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The Extractionist
2023 Philip K. Dick Award Winner
In her latest exciting technothriller, acclaimed author Kimberly Unger (Nucleation) delivers a badass, futuristic heroine in a vivid whodunit that careens between our world and the virtual one. Gaming expert Unger creates a vastly entertaining future where the rich still play by different rules, but technology is still the wildcard.
"A thriller that kept me occupied for days." --Lightspeed Magazine on Nucleation
Underground hacker Eliza McKay is one of the best in the virtual space where people create personas that can interact as data. When rich or important people get stuck in the Swim--for reasons that are sleazy, illegal, or merely unlucky--it's McKay's job to extract them. And McKay's job just got a lot more dangerous.
While on an assignment in Singapore, McKay is flagged by an investigative outfit led by Ellie Brighton. Brighton desperately needs her corporate superior extracted from the Swim. The brute-force hacking tactics of Brighton's tech Rose have already failed. The executive's personality remains trapped and fragmented; if left for much longer, he won't survive.
But the job is turning out to be more dangerous than McKay initially thought: her house is broken into, her target is surprisingly reluctant to be extracted, and something is menacing her informational AI sprite, Spike. Something big.
In her latest exciting technothriller, acclaimed author Kimberly Unger (Nucleation) delivers a badass, futuristic heroine in a vivid whodunit that careens between our world and the virtual one. Gaming expert Unger creates a vastly entertaining future where the rich still play by different rules, but technology is still the wildcard.
"A thriller that kept me occupied for days." --Lightspeed Magazine on Nucleation
Underground hacker Eliza McKay is one of the best in the virtual space where people create personas that can interact as data. When rich or important people get stuck in the Swim--for reasons that are sleazy, illegal, or merely unlucky--it's McKay's job to extract them. And McKay's job just got a lot more dangerous.
While on an assignment in Singapore, McKay is flagged by an investigative outfit led by Ellie Brighton. Brighton desperately needs her corporate superior extracted from the Swim. The brute-force hacking tactics of Brighton's tech Rose have already failed. The executive's personality remains trapped and fragmented; if left for much longer, he won't survive.
But the job is turning out to be more dangerous than McKay initially thought: her house is broken into, her target is surprisingly reluctant to be extracted, and something is menacing her informational AI sprite, Spike. Something big.
290 pages, Paperback
First published July 12, 2022
30 people are currently reading
2073 people want to read
About the author
Kimberly Unger
16 books50 followersKimberly Unger has been a games industry professional for over 20 years, both as a freelancer and full-time employee. She writes tech-driven science fiction informed by these experiences.
She likes fast robots, big explosions and stabby things.
Kimberly holds degrees from both UC Davis and the Art Center College of Design. She currently works as a producer for Playchemy developing narrative adventure games, and lectures for the UCSC Baskin School of Engineering’s Masters degree in Games and Playable Media.
She likes fast robots, big explosions and stabby things.
Kimberly holds degrees from both UC Davis and the Art Center College of Design. She currently works as a producer for Playchemy developing narrative adventure games, and lectures for the UCSC Baskin School of Engineering’s Masters degree in Games and Playable Media.
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July 14, 2022
Virtual reality in all its various imaginings always holds attraction for us. The idea that we can enter the world of dreams is as old as dreaming itself—many Indigenous cultures privilege the dreamworld and use it as a source of stories and even wayfinding. The Extractionist joins a very long line of science-fiction novels, then, that contemplate what happens if you get stuck in a dreamworld or virtual reality. Kimberly Unger imagines a world where this is common enough that it is someone’s job to go in and get you out. Throw in your standard double-crosses, action sequences, and murder attempts from any sci-fi thriller, and you’ve got this book!
Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the eARC!
Eliza McKay’s true passion is engineering nanomachines. Alas, the United States government revoked her licences to do so. Blacklisted, she resorts to other jobs—like extracting people whose personas have become stuck in the Swim, a collective cyberspace that people can visit for business or pleasure. Eliza’s latest job involves extracting a government spook, and as these things tend to go in a novel like this, everything goes sideways fast. The next few days entail tiny moments of respite in between intense scenes of terror and mortal peril. Along the way, Eliza has to decide whom to trust, who deserves her help, and how far she will go to finish the job.
Probably the inevitable comparison reviewers will make here is to William Gibson, who coined the term cyberspace (which is not actually used in this book, but that’s what the Swim is). Gibson’s vision of a virtual reality achieved by directly networking one’s brain has indelibly shaped this entire subgenre. Generally, comparisons to him will not be favourable, so this is one of those rare cases where I’ll come down with the utmost compliment that I think Unger actually takes up Gibson’s legacy in a very appropriate and interesting way. She builds on Gibson’s influence on cyberpunk while taking into account things like quantum computing and the proliferation of VR/AR in today’s world.
McKay is also quite a likable protagonist, all things considered—yes, she has trauma and a healthy heaping of avoidance issues, but she is also very self-aware and emotionally intelligent. This is a nice departure from the hard-boiled hacker stereotype. At one point she remarks on how she’s going to need sleep soon; not only did this feel refreshingly realistic in a thriller, but it’s nice to see our protagonist considering her limitations. Similarly, she has a good support network: a friendly AI to help her out, actual friends she knows in person, some dysfunctional family dynamics (don’t we all?). All in all, Unger has put a lot of work not only into the world but her main character and supporting cast.
While the “good guys” are a force to be reckoned with, the antagonists in this story felt a little weak to me. On one hand, I like how the eventual “big bad” proves to be a sympathetic one. On the other hand, the red herring antagonist falls flat because he just doesn’t ever come off as much of a threat—and we only meet him once, then never really hear from him again. This misdirection, if that is what it is intended to be, misfires. The climactic battle in both the Swim and the real world is intense courtesy of Unger’s descriptions, but the build up to it feels lacking.
Indeed, the pacing at the start felt very slow (despite some explosive beginnings)—it really wasn’t until I was about a quarter of the way into the novel before I sat up and said, “Oh, there’s something here.” Even though a lot happens, I admit, the book dragged on for me. Fortunately, I was interested in enough in the story, in finding out who was behind all of this and why, and I liked Eliza enough, as I said above, to keep reading.
Equal parts exciting, then, and enervating, The Extractionist is a pretty strong contender for a new generation of cyberpunk that hews to the traditions of the subgenre while also carving out new ones given our modern society’s flirtation with a metaverse. Unger has a keen talent for description and characterization, even if her plotting and pacing left something to be desired (in my opinion). I had forgotten that I had previously read (but didn’t much like) Nucleation . So I’m glad I got to read another book of hers, one that I have enjoyed much more. Sometimes an author just takes a while to write the book that’s for you.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the eARC!
Eliza McKay’s true passion is engineering nanomachines. Alas, the United States government revoked her licences to do so. Blacklisted, she resorts to other jobs—like extracting people whose personas have become stuck in the Swim, a collective cyberspace that people can visit for business or pleasure. Eliza’s latest job involves extracting a government spook, and as these things tend to go in a novel like this, everything goes sideways fast. The next few days entail tiny moments of respite in between intense scenes of terror and mortal peril. Along the way, Eliza has to decide whom to trust, who deserves her help, and how far she will go to finish the job.
