Review: Lock In

Lock In by John Scalzi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

07 June 2018

What a pity I didn't review this before. It would be interesting to see what I thought the first time.

This time was so entertaining, but also filled with admiration. It's a mystery, first person, near future and it moves at a zippy pace. However it never descends into stupidity or condescension. Ranging through politics, high tech, medical research, and PTSD it is clever, with a little smartass in the tone. And because this is fiction it is able to end on a truly satisfying form of justice.

Sidebar: one of the things Scalzi does so well as a writer is to include a diverse cast of ethnicities, genders, abilities, sexual orientations, and class levels without the feeling that he is just checking boxes, or even worse, doing a poor job. Even the throw-away characters have facets. A mystery requires victims, but Scalzi is sympathetic to the toll violence takes on people, and he never is callous about it.

Re-read before Head On.

Personal copy

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