/lit/ - Literature

>>17342638
Lock-In, Lock-In #1 - John Scalzi (2014)
The protagonist of this book was specifically designed to be an everyperson. As noted in previous Scalzi reviews, I believe this was for maximum self-insertability leading to supposedly better salability than anything else. For more info, read the below link.
https://www.torforgeblog.com/2018/04/02/hadens-chris-shane-gender-and-me/

The Great Flu killed 400 million and infected 2.75 billion. Due to its long asymptomatic incubation period it spread everywhere despite precautions. Even after recovering there was often permanent damage. 1% of the infected were afflicted with Locked-in syndrome and became known as Hadens. No reliable vaccine has been developed and 10s of millions more are infected every year. To help Hadens combat loneliness a VR simulation called Agora is developed for them to interact with each other. Personal Transports, also known as Threeps, are remote controlled androids based on C-3PO, are developed to allow them to interact with the real world. There are also people called Integrators who after having a neural net surgically implanted into their rare brain structures allows Hadens to take over their bodies.
So, basically COVID except a lot worse. Using C3PO as the basis was especially silly to me. I've read a lot of similar and for me this has to be one of the least credible depictions of how it would be, but maybe I just have too high of expectations. The integrators seemed unnecessary.

The protagonist begins their first day at the FBI, in their threep. It's also their first murder case which quickly becomes so much more than that to where it could disrupt everything everyone knows about how they live now.
There's a lot of silliness in general but it's a nice sort, for me anyway.

A bit above decent for near future sci-fi crime fiction. If you're looking for anything other more than mild fun than this isn't that. I'll be reading second/final book next.
Rating: 3.5/5