Probably the inevitable comparison reviewers will make here is to William Gibson, who coined the term cyberspace (which is not actually used in this book, but that’s what the Swim is). Gibson’s vision of a virtual reality achieved by directly networking one’s brain has indelibly shaped this entire subgenre. Generally, comparisons to him will not be favourable, so this is one of those rare cases where I’ll come down with the utmost compliment that I think Unger actually takes up Gibson’s legacy in a very appropriate and interesting way. She builds on Gibson’s influence on cyberpunk while taking into account things like quantum computing and the proliferation of VR/AR in today’s world.
McKay is also quite a likable protagonist, all things considered—yes, she has trauma and a healthy heaping of avoidance issues, but she is also very self-aware and emotionally intelligent. This is a nice departure from the hard-boiled hacker stereotype. At one point she remarks on how she’s going to need sleep soon; not only did this feel refreshingly realistic in a thriller, but it’s nice to see our protagonist considering her limitations. Similarly, she has a good support network: a friendly AI to help her out, actual friends she knows in person, some dysfunctional family dynamics (don’t we all?). All in all, Unger has put a lot of work not only into the world but her main character and supporting cast.
While the “good guys” are a force to be reckoned with, the antagonists in this story felt a little weak to me. On one hand, I like how the eventual “big bad” proves to be a sympathetic one. On the other hand, the red herring antagonist falls flat because he just doesn’t ever come off as much of a threat—and we only meet him once, then never really hear from him again. This misdirection, if that is what it is intended to be, misfires. The climactic battle in both the Swim and the real world is intense courtesy of Unger’s descriptions, but the build up to it feels lacking.
Indeed, the pacing at the start felt very slow (despite some explosive beginnings)—it really wasn’t until I was about a quarter of the way into the novel before I sat up and said, “Oh, there’s something here.” Even though a lot happens, I admit, the book dragged on for me. Fortunately, I was interested in enough in the story, in finding out who was behind all of this and why, and I liked Eliza enough, as I said above, to keep reading.
Equal parts exciting, then, and enervating, The Extractionist is a pretty strong contender for a new generation of cyberpunk that hews to the traditions of the subgenre while also carving out new ones given our modern society’s flirtation with a metaverse. Unger has a keen talent for description and characterization, even if her plotting and pacing left something to be desired (in my opinion). I had forgotten that I had previously read (but didn’t much like) Nucleation . So I’m glad I got to read another book of hers, one that I have enjoyed much more. Sometimes an author just takes a while to write the book that’s for you.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
February 5, 2022
I enjoyed this author's previous book,
Nucleation
, which, like this one, I had as a pre-publication version from Netgalley. I noted on that one, and will note again, that the author (despite her degree in English/Writing) has a poor grasp of basic mechanics, as the unedited version reveals; it's full of comma splices, there are a good few excess hyphens and coordinate commas inserted because she's only learned half of a rule, a number of sentences have words dropped out (or occasionally repeated), the past perfect tense goes missing frequently, and there are a smaller but still significant number of other errors. Worst of all is her use of pronouns. Not infrequently, there are two female characters being discussed in a sentence, and "she" or "her" will be used to refer to both characters, often in alternation, with no clear signalling as to which is which. At other times, the gender of a pronoun is simply wrong for the person it's referring to - not, as far as I can tell, for any deliberate reason; it's just a mistake the author is prone to making.
All of this may (and, I hope, will) be cleaned up by publication, though as usual I will note that having a great many errors in the unedited book is a strong predictor of having more than a few in the edited version, since editors are human and miss things.
It isn't a sequel to Nucleation, and can be read as a standalone, though if you enjoy one I think you'll also enjoy the other; leaving aside the mechanical issues, this is a strong piece of writing, with excellent pacing and tension. It makes William Gibson's Agency look like the proverbial pile of puke, in this regard (or rather, Gibson managed to do that himself). The cyberpunk premise, while still a bit handwavey, is better justified than average, too. The idea is that (using quantum computing as a sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic) people are able to write out versions of themselves, known as "personas," into the "Swim" to transact business on their behalf. If the persona encounters too much of a paradigm shift, however, writing them back into the original person is tricky, and this is the niche skill that the protagonist has. Unfortunately, mysterious parties are opposed to her completing her latest contract, and are willing to use strongarm tactics to get her to leave off. She herself, using an advanced and experimental brain-computer interface that she built herself, interfaces directly with the Swim, which makes her vulnerable to events occurring in it.
While it does suffer from the usual cyberpunk issue of overliteralizing the interface metaphor in some of the action scenes, that didn't do too much to hinder my enjoyment of a well-structured story that rises beyond the cliches of the genre, while still honouring its key tropes. It comfortably makes it onto my Best of the Year list, though low down the list, because I suspect there will be a residue of those many mechanical issues in the published version.
All of this may (and, I hope, will) be cleaned up by publication, though as usual I will note that having a great many errors in the unedited book is a strong predictor of having more than a few in the edited version, since editors are human and miss things.
It isn't a sequel to Nucleation, and can be read as a standalone, though if you enjoy one I think you'll also enjoy the other; leaving aside the mechanical issues, this is a strong piece of writing, with excellent pacing and tension. It makes William Gibson's Agency look like the proverbial pile of puke, in this regard (or rather, Gibson managed to do that himself). The cyberpunk premise, while still a bit handwavey, is better justified than average, too. The idea is that (using quantum computing as a sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic) people are able to write out versions of themselves, known as "personas," into the "Swim" to transact business on their behalf. If the persona encounters too much of a paradigm shift, however, writing them back into the original person is tricky, and this is the niche skill that the protagonist has. Unfortunately, mysterious parties are opposed to her completing her latest contract, and are willing to use strongarm tactics to get her to leave off. She herself, using an advanced and experimental brain-computer interface that she built herself, interfaces directly with the Swim, which makes her vulnerable to events occurring in it.
While it does suffer from the usual cyberpunk issue of overliteralizing the interface metaphor in some of the action scenes, that didn't do too much to hinder my enjoyment of a well-structured story that rises beyond the cliches of the genre, while still honouring its key tropes. It comfortably makes it onto my Best of the Year list, though low down the list, because I suspect there will be a residue of those many mechanical issues in the published version.
October 1, 2023
As a podcaster who does a whole show devoted to Philip K. Dick, I am interested each year in the book that wins the award with his name on it. Our first interview was with Carrie Vaughn on her underrated Bannerless novel when it won the award. The prize each year goes to a paperback original, and the idea is that most of Phil’s books debuted in paperback. Unlike most winners, Kimberly Unger’s novel actually sounds Dickian in the nature of the plot, not just in format.
The concept of fake virtual worlds is a theme Phil wrote about, including the idea that someone could get stuck in one of these worlds. That is part of the nightmare in Phil’s masterpiece The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and of course, the short story that inspired Total Recall, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale just to name two. So, Unger’s modern take on the subject from Tachyon Publishing is a pretty solid bet for an award winner.
