This experience, along with his zombie baseball book, have given me a reason to be cautious about Bacigalupi books going forward. From now on, before renting or purchasing his books, I'm going to have to check the description to see if it takes place in present day.

I loved The Windup Girl, the Shipbreaker books, and the Water Knife. Part of what worked for me in those books was the excellent but not excessive world-building, the high-stakes, and the pacing. Sadly, in both this and Zombie Baseball Beatdown, the author sets stories in the theoretical real world.

I'm not entirely sure if that's all that's to blame, as if he feels somehow more restricted by a normal setting, or if it's merely coincidence, but both books have similar issues.

I reached about 20% in this book and realized I didn't really care about Alix, the protagonist. I didn't care about her family, or 2.0, the young man in charge of a goofy hacker collective that feels ripped out of hacker collective from the 90's, or anyone else involved. Very little had actually happened, everyone's goals were obscured, and the writing seems to overestimate how interesting I found the principle mystery.

Sometimes obscurity can create a compelling mystery, but for me it more often leads to not having enough information to care about what characters are doing or have a stake in their actions. It's worth noting that the blurb for the book on the Goodreads description gave me more information on the premise than the first quarter of the book did.