Lock in

Pros: great premise, diverse cast, complex plot

Cons: Chris's connections start to feel contrived, Chris's wealth

First off, had I not read when the audio book came out that there were two versions, one with a female narrator and one with a male, I might not have noticed that Chris's gender is never specified. Hence my use of his/her.

The book deals heavily with disabilities - the language used to talk about it, how people with disabilities are perceived by those without disabilities, there's a very brief conversation about whether cures are the best course of action, etc. It's great to see a book deal with these issues in a frank way. It also goes into discrimination in some ways, for example, while Haden's sufferers are able to use threeps, no one else can, including people with other debilitating physical conditions - like quadriplegics.

I loved some of the technology used in the book, particularly the 3D crime scene maps and the agora.

The plot was pretty complicated and had a lot of great twists. I did start to feel that a few of the connections Chris made were contrived - Tony being the exact person they need to help with their case, meeting with the heads of the pertinent Haden corporations the week everything's happening. They're realistic given the context, their location, and the number of Haden's concentrated in DC, but they still felt a bit too lucky.

It started to annoy me how quickly Chris was to throw money at his/her problems. Yes he/she is rich, but he/she can't afford to do this kind of thing on every job - replacing threeps, paying for services people he/she meets on cases can't afford, agreeing to pay Tony whatever he wants, regardless of the budgetary concerns of restrictions of the FBI (they don't even see if the FBI has their own contracted programmers who could do the work for them before hiring him).

I thought it was a great mystery with some thought provoking ideas.

When I first heard about “Lock In”, I thought it was just another pandemic book based on the descriptions. I was completely wrong! This book is much more of a combination of “Surrogates”, “I, Robot” and “Caves of Steel” – a detective novel with a sci-fi touch in a world facing a pandemic. The pandemic is different than the usual ones though. Instead of killing those affected, it locks them in, making them unable to communicate or move their bodies. This is where the ‘Surrogates” comparison comes in. The government develops a way for those affected to control robots which act as proxies for these people in the real world.

I enjoyed the world building in this one, as well as the main characters. The dynamic reminded me a lot of Caves of Steel, but without quite as much “Ohhh, of course that's it!” to the story.

I really liked the concept behind this series. It was so deep that it took quite a while for the story to get moving. I gave this a 4 star but its just barely. The author had to repeatedly try to sell us on the motivation behind the villain and I think that's because it was so convoluted and in my view not a strong motivation to do everything that happened.

I'm always so excited when I find a good, hard science, science fiction story. I can count on this author to provide a good story the same way Isaac Asimov and Michael Crighton do.

Great new ideas, not too much stalling to present the underlying theories, some humour, some education on bias, and the murderer not revealed too early.

It was good to be so interested in turning off the tv to read text.

Short review: Another very good book by Scalzi. This is a near future Police Procedural (or FBI Procedural). Chris Shane has just started the FBI when a case comes up that is not what it seems.

Chris Shane is the poster boy for Haden's Syndrome. Haden's is a virus that starts with flu like symptoms, then for a sub group moves to meningitis like syndromes then for another subgroup moves to Lock in. About 1% of survivors have lock in where they can no longer move, interact, speak or participate in the world. But through technology Haden's syndrome victims can move around via robots or even other humans. So when someone a crime involves a haden's sufferer or a robot, the FBI is called in to determine who it was that actually committed the crime. The problem is this crime goes much deeper.

This is a good thriller/mystery with very good scifi elements. Scalzi does a great job with just enough humor and plot. But he also is good at characters. These are people that you want to find out more about. And also deftly inserts issues, medical ethics, government overreach, business regulation, etc. Never feeling like these issues veer into propaganda.

Well worth reading.

 Loco, qué bien q escribe Scalzi xD Este es el 3er libro q leo de él este año (siendo el primero el de la sociedad protectora de kaijus :v) y la verdad, lo disfruté mucho. Lock In no es de sus libros humorísticos, es más serio. Trata sobre un mundo en el que una epidemia llamada Síndrome de Haden deja con parálisis total del cuerpo a una gran parte de la población humana, dejándolos encerrados (locked in) en sus cuerpos. Para combatir a esto, se desarrollan unos robots a los que las personas con Haden pueden controlar para reintegrarse a la sociedad. Excepto que ahora a la sociedad no le gusta que haya un porcentaje tan grande con ventajas sobre la gente común y corriente. En este contexto se desarrolla una trama de intriga y conspiración que dos agentes del FBI tienen que resolver. 

It was okay. Not really sure how to explain it. I would call it a made for TV movie. With cops. From the future.

I don't think it was as good as his earlier books. Very interesting premise.

Every other scalzi book I've read in a day. This took 3. Just wasn't as exciting as some of the rest.

Not bad, I'd just recommend his other books more.