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Andrea Phillips
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11/17/2015
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A quick, entertaining read -- marred by a thoroughly unlikeable protagonist

It's been a while since I was in my 20s, and I know I had a certain amount of self-absorption and lack of awareness -- but I sincerely hope I was never this bad.

Not only is the main character in this book utterly shallow, self-absorbed, and unlikeable, I think the reader in the end is intended to see that she's learned and grown up. I didn't see that, though -- it just looked to me as though she'd refocused her self-absorption in a different way.

The worst part is that I don't think that the author, despite having written her, honestly realizes just what a terribly selfish and horribly thoughtless person the main character is. I suspect that the author considers her protagonist reasonably sympathetic.

If you like techno-thrillers (as I do), this is probably a fine book. It would be a great beach read. But the fact that I constantly wanted to smack the protagonist out of her shallow self-absorption made it harder for me to truly enjoy it.

Whacking off an extra 1/2 star for the horrible protagonist, but still giving 3.5 stars because the author did a fairly good job of plotting and soft SF despite the various characters being all very much archetypes rather than complex human personalities.