As I get started I want to say I enjoyed this book, I think it is good and worth the time of modern Science Fiction readers. If I seem hard on it, it would be the status as the PKD award winner.
The history of virtual reality science fiction had its first mind-bending classic a decade before Cyberpunk became a thing with John Brunner’s Shockwave Rider. The reality is that decades later it is easy for these types of stories to feel old hat, certainly 20 years after The Matrix was in theaters, we are at the point when that movie has already had a legacy sequel. This setup has a long history often the question I have with books in this genre is how do you separate your take on Cyberpunk and do something original.
“Excellent, but where is the body? I’m here to perform an extraction right?”Mckay asked. She had extracted people from some of the oddest setups, but so far there was always a body, somewhere, to write the persona back to.”
The title character Eliza McKay is an expert in Extraction, when powerful people get stuck in “The Swim” virtual worlds, they pay an agent/ mercenary to get them free. This requires skills in the real world and the swim. The action moves from Singapore to San Francisco and back again. Much of the action takes place in the Swim. As you can see from the above quote she can free her client but back to his body…Where?
In her world that is unethical, he must be alive, or his mind would stop working but where? That sets off the mystery and espionage parts of the story.
One of the keys for a near future cyberpunk-ish novel like this is the world-building. I think some readers believe the dynamic has to be a plausible “few years from now” feeling, but I am a Dickian so I can live with surreal. I don’t understand the idea of wanting this type of Science fiction to feel grounded. Even Hard SF, when it sits on the shelf like say an Arthur C. Clarke novel will transform from grounded and realistic to surreal when the march of passes stories like 2001: A Space Odyssey. That novel has become an alternate reality novel that it was intended to be. Build me a consistent world and I am good.
“Once settled on the Skybus, she sealed her sunglasses on and closed her eyes. The Overlay helpfully slid Brighton’s contract into her line of sight, hazard terms and rates picked up in red. She hadn’t taken on a project with questionable components for a while, the figures looked low compared with the feeling of panic she’d been trying to avoid for the past several hours.”
Tattoo sinks, the Skybus, and the sealed glasses give this world a different feeling from ours. That is well done natural bits of world-building that will rightfully swim right over most readers. As a Sci-fi writer and critic, I look for such things. The Overlay is the internal net access that appears in the vision of the person operating in the real world. Most of the world-building was well done.
There were several times that The Extractionist lost, me, and details went over my head. Unger is a techie, I am not so, and perhaps that is why I didn’t get everything. Honestly, it didn’t hurt my feelings toward the book. I don’t mind as long as I am getting most of it. The above quote also hints at something I felt was missed.
Why is Eliza taking these dangerous jobs? In a PKD novel, she would be broke, and have an ex-wife or business partner she owed money to. In world, a better explanation might be a loss of connection to the Swim if she didn’t do this one gig. Those are noir clichés but they exist for a reason. You can’t do a haunted house novel without a logical reason to stay (for a totally different example) and I think I needed more of a reason for Eliza to HAVE to take this case.
So this gets back to the question of how you separate your story. That is important but the balance of hitting clichés in the right moments is like playing the power cord correctly as a rhythm guitar
She has a brother and that gives the character a little depth but I thought one part on page 87 gave Eliza a strange internal world depth. In the novel she is attacked, what they do to her body is almost an afterthought. They connect to her swim and the violation is brutal.
“The Overlay spun up in response to the unexpected input, leaping at the chance to reconnect with the headset, then recoiling as it made contact with the unexpected system. No. No. No. Never had McKay imagined something like this. The Overlay was firewalled and secured against all manner of virtual threats, but direct input was something else entirely. She felt a sick twisting in her gut. They can access everything.”
The terror and violation in this scene make clear that the importance of the virtual world, the shifting importance. The Tech overwhelms the lead character as it sometimes does the book. Like I said that never bothered me, less tech-savvy readers will likely not enjoy the experience.
Overall this a very good novel, it is entertaining. The most important judgment I can give you is that I intend to read more of Kimberly Unger.
The concept of fake virtual worlds is a theme Phil wrote about, including the idea that someone could get stuck in one of these worlds. That is part of the nightmare in Phil’s masterpiece The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and of course, the short story that inspired Total Recall, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale just to name two. So, Unger’s modern take on the subject from Tachyon Publishing is a pretty solid bet for an award winner.
As I get started I want to say I enjoyed this book, I think it is good and worth the time of modern Science Fiction readers. If I seem hard on it, it would be the status as the PKD award winner.
The history of virtual reality science fiction had its first mind-bending classic a decade before Cyberpunk became a thing with John Brunner’s Shockwave Rider. The reality is that decades later it is easy for these types of stories to feel old hat, certainly 20 years after The Matrix was in theaters, we are at the point when that movie has already had a legacy sequel. This setup has a long history often the question I have with books in this genre is how do you separate your take on Cyberpunk and do something original.
“Excellent, but where is the body? I’m here to perform an extraction right?”Mckay asked. She had extracted people from some of the oddest setups, but so far there was always a body, somewhere, to write the persona back to.”
The title character Eliza McKay is an expert in Extraction, when powerful people get stuck in “The Swim” virtual worlds, they pay an agent/ mercenary to get them free. This requires skills in the real world and the swim. The action moves from Singapore to San Francisco and back again. Much of the action takes place in the Swim. As you can see from the above quote she can free her client but back to his body…Where?
In her world that is unethical, he must be alive, or his mind would stop working but where? That sets off the mystery and espionage parts of the story.
One of the keys for a near future cyberpunk-ish novel like this is the world-building. I think some readers believe the dynamic has to be a plausible “few years from now” feeling, but I am a Dickian so I can live with surreal. I don’t understand the idea of wanting this type of Science fiction to feel grounded. Even Hard SF, when it sits on the shelf like say an Arthur C. Clarke novel will transform from grounded and realistic to surreal when the march of passes stories like 2001: A Space Odyssey. That novel has become an alternate reality novel that it was intended to be. Build me a consistent world and I am good.
“Once settled on the Skybus, she sealed her sunglasses on and closed her eyes. The Overlay helpfully slid Brighton’s contract into her line of sight, hazard terms and rates picked up in red. She hadn’t taken on a project with questionable components for a while, the figures looked low compared with the feeling of panic she’d been trying to avoid for the past several hours.”
Tattoo sinks, the Skybus, and the sealed glasses give this world a different feeling from ours. That is well done natural bits of world-building that will rightfully swim right over most readers. As a Sci-fi writer and critic, I look for such things. The Overlay is the internal net access that appears in the vision of the person operating in the real world. Most of the world-building was well done.
There were several times that The Extractionist lost, me, and details went over my head. Unger is a techie, I am not so, and perhaps that is why I didn’t get everything. Honestly, it didn’t hurt my feelings toward the book. I don’t mind as long as I am getting most of it. The above quote also hints at something I felt was missed.
