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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Honestly I’m surprised how much I liked this! Everyone I described the book to was shocked by the fact that I was reading it - I think that’s mostly because of the baseball of it all, but I really enjoyed. I thought it was interesting, I thought the world created here was amusing, I really liked Dolores. I thought Kobo’s journey in regards to his relationship with Zunz was really interesting. I enjoyed reading about what happens to sports as the rich get more and more control over every element of their own bodies - and what inequalities that creates in the world. I appreciated the constantly looming presence of medical debt and how most characters were on the brink of financial catastrophe - that felt both real to the created world here and as an extension of already existing inequalities and problems with our medical system. And the idea of the “Monsanto Mets” is just awful in the best way.
adventurous
challenging
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Gave up on this book. More a case of just not being into it than that it's bad.
I used to love baseball and I've been interested in finally finding a cyberpunk novel I like. Sadly, this didn't hit either of those two for me. Not enough baseball for it to be about baseball and sort of stuck in the cyberpunk trappings that make the genre somewhat unpleasant to me.
I think I just can't stop rolling my eyes at noir these days. Maybe it's because I've ingested too much noir over my life, but every time I see it now it stands out awkwardly.
I used to love baseball and I've been interested in finally finding a cyberpunk novel I like. Sadly, this didn't hit either of those two for me. Not enough baseball for it to be about baseball and sort of stuck in the cyberpunk trappings that make the genre somewhat unpleasant to me.
I think I just can't stop rolling my eyes at noir these days. Maybe it's because I've ingested too much noir over my life, but every time I see it now it stands out awkwardly.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Wanted to like this, but couldn't ultimately get through it. I read half, then went to the end to see if my guess about how it was going to come out was correct. It was. There was a giveaway early on which I picked up. It just wasn't worth slogging through all the technobabble to get there. Michel is very imaginative; the problem for me was there was just too much. He seems to have felt he had to pile every last possible sci-fy-y invention he could into one fabula, and I couldn't keep track. Also much of it was irrelevant.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’d say The Body Scout is a bit of a cross between the body horror of Altered Carbon and the humor of Futurama, while being set amidst the backstage dealings of the baseball world. The world building is great, the humor is not always laugh out loud but there is plenty of it, and the characters are fleshed out (pun intended) pretty well. It’s not perfect, the last chapter feels a bit rushed and the overall mystery is a bit thin. Still, for someone who cares not a bit about baseball I really enjoyed this book
adventurous
dark
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Kobo, down on his luck, scout for the Yankees baseball team—a mega corporation in competition with every other team—is having A Day. While scouting a talented scientist, a pair of Neanderthals working for the Mets, spike his drink, nab his mark, and to top it all off, he’s just seen his brother die live on television. He stuck a homer for the Mets, collapsed, and leaks grey matter, blood, and biotechnological juice on the field. To top it off, a pair of women working as muscle for the corporation that handles his medical loan to continue his addiction in upgrading his cybernetics and are also his landlord, pay him a very physical visit. And, oh yeah, he’s fired because he lost his mark.
It’s pretty noir. Kobo isn’t exceptional or competent. He’s an Everyman, once a cyber boy ball player, before “oilers” like him—cybernetically enhanced people—were thrown off of teams in a move to biochemical enhancement. A return to a “natural” state of play again. He’s a middling scout. But he’s alone, trapped in nostalgia. Probably forever in debt until he’s dead.
Then the Mets come calling, via the Neanderthal’s who robbed him of his prize, with an offer of essential becoming a P.I for them focusing on how and why his brother was ostensibly murdered.
Neanderthals, by the way, is a biotechnology byproduct of scientists who used DNA located in fossils (ala Jurassic Park) to recreate pseudo Neanderthals, as they’re still born paired from a sapien egg and are completely outside of the time where they actually existed.
He rekindles an old flame, Dolores, a scout for a completely different team, the Sphinxes, for help locating a lead, a ball player in that teams stable. He is also being tailed by a mysterious girl child, who looks familiar, but can’t figure out how or why.
It’s a mystery that takes him all over the setting, interacting with a lot of different factions. Dolling out bite-sized worldbuilding as it becomes available. We also learn about Kobo’s past, both with Delores and his cyborg pitching days, his childhood with his brother, and more.
Craft-wise, this is a bit above commercial fiction, and I think that’s on purpose. It’s accessible prose, not as much jargon as you’d typically find in a cyberpunk-biopunk affair, more inclusive, and subversive of genre. Rather than using orientalist aesthetics, it evokes a distinctly western lens with baseball as a game, but also as a brand and ethos of American culture. Its relevant to post-capitalistic concerns and a launching pad to discuss class stratification and loss of agency via advertising and the inevitability of new technologies being co-opted by capitalistic forces that colonize the body. Often without consideration of long term effects at any level. It’s also got a noir cadence but vacillated often between pretty gonzo plot beats and the more serious. Dialogue wise, it’s always learning toward natural and less serious, as Kobo is just not a serious person, usually.
There’s some twists and turns, but if you go in expecting an (updated) cyberpunk book with noir trappings, you’re going to get those tropes and plot beats. It’s not unpredictable and it doesn’t imagine a solarpunk intersection with technology or the agency of a small group of individuals against post-capitalism and corporations. But it does have a lot to communicate otherwise, and it does what it wants to do, even when it’s pretty odd, quite well.
It’s pretty noir. Kobo isn’t exceptional or competent. He’s an Everyman, once a cyber boy ball player, before “oilers” like him—cybernetically enhanced people—were thrown off of teams in a move to biochemical enhancement. A return to a “natural” state of play again. He’s a middling scout. But he’s alone, trapped in nostalgia. Probably forever in debt until he’s dead.
Then the Mets come calling, via the Neanderthal’s who robbed him of his prize, with an offer of essential becoming a P.I for them focusing on how and why his brother was ostensibly murdered.
Neanderthals, by the way, is a biotechnology byproduct of scientists who used DNA located in fossils (ala Jurassic Park) to recreate pseudo Neanderthals, as they’re still born paired from a sapien egg and are completely outside of the time where they actually existed.
He rekindles an old flame, Dolores, a scout for a completely different team, the Sphinxes, for help locating a lead, a ball player in that teams stable. He is also being tailed by a mysterious girl child, who looks familiar, but can’t figure out how or why.
It’s a mystery that takes him all over the setting, interacting with a lot of different factions. Dolling out bite-sized worldbuilding as it becomes available. We also learn about Kobo’s past, both with Delores and his cyborg pitching days, his childhood with his brother, and more.
Craft-wise, this is a bit above commercial fiction, and I think that’s on purpose. It’s accessible prose, not as much jargon as you’d typically find in a cyberpunk-biopunk affair, more inclusive, and subversive of genre. Rather than using orientalist aesthetics, it evokes a distinctly western lens with baseball as a game, but also as a brand and ethos of American culture. Its relevant to post-capitalistic concerns and a launching pad to discuss class stratification and loss of agency via advertising and the inevitability of new technologies being co-opted by capitalistic forces that colonize the body. Often without consideration of long term effects at any level. It’s also got a noir cadence but vacillated often between pretty gonzo plot beats and the more serious. Dialogue wise, it’s always learning toward natural and less serious, as Kobo is just not a serious person, usually.
There’s some twists and turns, but if you go in expecting an (updated) cyberpunk book with noir trappings, you’re going to get those tropes and plot beats. It’s not unpredictable and it doesn’t imagine a solarpunk intersection with technology or the agency of a small group of individuals against post-capitalism and corporations. But it does have a lot to communicate otherwise, and it does what it wants to do, even when it’s pretty odd, quite well.