Tuesday, June 5, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Head On by John Scalzi




Head On is the stand-alone sequel to John Scalzi's "Lock In," a Sci-Fi mystery series set in a near future world where a disease called "Haden Syndrome" has spread through humanity causing some humans to be "Locked-In" to their own bodies, only able to move via robot bodies nicknamed "threeps."  The series follows Chris Shane, a Locked-In Haden, a former child celebrity turned FBI Agent as he investigates mysteries that are Haden-related.  The result is a cross between a TV cop procedural and a SciFi story, which is well executed.

Unfortunately, like its predecessor, the result is basically a cop procedural, and not one that elevates the form to another level.  Despite the interesting premise, the mystery in this book isn't particularly intriguing (Lock-In's was better in this respect) and the main character is entirely bland.  So while Head On is perfectly fine, it's entirely unremarkable, even more than it's predecessor.  If you like procedurals, you'll like this book, but even then it is not something i'd highly recommend as compared to others.

More after the jump.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Hilketa is a new and growing sport - featuring "athletes" who are locked-in sufferers of Haden Syndrome (so their bodies are fully paralyzed, but they can move via robot bodies) playing in specialized threeps in a sport where the goal is to tear off one of the head of one of the players and get it into a goal - oh and it also includes weapons such as blades and crossbows.  The violence allowed by robot players makes it seem like a very appealing sport to the masses.  But when Chris Shane, Locked-In Haden and FBI Investigator, is at an exhibition game of a Hilketa league with his rich parents, something shocking happens:  one of the players dies.  And when data from that player's threep goes missing and the administrator responsible for that data is found to have hung himself, well, suddenly there's an FBI investigation to be done.  Was the death of the player an accident?  Or was it Murder?  Shane will have to find out.
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As I said above, and as usual for every Scalzi book I've read, Head on is a well executed book in its genre, being the mystery genre (in addition to its SciFi setting).  Every reveal tracks well, the setting is interesting - Hilketa is definitely something that would be thought of by people in this universe and is a very fun idea - and the series' at this point running joke about how Chris keeps treating his threeps is definitely funny.

That said, nothing about this book stands out as exceptional, even in the plot.  You'll spot the eventual bad guy very very quickly if you've read any mystery books whatsoever, and with the exception of one diversion, none of the twists and turns should come out as surprising to any reader.  The book uses its interesting setting even less than its predecessor IMO, to the point where it feels at times more like a conventional non-genre mystery story, which is a major waste, and some of the reveals in the final end reveal come from parts of the investigation that happen off screen - they make sense, but they're totally unearned.

And then there's the issue of the main character.  One notable gimmick of the series, which you might not realize if you read the book, is that series protagonist Chris Shane is never identified by gender and in fact there are two versions of the audiobook, one with a female and one with a male reader (I'd thought of Chris as female myself).  I'm not sure this is why, but a flaw in this book as with Lock-In is simply that Chris is utterly and entirely bland, with little personality whatsoever.  Prior Scalzi protagonists have had personality and/or wit - Chris does not.  Again, there's no reason the gimmick should result in a character so devoid of a personality of his own - (god knows there's plenty of unknown gender characters in fiction who are interesting in their own right) - but I wonder if Scalzi's attempt to keep this gimmick has accidentally led to the bland protagonist.

This will undoubtedly not be the end of the series, which would naturally feature for an adaptation into a TV show, one can tell.  But, it will be the end of me reading further in the series - unlike the other Scalzi books I've read, which generally fall in the "Enjoyed a good amount, even if not anything special" category.
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