Why is Eliza taking these dangerous jobs? In a PKD novel, she would be broke, and have an ex-wife or business partner she owed money to. In world, a better explanation might be a loss of connection to the Swim if she didn’t do this one gig. Those are noir clichés but they exist for a reason. You can’t do a haunted house novel without a logical reason to stay (for a totally different example) and I think I needed more of a reason for Eliza to HAVE to take this case.
So this gets back to the question of how you separate your story. That is important but the balance of hitting clichés in the right moments is like playing the power cord correctly as a rhythm guitar
She has a brother and that gives the character a little depth but I thought one part on page 87 gave Eliza a strange internal world depth. In the novel she is attacked, what they do to her body is almost an afterthought. They connect to her swim and the violation is brutal.
“The Overlay spun up in response to the unexpected input, leaping at the chance to reconnect with the headset, then recoiling as it made contact with the unexpected system. No. No. No. Never had McKay imagined something like this. The Overlay was firewalled and secured against all manner of virtual threats, but direct input was something else entirely. She felt a sick twisting in her gut. They can access everything.”
The terror and violation in this scene make clear that the importance of the virtual world, the shifting importance. The Tech overwhelms the lead character as it sometimes does the book. Like I said that never bothered me, less tech-savvy readers will likely not enjoy the experience.
Overall this a very good novel, it is entertaining. The most important judgment I can give you is that I intend to read more of Kimberly Unger.
July 4, 2022
My thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book, all opinions are my own.
The Extractionist is a tolerably good read, with very good pacing. I'm not too sure that the characterization holds together completely (the protagonist is not really what I would consider a "bad-ass", and her motivation for taking the dodgy job is not entirely logical; neither are we given enough info on the reasons for her persona non grata status). Also, the tech can be a bit top-heavy at times - but there is enough real-life action to carry the average reader over it. The prose can be quite awkward in spots, but probably only old-fashioned readers like myself will be bothered by this; certainly, the tech-savvy reader will be more interested in the visualizations of the Swim (the virtual world), than the mundanity of mere human verbalization. The plot isn't very intricate, either, fairly basic task to be completed, complicated as per usual by interaction with the baddies, and the real bad guys turn out to be rather mundane (not quite the paradigm-changer that should result in a person preferring to stay in the Swim rather than come out and lose their intel, I would have thought), but then, most thrillers that work themselves up to having a massive climax turn out to be something we've all seen or heard before, so that's no biggie. I found it quite amusing that, despite the increase in technological abilities, tech-people still congregate in what we would all recognize as an internet café!
The author did a very good job of anthropomorphizing the virtual world, putting an experience that will obviously not be visually as exciting at all into a very digestible package ( I don't, for example, think that data streams will present as octopi or tigers but, hey, I could be totally wrong there!)
In short, this is no Neuromancer, but it's not a bad genre-read
The Extractionist is a tolerably good read, with very good pacing. I'm not too sure that the characterization holds together completely (the protagonist is not really what I would consider a "bad-ass", and her motivation for taking the dodgy job is not entirely logical; neither are we given enough info on the reasons for her persona non grata status). Also, the tech can be a bit top-heavy at times - but there is enough real-life action to carry the average reader over it. The prose can be quite awkward in spots, but probably only old-fashioned readers like myself will be bothered by this; certainly, the tech-savvy reader will be more interested in the visualizations of the Swim (the virtual world), than the mundanity of mere human verbalization. The plot isn't very intricate, either, fairly basic task to be completed, complicated as per usual by interaction with the baddies, and the real bad guys turn out to be rather mundane (not quite the paradigm-changer that should result in a person preferring to stay in the Swim rather than come out and lose their intel, I would have thought), but then, most thrillers that work themselves up to having a massive climax turn out to be something we've all seen or heard before, so that's no biggie. I found it quite amusing that, despite the increase in technological abilities, tech-people still congregate in what we would all recognize as an internet café!
The author did a very good job of anthropomorphizing the virtual world, putting an experience that will obviously not be visually as exciting at all into a very digestible package ( I don't, for example, think that data streams will present as octopi or tigers but, hey, I could be totally wrong there!)
In short, this is no Neuromancer, but it's not a bad genre-read
April 17, 2022
When I reviewed NUCLEATION, the debut novel by Kimberly Unger, I said in part "The story has really just begun, and I'm interested in finding out what comes next, whether it's in the NUCLEATION universe or something else from Kimberly Unger. I believe she's a writer to watch." Unger's new novel, THE EXTRACTIONIST, has done nothing to change my mind about that assertion.
Eliza McKay is an Extractionist. She didn't necessarily start out as an Extractionist. She messed around in a dangerous way with nanotechnology that put her in a bad way with the law. Her licenses for that kind of work were revoked, and now she is working to get back her licenses and respectability by taking contracts to go into the Swim (think cyberspace) where people upload into digital persona for various reasons and get them out when they're stuck in there. She's really good at it. She has a high-powered computer system wired into her
brain, and the combination of that computer system and her programming and virtual reality skills make her a highly desired Extractionist.
She takes a government job to go into the Swim and find the digital persona of Mike Miyamoto, an operative who is investigating a criminal case. The goal is to preserve the evidence that he has found there. The problem is that he has found something so disturbing that the persona doesn't want to come out of the Swim. With McKay's employers - yes, the government, but the explanation is not as straightforward as you might think, and that's not so surprising given the nature of the story - not being the only ones trying to retrieve Mike's persona, McKay must race against time and her opponents in an effort to get Mike's persona out of the Swim. When McKay is actively attacked by a malicious program in the Swim during one attempt to find Mike - a program dubbed the Beast - it becomes obvious that there is more going on here than she bargained for.
McKay runs into what seems like non-stop attacks that are designed from preventing her from achieving her goal. In addition to attacks by the Beast in the Swim, there are hired thugs who break into her home in an effort to hack into her cybernetic implants, and she is injured in an accident when her self driving vehicle goes on the fritz - something that never happens in her world (but we're still worried about here in our day). What she discovers throughout the course of the novel is a massive, complex coverup involving a big corporation and the government.
Unger has woven an action-packed tale that is a spy thriller with believable science, technology, and situations that keep the reader engaged. At one point in my life I wrote software for a living, but I can only dream of being able to write the code that McKay does in the novel or that Unger does in real life. In order to make this story work the Swim and the interactions with it must be believable, and while maybe some of the concepts are beyond our abilities right now, I never felt as if what McKay was doing was not achievable. Maybe not in the near future, sure, but somewhere along the line it could happen. Combine that with a fast paced and complex tale of corporate and governmental intrigue, Unger has given the world another winner.
I said at the top that Unger is a writer to watch. With what I feel are two winning novels under her belt, she's not only a writer to watch but a writer that will be contributing great stories to the science fiction field for a very long time to come.
Eliza McKay is an Extractionist. She didn't necessarily start out as an Extractionist. She messed around in a dangerous way with nanotechnology that put her in a bad way with the law. Her licenses for that kind of work were revoked, and now she is working to get back her licenses and respectability by taking contracts to go into the Swim (think cyberspace) where people upload into digital persona for various reasons and get them out when they're stuck in there. She's really good at it. She has a high-powered computer system wired into her
brain, and the combination of that computer system and her programming and virtual reality skills make her a highly desired Extractionist.
