarring switch from the main storyline to the viewpoint of . . . oh, maybe that's a spoiler, but anyway . . . while I think the codas could have been dropped entirely, in the end I liked where Scalzi took the story.  

Highly recommended, especially to Star Trek and sci-fi fans.  There were quite a few grammatical errors in Redshirts, which surprised me because I used to read Scalzi's blog, Whatever, and he's such a sharp writer that I hesitate to blame the errors (mixed tenses in particular) on the author. Eh, whatever. It's a crazy-fun ride.  

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.