As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust: Alan Bradley.

Deal Me In 2015: Story #2 ('The Mouse in the Corne.

Two posts of interest at Tor.com: insight into the cover design by designer Peter Lutjen and insight into John Scalzi's writing process for this book. My focus was more on what life would be like for individuals who experienced their lives through a prosthesis, and the mystery. Honestly, while I was reading the book I did not spend a lot of time thinking about this. Obviously the book is about a section of the population that has been severely disabled, and the unique approach that was taken to deal with this. It is available for free at Tor.com. I paid a small amount for a Kindle version because I wanted to have it available to reread.Īn article at the Huffington Post addresses how this book covers ideas and prejudices about disabilities. From my point of view, it enhanced the experience of reading the novel. Reviewers at Goodreads were divided as to whether the prequel helped in reading Lock In or not. Tor.com says the novella 'traces the medical history behind a virus that will sweep the globe and affect the majority of the world’s population, setting the stage for Lock In'. I enjoy reading fiction told in that style.

The ramifications of a life like this and the society which deals with it is explored via a murder mystery.Īn extra bonus for me was that Scalzi wrote a prequel novella, Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome. The story picks up about 20 years after the world-wide epidemic, when technological breakthroughs have been developed to the point where the victims of the disease who have been locked in can move around, talk, and function in society in a robotic device while their bodies are lying in a bed elsewhere. This is a thriller set in the near future. The volunteers are willing to risk military service and its dangers for a chance at a new life.įor this book, Scalzi goes in a whole new direction.

They make this choice because the CDF will reverse the flow of aging. Scalzi's books in that series feature older humans who have elected to fight for the Colonial Defense Forces on other planets. I avoided the Old Man's War series because they are military science fiction and I thought I would not like that. I first encountered him as a reviewer of DVDs and then discovered his wonderful blog called Whatever. I avoided them for a while, even though I was a John Scalzi fan before he published his first book. Since I started this blog, I have read two books by John Scalzi, both in the Old Man's War series, Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades. I do like some science fiction books, but that is a small portion of my reading.

Later I may decide to talk about some of those points in a second post but not now. There are so many wonderful aspects of this book, and some of them I cannot talk about without spoiling some of the book. Lock In by John Scalzi was my favorite read in January.

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