She takes a government job to go into the Swim and find the digital persona of Mike Miyamoto, an operative who is investigating a criminal case. The goal is to preserve the evidence that he has found there. The problem is that he has found something so disturbing that the persona doesn't want to come out of the Swim. With McKay's employers - yes, the government, but the explanation is not as straightforward as you might think, and that's not so surprising given the nature of the story - not being the only ones trying to retrieve Mike's persona, McKay must race against time and her opponents in an effort to get Mike's persona out of the Swim. When McKay is actively attacked by a malicious program in the Swim during one attempt to find Mike - a program dubbed the Beast - it becomes obvious that there is more going on here than she bargained for.
McKay runs into what seems like non-stop attacks that are designed from preventing her from achieving her goal. In addition to attacks by the Beast in the Swim, there are hired thugs who break into her home in an effort to hack into her cybernetic implants, and she is injured in an accident when her self driving vehicle goes on the fritz - something that never happens in her world (but we're still worried about here in our day). What she discovers throughout the course of the novel is a massive, complex coverup involving a big corporation and the government.
Unger has woven an action-packed tale that is a spy thriller with believable science, technology, and situations that keep the reader engaged. At one point in my life I wrote software for a living, but I can only dream of being able to write the code that McKay does in the novel or that Unger does in real life. In order to make this story work the Swim and the interactions with it must be believable, and while maybe some of the concepts are beyond our abilities right now, I never felt as if what McKay was doing was not achievable. Maybe not in the near future, sure, but somewhere along the line it could happen. Combine that with a fast paced and complex tale of corporate and governmental intrigue, Unger has given the world another winner.
I said at the top that Unger is a writer to watch. With what I feel are two winning novels under her belt, she's not only a writer to watch but a writer that will be contributing great stories to the science fiction field for a very long time to come.
April 4, 2022
In a world in which people upload their minds into virtual reality, things sometimes go awry and they get stuck in “the Swim.” Enter Eliza McKay, freelance Extractionist. Highly skilled in navigating virtual reality, thanks to a combination of experience, native talent, and extensive implanted hardware, she’s the go-to specialist for difficult retrieval cases. Now she’s on assignment for a government agency, trying to preserve the investigation results of an agent’s digital persona gone missing in the Swim. One thing after another goes wrong, and soon she’s faced with a choice of pulling the agent out without what he’s learned or having to try ever more risky strategies. Then thugs break into her house and try to hack her cybernetic implants. And something dangerous is lurking in the Swim.
Like Unger’s debut novel, Nucleation, The Extractionist features vivid and highly imaginative hard science fiction world-building. I’m not a tech person or familiar with virtual reality, but the characters and situations were compelling enough to keep me reading, and eventually the internal consistency made sense to me. The story is full of fascinating details, like the need to replace neurotransmitter chemicals after a prolonged VR session. Unger writes with the ease of familiarity with challenging technical material, so that even if I couldn’t explain what was happening, I knew she could. The sureness of an author’s voice can carry us into worlds and situations we’ve never experienced for ourselves. Unger’s work is cutting-edge science fiction. I can hardly wait to see what she comes up with next!
Like Unger’s debut novel, Nucleation, The Extractionist features vivid and highly imaginative hard science fiction world-building. I’m not a tech person or familiar with virtual reality, but the characters and situations were compelling enough to keep me reading, and eventually the internal consistency made sense to me. The story is full of fascinating details, like the need to replace neurotransmitter chemicals after a prolonged VR session. Unger writes with the ease of familiarity with challenging technical material, so that even if I couldn’t explain what was happening, I knew she could. The sureness of an author’s voice can carry us into worlds and situations we’ve never experienced for ourselves. Unger’s work is cutting-edge science fiction. I can hardly wait to see what she comes up with next!
February 2, 2022
Unger takes readers on a deep dive into the world of science fiction and technology with this female-led thriller. Eliza McKay is a hacker assigned to extract a client from the virtual world known as the Swim. It should be a relatively straight forward case for someone as skilled as McKay, but she soon finds herself at the center of a whirlwind of danger and lies. With time running out to safety carry out the extraction, McKay must hunt for the truth while fighting for her life.
Eliza McKay is a bold protagonist who quickly establishes her authority. She's been fit with technological advancements in her mind that basically allow her to tap into smart tech within this compelling storyworld. While some may find the exposition referencing the technology a bit overwhelming at times, sci-fi fans who enjoy in-depth tech-driven plots will enjoy the vast virtual world and fascinating advancements McKay encounters. Some moments are redundant, and readers might feel that it takes a bit too long to get to the final climax, but overall, there's a lot of strong plot points that readers will latch onto.
Unger clearly knows her technology. As a woman who works in the virtual reality space, her brilliance and expertise shines on the page. At times, the tech overshadows the plot and perhaps can feel a bit heavy-handed, taking away opportunities to focus on the emotional development of the characters, but readers who enjoy their sci-fi brimming with a large amount of science and technology will thoroughly enjoy this book.
Eliza McKay is a bold protagonist who quickly establishes her authority. She's been fit with technological advancements in her mind that basically allow her to tap into smart tech within this compelling storyworld. While some may find the exposition referencing the technology a bit overwhelming at times, sci-fi fans who enjoy in-depth tech-driven plots will enjoy the vast virtual world and fascinating advancements McKay encounters. Some moments are redundant, and readers might feel that it takes a bit too long to get to the final climax, but overall, there's a lot of strong plot points that readers will latch onto.
Unger clearly knows her technology. As a woman who works in the virtual reality space, her brilliance and expertise shines on the page. At times, the tech overshadows the plot and perhaps can feel a bit heavy-handed, taking away opportunities to focus on the emotional development of the characters, but readers who enjoy their sci-fi brimming with a large amount of science and technology will thoroughly enjoy this book.
September 7, 2022
I would probably go 3.5 stars on this. If I was going to describe this book (and I am) I would call it a technopunk adventure. Whereas cyberpunk (IMO) usually features more body mods and a distinctly dystopian world, the body mods were all based in the ability to affect the Swim, a broad term that covered any networked system. This led to a lot of interactions in cyberspace which, for the most part, were bloodless. It seems the only real risks were psychosis/ mental trauma or overdoing it and passing out to wake up with a wicked hangover. The world was generic and “futuristic” but in a “I could see that happening” way.
So with that behind us, I’ll tell you why this book ended up higher rather than lower for
Me. The main character, McKay, is well written, fleshed out, and troubled. What’s not to like? Her spunk and fire got me through this book which could have used a bit more of a heavy hand in editing.
So with that behind us, I’ll tell you why this book ended up higher rather than lower for
Me. The main character, McKay, is well written, fleshed out, and troubled. What’s not to like? Her spunk and fire got me through this book which could have used a bit more of a heavy hand in editing.
October 18, 2022
Review:
https://talesfromahack.wordpress.com/...
Thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for letting me read an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
https://talesfromahack.wordpress.com/...
Thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for letting me read an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
May 17, 2024
4.5 Fast paced story of Eliza McKay, extractionist. She's hired to bring a persona out of the Swim - the virtual world. Part Matrix, part Ready Player One.
August 9, 2022
THE EXTRACTIONIST
Kimberly Unger
If I was a gamer, this would be up my alley. But I, sadly, am not. So I just could not relate and did not finish... more me than the book.
DNF
Happy Reading!
Kimberly Unger
If I was a gamer, this would be up my alley. But I, sadly, am not. So I just could not relate and did not finish... more me than the book.
DNF
Happy Reading!
January 10, 2023
To see a full review check it out here.
Vibrant world, intense technology. This would have made an amazing video game.
Vibrant world, intense technology. This would have made an amazing video game.
January 11, 2023
Delightful! Just as immersive as the long-established cyberpunk masters. I hope we see more of McKay!
August 10, 2025
If you ever thought what Cyberpunk without the punk part would look like, well - thats the book that unravels this mystery! Kimberly Unger somehow managed to create a fiction about techno oppressive state without any class struggle whatsoever by neither critiquing the state or the technology of a world that would somehow understand the moment you look at a particular patterns and puts you in jail. What a flop of a book honestly.
But lets get a little bit deeper. It all starts with the point of view - we have an alleged hacker girl that was previously doing dangerous experiments but is now downgraded into an extractionist - a fictional job related to pulling people out of virtual space. She is hired to do a dangerous extraction with some government agency. As a premiss and as a plot it is a sound beginning, until you understand the way the author even though she represents the hacker's point of view is neither critical of the state's ability to restrain people from pursuing those "dangerous technologies", neither are they critical of the government agencies that seem to do whatever they want. In a strange way things start to look like pure MIT graduate wank fiction.
And that MIT part where "geniuses" are accepted by the long reaching hand of the state to perform their little trickeries and each one of the main character friends are more interested in writing a "paper" than doing whatever to claim sovereignty, that part tells you everything you need to know about the liberal pro-Elon, pro-tech-billionaires, pro-silicon-valley mindset of the author that somehow sees the issue in that type of world in a license whether you can do something or not.
And whats the result? To reach the conclusion that the most worth of comment issue in her world must be is overworking, low self-esteem and desire to overachieve. Until the half of the book no one can guess how the main conflict can flop on its head as if its an olympic diver that jumps on the plank, then makes a few interesting twists and lands on the concrete floor turning into an unpleasant mash. Thats how the book feels when it turns out that the big investigation of the righteous good undercover cop unit finds that its actually one of their hackers that is hiring additional staff to do her work. Then suddenly that little girl that couldn't do her job properly is transformed into a genius that sends black ops everywhere, hacks old military AI and is constantly annoying at the same time.
And we get to the most annoying part of the book, where it seems the obvious blocker to reach the conclusion is that rogue hacker girl from the secret unit, but instead of removing her from the equation to free their way and complete the mission, the team of highly concerned experts pull her closer and closer to the target they are trying to protect. All ends in a bleak revelation that they should fix their ways of working, and thats that.
All that good writing to deliver what of the most trivial endings filled with corporate glazing in a world that is devoid of its own conflict as neither the technology or the state are ever questioned. I can give her the benefits of the doubt since the book was published before the Elon's HH salute, but jeez, girl, be more critical of the world around you.
But lets get a little bit deeper. It all starts with the point of view - we have an alleged hacker girl that was previously doing dangerous experiments but is now downgraded into an extractionist - a fictional job related to pulling people out of virtual space. She is hired to do a dangerous extraction with some government agency. As a premiss and as a plot it is a sound beginning, until you understand the way the author even though she represents the hacker's point of view is neither critical of the state's ability to restrain people from pursuing those "dangerous technologies", neither are they critical of the government agencies that seem to do whatever they want. In a strange way things start to look like pure MIT graduate wank fiction.
And that MIT part where "geniuses" are accepted by the long reaching hand of the state to perform their little trickeries and each one of the main character friends are more interested in writing a "paper" than doing whatever to claim sovereignty, that part tells you everything you need to know about the liberal pro-Elon, pro-tech-billionaires, pro-silicon-valley mindset of the author that somehow sees the issue in that type of world in a license whether you can do something or not.
And whats the result? To reach the conclusion that the most worth of comment issue in her world must be is overworking, low self-esteem and desire to overachieve. Until the half of the book no one can guess how the main conflict can flop on its head as if its an olympic diver that jumps on the plank, then makes a few interesting twists and lands on the concrete floor turning into an unpleasant mash. Thats how the book feels when it turns out that the big investigation of the righteous good undercover cop unit finds that its actually one of their hackers that is hiring additional staff to do her work. Then suddenly that little girl that couldn't do her job properly is transformed into a genius that sends black ops everywhere, hacks old military AI and is constantly annoying at the same time.
And we get to the most annoying part of the book, where it seems the obvious blocker to reach the conclusion is that rogue hacker girl from the secret unit, but instead of removing her from the equation to free their way and complete the mission, the team of highly concerned experts pull her closer and closer to the target they are trying to protect. All ends in a bleak revelation that they should fix their ways of working, and thats that.
All that good writing to deliver what of the most trivial endings filled with corporate glazing in a world that is devoid of its own conflict as neither the technology or the state are ever questioned. I can give her the benefits of the doubt since the book was published before the Elon's HH salute, but jeez, girl, be more critical of the world around you.
September 17, 2025
Much of the book gave me the impression of an attempt at a William Gibson or Neal Stephenson type of story, but written in the style of a typical urban fantasy, where McKay plays the protagonist with some supernatural (in this case SF-technical) power who’s haunted by something in her past. This arrangement will certainly work for some readers, but for me it’s not an ideal combination. I found the plot and dialog a bit too straightforward - lacking the cryptic cleverness of a Gibson or Stephenson work - so it was less engaging to me. Toward the end, it veers more into the metaphorical territory of something like Tron, or Ready Player One, or even Snow Crash, but without the originality or charm of those works. Overall, not bad, but not exceptional in my opinion.
PS, some comments to the digital edition for any editors in case there’s a subsequent update:
p. 150: “Wait, NWaS’s is Bellicode’s law firm?” - she claimed she already knew this on p. 145.
p. 157: “Yes, of course. If I can ask, who referred you to me?” - this question is ignored, with no acknowledgement or explanation.
p. 167: “whose” should be “whole”.
p. 196: “thereat” should be “there at”
p. 250: the paragraph beginning with “Gotcha” and ending with “nonchalantly” is unclear - some wording or quotes may be missing somewhere?
p. 281: font size issue on paragraph beginning with “Not a chance”
p. 289: “murder” should be “murdered”
PS, some comments to the digital edition for any editors in case there’s a subsequent update:
p. 150: “Wait, NWaS’s is Bellicode’s law firm?” - she claimed she already knew this on p. 145.
p. 157: “Yes, of course. If I can ask, who referred you to me?” - this question is ignored, with no acknowledgement or explanation.
p. 167: “whose” should be “whole”.
p. 196: “thereat” should be “there at”
p. 250: the paragraph beginning with “Gotcha” and ending with “nonchalantly” is unclear - some wording or quotes may be missing somewhere?
p. 281: font size issue on paragraph beginning with “Not a chance”
p. 289: “murder” should be “murdered”
August 10, 2024
Fun and pretty decent retro cyberpunk thriller. She intentionally runs with the Johnny Mnemonic style idea of entering the virtual net and hacking by performing human movements, which i hopped on board for and enjoyed. it's skillfully executed i think and not some self published drivel as the review number could suggest. she refers to the net constantly as metaphorical graphical interface, so this is simply an alternate future where that was made, probably an homage to the early cyberpunk works. wish it had a bit more worldbuilding vignettes, and some characters disappeared with sorta unfulfilled hints of importance.
