The Extractionist by Kimberly Unger

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.

I understand it is a slightly futuristic sci-fi scene with VR being a complete experience via xWire implants. But, I have read plenty of sci-fi that can suspend belief and make me feel like I'm living the story. Like their philosophical future is really possible. None of that is accomplished with The Extractionist. We start to investigate the concept of persona and its connection to reality, but the author just scratches the surface of what the Swim really means to the future. Hello, Spike, I'm looking at you. Unger even circumnavigates the fascinating development of hacking that seemed to be the entire plot of the novel.

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.