Not sure about all the rave reviews. Definitely not outstanding, nor groundbreaking. It’s a basic FBI agent gets the bad guy with a slightly clever premise.

John Scalzi has been on my radar for quite a while now, and frankly, I'm not entirely sure why I'd never picked him up before. Thankfully, I finally came to my senses. Listening to his wild sci-fi/murder mystery "Lock In" on audio was easily one of the best book decisions I've made in a while. Lock In is a full throttle adventure from page one. In the near future, a new disease called Haden's has taken the world by storm. It's first two stages, appearing with flu- and meningitis-like symptoms, afflict and in some circumstances kill more than a billion worldwide. But many others survive to the third stage: complete body lock in. The victims have full awareness, but they're trapped in their own bodies as their brains have been rewired by the disease. Chris Shane is not only a rookie FBI agent, but a Haden's victim as well. He functions with the use of a "Threep", a personal robot body with which the user is able to interface and control as a proxy body. On his first day, Shane and his partner, Agent Vann, are called to the scene of a murder. What sets this apart from any other case, though, is the fact that it involves an Integrator, a person who's brain was rewired by the disease, but was spared from lock in. As more details about the victim emerge, Shane and Vann are drawn into a conspiracy bigger than either had imagined. The idea of setting a police procedural in a science fiction world could have gone completely awry in so many different ways, but Scalzi managed to completely enthrall me in his universe. The characters and situations are utterly real, believable, and extremely easy to grow attached to. Lock In was a true thrill ride from the first chapter. I'll twiddle my thumbs eagerly as I wait for the follow up.

This book had an excellent premise that was both unique and exciting. As I dove into its pages my hopes for the read continued to grow. However as the climax grew closer the story-line became a bit too predictable and cheerfully unbelievable. The story came to an end in a sadly contrived fashion that left me feeling like I'd just finished a relatively sophisticated Scooby Doo episode.

Highly recommend...characters are gritty and real, dialog is spot on and the storyline is compelling. Didn't put the book down for two days!

I have read enough Scalzi that I think it's safe to say I'm a big fan of his underdog antiestablishment snarky protagonists and the cynically cruel worlds they inhabit with sarcasm and their wits as their only weapons. Enter Lock In. The premise is decent: a plague makes a portion of the population only able to interact through robot bodies or riding in someone else's consciousness. Then he plops a rookie FBI agent into this world and weaves a conspiracy around him. It reminded me of Old Man's War in that normal (well, "Scalzi-normal") people are dealing with abnormal technology and geopolitical forces that seem omnipotent at first. But the crime storyline is predictable and fairly linear and the ending...well, let's just say it wraps up far too neatly and effortlessly to remotely resemble reality. It's like Scalzi channeled William Gibson but castrated the cyberpunk corporate machine and made the hero too heroic. It needed about 50 more pages in the Second Act of struggle, investigation, more murders or something to really charge into a climactic ending. As it stands, Locked In is merely bubblegum sci fi, a quick read with no lasting resonance.

I have read many books by John Scalzi, but this was not one I could recommend. It was predictable and boring. Definitely not up to the caliber of his other offerings. This is the stuff high school plots are made of. The theories are barely explainable and not very interesting. Sorry John, try again.

This is by far the best book I have read in years, and combines intricate plots, intrigue, and comic relief into the 678 page book I just finished.

Pretty wonderful novel. Often, longtime ‘genre’ writers unwittingly take the weight from the one foot their characters have planted in our world—where we can empathize with their perceptions, ambitions, fears, hopes—and shift it to the foot planted in the imagined future world of the story, which is more interesting to write about. Not in this thrilling book. Scalzi warmly, brilliantly brings us into the lives, deaths, and non-lives and non-deaths, of the people carrying this absolutely cracking tale. And I haven’t felt so hip to tech in years! I’m usually intimidated into thinking that my contemporaneous intelligence is kinda obsolete and clunky, like, SO 20th century, dude. I’ll even do the cliche’d fan thing and say, “You know, Mr. Scalzi, this would make, like, a cool series…” Docked one-half star because the wrap-up is very rushed, compacted by smart characters explaining their victory instead of working through terrifying challenges to earn it.

While Scalzi's play on virtual reality was interesting and well-done, I found myself put off by the constant moralizing about how awful it is when the government doesn't just take care of everyone the way the author feels it should. Ultimately that made it feel like an especially whiny CSI episode set in the future.

What a fun, interesting, and thought provoking read. I did notice a few edits. Using she and me instead of she and I. Happened twice. Still a good read and I'll buy another book.