November 21, 2024
The winner of the 2022 PKD Award. Definitely not one of my favorites. Reminded me of Becky Chambers with respect to dialogue. The story revolves around a Neuromancer type immersion within the Internet, but it reads and sounds like YA. I’m curious about the books that went up against it for the PKD Award since I found this winning book just marginal.
May 30, 2024
Good fun standard cyberpunk.
May 5, 2023
Not a book that I ever really meshed with. For some reason all the action in the swim never felt stylish, but rather too abstract to be interesting - it may as well have been fantasy monsters instead of code bundles. And the characters never quite seemed worth caring about.
July 11, 2022
An entire review can be found at In Pursuit of My Own Library
In her breakout technothriller, virtual reality expert Kimberly Unger has created the iconic, badass, cyberpunk heroine that we need: Eliza McKay. McKay is a disgraced underground hacker who is just trying to take back her career one dangerous job at a time. But when her latest contract throws her into the middle of a corporate power struggle, she finds herself fighting for her life in both the real and digital worlds.
I had really high hopes with that teaser. It pains me to say I was disappointed. This was not a novel that had me compelled to read for hours. I easily found myself able to get distracted from the story. The pacing just did not flow the way I would expect in a thriller. I wasn't gut-wrenched, no pulse pounding, no sweats; simply put, no compulsion to turn the page and find out what happened.
Eliza McKay has been hired by the government that so happily blacklisted her for being a bit too experimental--a plot point where we get plenty of allusions but no actual story--to retrieve a prominent agent from the Swim. Problem number one: the persona doesn't want to cooperate. Problem number two: Rose. Despite all the very crazy scenarios Eliza found herself in, there was a certain lack of realism that didn't allow me to connect with the story.
The corporate power struggle also feels like an overpromise. Let's call it a personal struggle, Eliza versus Rose. Two styles of hacking facing down in the Swim. The foreshadowing in that relationship is a bit clunky and on the nose for the thriller category. There just also happen to be extraneous characters running all over the place for no apparent reason. None of them seem to actually develop with each other despite many personal interactions.
There are some hints of the Matrix when Eliza handles the extraction from both the real and virtual worlds with plenty of attempts at heart-pounding action. But yet another area where the descriptions do not build a solid world more a fuzzy impressionist painting. So many items that I wish would could have seen more details but only received wide brushstrokes of information. Then whole pages of dialogue that gave no definition to the story. There was an imbalance in the storytelling. Just when I would be pulled into Eliza's plight, the writing would become anemic and I would go do chores.
The novel releases tomorrow. Best of luck to it.
In her breakout technothriller, virtual reality expert Kimberly Unger has created the iconic, badass, cyberpunk heroine that we need: Eliza McKay. McKay is a disgraced underground hacker who is just trying to take back her career one dangerous job at a time. But when her latest contract throws her into the middle of a corporate power struggle, she finds herself fighting for her life in both the real and digital worlds.
I had really high hopes with that teaser. It pains me to say I was disappointed. This was not a novel that had me compelled to read for hours. I easily found myself able to get distracted from the story. The pacing just did not flow the way I would expect in a thriller. I wasn't gut-wrenched, no pulse pounding, no sweats; simply put, no compulsion to turn the page and find out what happened.
Eliza McKay has been hired by the government that so happily blacklisted her for being a bit too experimental--a plot point where we get plenty of allusions but no actual story--to retrieve a prominent agent from the Swim. Problem number one: the persona doesn't want to cooperate. Problem number two: Rose. Despite all the very crazy scenarios Eliza found herself in, there was a certain lack of realism that didn't allow me to connect with the story.
The corporate power struggle also feels like an overpromise. Let's call it a personal struggle, Eliza versus Rose. Two styles of hacking facing down in the Swim. The foreshadowing in that relationship is a bit clunky and on the nose for the thriller category. There just also happen to be extraneous characters running all over the place for no apparent reason. None of them seem to actually develop with each other despite many personal interactions.
There are some hints of the Matrix when Eliza handles the extraction from both the real and virtual worlds with plenty of attempts at heart-pounding action. But yet another area where the descriptions do not build a solid world more a fuzzy impressionist painting. So many items that I wish would could have seen more details but only received wide brushstrokes of information. Then whole pages of dialogue that gave no definition to the story. There was an imbalance in the storytelling. Just when I would be pulled into Eliza's plight, the writing would become anemic and I would go do chores.
The novel releases tomorrow. Best of luck to it.
June 26, 2022
* Thanks to Tachyon Publications and Netgalley for an advance copy for review purposes *
It is easy to get lost in the world of "The Extractionist", a not so far future where virtual reality and technological human interface enhancements are the norm. The main character, Eliza McKay, works in a niche of rescue operations for people that get stuck in the virtual world, often in embarrassing or not quite legal situations. Her latest job, initiated by a governmental agency in order to salvage a potentially compromised operation, turns into a deadly chase involving thugs and seriously overpowered hackers. I really enjoyed the world created by Kimberly Unger - some sections are gritty, but some parts are not too different from our urban landscape today - people choose the extent to which they get involved with technology, and you can find your regular tech characters, alongside augmented hired muscle and social media darlings. Eliza is nuanced and complex - she is highly skilled and would have thrived as a nanotech designer if only not for "the incident". A lot of the danger in the story comes from her own poor decision making, and while self inflicted damage is not usually my cup of tea, it is easy to understand how a sleep deprived person running on neurotransmitter enhancers would have some judgement impairments, and how her "keep pushing no matter what" mentality might have gotten her in trouble to begin with.
It is easy to get lost in the world of "The Extractionist", a not so far future where virtual reality and technological human interface enhancements are the norm. The main character, Eliza McKay, works in a niche of rescue operations for people that get stuck in the virtual world, often in embarrassing or not quite legal situations. Her latest job, initiated by a governmental agency in order to salvage a potentially compromised operation, turns into a deadly chase involving thugs and seriously overpowered hackers. I really enjoyed the world created by Kimberly Unger - some sections are gritty, but some parts are not too different from our urban landscape today - people choose the extent to which they get involved with technology, and you can find your regular tech characters, alongside augmented hired muscle and social media darlings. Eliza is nuanced and complex - she is highly skilled and would have thrived as a nanotech designer if only not for "the incident". A lot of the danger in the story comes from her own poor decision making, and while self inflicted damage is not usually my cup of tea, it is easy to understand how a sleep deprived person running on neurotransmitter enhancers would have some judgement impairments, and how her "keep pushing no matter what" mentality might have gotten her in trouble to begin with.
