Helpful Score: 2
Damn. I read this *fast*. Getting through a book in less than 24 hours is something that *rarely* ever happens to me.
Anyway: what we have here is a police procedural sometime in the next century or so, where (essentially) wheelchairs have been replaced by neural connections and C-3PO chassis.
The amount of world building that has gone on to get to the point of even being able to _write_ a police procedural is kind of remarkable. I can easily imagine that Scalzi's got a world bible that's easily two or three times the size of this novel. But we never get bogged down in info dumps to explain it; instead the novel concentrates strongly on Scalzi's talent: personal interrelationships.
It's rare for me to find a Scalzi novel that I don't love, so it's perhaps not a surprise that I really liked this one too. But I've also found over the last few years that the police procedural is a form that I *really* like (mostly because the scope is smaller than galaxy-shaking events, I think), and so this one hits extra hard in my "desire" spot.
I would, however, recommend reading the "Unlocked" prequel which is available for free on tor.com. (http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/05/unlocked-an-oral-history-of-hadens-syndrome-john-scalzi) I don't know that it's required (I did read it first, myself), but lots of people have complained that the world was hard to understand initially, and that prequel could easily have assisted that jump.
5 of 5 stars.
Anyway: what we have here is a police procedural sometime in the next century or so, where (essentially) wheelchairs have been replaced by neural connections and C-3PO chassis.
The amount of world building that has gone on to get to the point of even being able to _write_ a police procedural is kind of remarkable. I can easily imagine that Scalzi's got a world bible that's easily two or three times the size of this novel. But we never get bogged down in info dumps to explain it; instead the novel concentrates strongly on Scalzi's talent: personal interrelationships.
It's rare for me to find a Scalzi novel that I don't love, so it's perhaps not a surprise that I really liked this one too. But I've also found over the last few years that the police procedural is a form that I *really* like (mostly because the scope is smaller than galaxy-shaking events, I think), and so this one hits extra hard in my "desire" spot.
I would, however, recommend reading the "Unlocked" prequel which is available for free on tor.com. (http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/05/unlocked-an-oral-history-of-hadens-syndrome-john-scalzi) I don't know that it's required (I did read it first, myself), but lots of people have complained that the world was hard to understand initially, and that prequel could easily have assisted that jump.
5 of 5 stars.
