sweetroll’s Reviews > The Body Scout > Status Update

“It [the Museum of Natural History] was a special place. Before they tore it down for an Amazon warehouse.”

This novel has two Honey Baked Hams for fists.

“I got it with nothing. Just my hard work. I started with jack shit, only a couple hundred million from my father and a snack company as an inheritance.”

That’s the kind of subtlety you can expect here.

The man squinted. “They used to have rules back in my day.”

“What day was that?”

“The good old days.”

Scintillating dialogue.

“Some tech baron named Peter Coin from Silicon Valley, way back when it was a valley and not a manmade libertarian island in tax-free international waters powered by floating mini nuke plants.”

Help, it just keeps going like this.

This book has a lot of the hallmarks of what I dislike in cyberpunk. The world-building has a total lack of subtlety and everybody, including the one-off characters, is cartoonishly cynical and rude. It makes for dull reading. On the plus side, most of the genetic and technological body enhancements are creative.

It's a risky move, making your novel revolve around esoteric subjects like baseball. As a reader, I had to weigh whether I wanted to spend time reading a genre I love (cyberpunk) dealing with a sport I find tedious. Not only do I not enjoy baseball, I resent having to learn more about it.

But I'm pressing forward.