September 15, 2024
As a big fan of Neuromancer, I feel like Kimberly Unger takes a concept that defined the cyberpunk genre as we know it today and makes it completely her own with The Extractionist.
Eliza McKay is a specialist who rescues people who have virtual reality-ed a bit too hard in the Swim AKA the cyberverse. A protagonist much more relatable and likeable than Gibson's Case, McKay moves through both physical and virtual with all the suaveness of a hacker and the humor of someone who has witnessed first-hand the horrors of progress. As she tries to rescue a client who is stuck in the Swim, she also looks her own peril in the face on multiple occasions—bringing the reader face to face with the novel's thesis: How real and alive is a person if all that's left is a virtual copy of themselves?
A favorite sci-fi book that I will reread again and again. I don't think the reviews on here do it justice. Short, quippy sci-fi that gets to the point without mind-numbing worldbuilding is in short supply and I'll snap it up wherever I can find it. Although I think it's unlikely, if Unger ever writes a sequel or another standalone novel, I'll be seated for it.
Eliza McKay is a specialist who rescues people who have virtual reality-ed a bit too hard in the Swim AKA the cyberverse. A protagonist much more relatable and likeable than Gibson's Case, McKay moves through both physical and virtual with all the suaveness of a hacker and the humor of someone who has witnessed first-hand the horrors of progress. As she tries to rescue a client who is stuck in the Swim, she also looks her own peril in the face on multiple occasions—bringing the reader face to face with the novel's thesis: How real and alive is a person if all that's left is a virtual copy of themselves?
A favorite sci-fi book that I will reread again and again. I don't think the reviews on here do it justice. Short, quippy sci-fi that gets to the point without mind-numbing worldbuilding is in short supply and I'll snap it up wherever I can find it. Although I think it's unlikely, if Unger ever writes a sequel or another standalone novel, I'll be seated for it.
April 8, 2022
"The Extractionist" by Kimberly Unger is a fast paced cyber thriller that will appeal to fans of early works by William Gibson and Nexus by Ramez Naam.
The protagonist, Eliza Nurey Wynoma McKay is is a freelance "Extractionist" who uses her nanotech based cyberconnection abilities to rescue people who get stuck in virtual reality. Since it wouldn't be a very interesting novel if everything works well, this story has no shortage of weapons fire, biohacking, cyber hacking, maker culture, robots, sentient AI, spy-craft, betrayal, and even an explosion or two for good measure. Unger's descriptions of cyberspace are quite vivid and would likely make for an interesting movie.
This was a fun book to read. I recommend it to those who enjoy cyber punk tales.
I thank the Kimberly Unger and Tachyon Publications for kindly providing an electronic review copy of this work.
The protagonist, Eliza Nurey Wynoma McKay is is a freelance "Extractionist" who uses her nanotech based cyberconnection abilities to rescue people who get stuck in virtual reality. Since it wouldn't be a very interesting novel if everything works well, this story has no shortage of weapons fire, biohacking, cyber hacking, maker culture, robots, sentient AI, spy-craft, betrayal, and even an explosion or two for good measure. Unger's descriptions of cyberspace are quite vivid and would likely make for an interesting movie.
This was a fun book to read. I recommend it to those who enjoy cyber punk tales.
I thank the Kimberly Unger and Tachyon Publications for kindly providing an electronic review copy of this work.
June 23, 2022
An extractionist is someone who pulls souls who are lost in the virtual world back into offline reality. Such is the premise of Kimberly Unger's novel: a science fiction near-future techno-thriller. The technology is believable (at least to someone who barely understands how to use email), and the virtual world - the Swim - is intriguing and even seductive.
While very little conversation happens between humans in the real world, the characters (human, AI, and sort-of hybrid) are generally realistically drawn. The story is well-plotted and moves quickly, and the choreography of the action sequences is deft. The hero is someone you can cheer for; and there's enough suspense that it's not entirely clear which are the good guys and bad guys until the climax.
While very little conversation happens between humans in the real world, the characters (human, AI, and sort-of hybrid) are generally realistically drawn. The story is well-plotted and moves quickly, and the choreography of the action sequences is deft. The hero is someone you can cheer for; and there's enough suspense that it's not entirely clear which are the good guys and bad guys until the climax.
November 10, 2022
In this efficient near-future thriller, Eliza McKay, the "extractionist" of the title, gets something of a deal that she can't refuse in terms of dragging a persona out of a virtual reality world, under circumstances that are more than a little dodgy. I liked this book rather better than Unger's previous novel ("Nucleation") and I'd be happy to see a follow-up. One of the interesting things about this story is what's there and what's not, in a scenario that's basically late-21st century. You have effective virtual reality, effective quantum computing, and effective nano-tech, but Unger chooses not to dwell on things such as politics and climate change. That's fine in a stand-alone thriller but, going forward, Unger would be wise to engage in some more world building.
February 25, 2023
This was a very smart take on VR integration with a human brain. I really loved the main character, and it's a big kudos to the writer that although so much of the book takes place within the virtual world, it still feels real and urgent; the stakes and the tension are there, the plot is very interesting. My only comment would be that I found the ending just a tiny bit abrupt — I would like to read more, stay in this world longer. Perhaps there will be a sequel?
P.S. Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
P.S. Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
August 1, 2022
3.5 stars***
This was an interesting cyber thriller - I liked some of the lingo the author uses, but some of it ended up being off-center and confusing at times. While I did like it, my interest wasn't fully there at times. It was very promising out the gate, but failed to deliver for me regarding imagery and its ability to pull me in. I would come back to it and lose the plot a bit. I did like some of the characters though, and they stuck with me.
Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing a digital ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.
This was an interesting cyber thriller - I liked some of the lingo the author uses, but some of it ended up being off-center and confusing at times. While I did like it, my interest wasn't fully there at times. It was very promising out the gate, but failed to deliver for me regarding imagery and its ability to pull me in. I would come back to it and lose the plot a bit. I did like some of the characters though, and they stuck with me.
Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing a digital ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.
August 3, 2022
The Extractionist is a great story. In this world virtual realty has merged with life to create a separate world called the Swim. In this world, hackers reign supreme and one of the best is Eliza McKay, who specializes in extracting people lost in the Swim. This time, her client's extraction goes off the rails in a big time way. Excellent world building, felt like the Swim was real. Good action - very well-written. Ms. Unger's stories always goes to the top of my reading list.
May 28, 2024
Goodness, what a slog. I see from the author's website that she is a 'futurist' and 'game designer', and it definitely feels like she was more interested in the mechanics of cybernetic computer brain chips in her invented world than in plot. Actually, the plot was fine. The world-building was pretty well developed. I was just so bored the whole way through.
August 5, 2022
I really liked The Extractionist a virtual reality story that science fiction readers will truly enjoy. I’m gonna be honest some of it went over my head but as I continued to read the story moves along and I really get to know the McKay and her world.
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