Interesting story but too much technobabble

On the positive side, the story was interesting and well-paced. There was some character development but not much and I didn’t feel much empathy for the protagonist or any of the other characters. There was also way too much techno-babble that was hard to follow and took away from the story. But the book did hold my attention and overall I did enjoy the read, hence the 4-star rating.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

I found this gripping, a well-plotted nearish-future mystery in which the SF setting is integral.

Not your usual space opera, though large portions take place in space. Not your usual cyberpunk either, exactly. I mean, there's an evil corporation, but it's not the one the protagonist works for (that corporation is just kind of big and dumb but on the whole doing the right-ish thing, like real corporations, in my experience). And there's quite a bit of time spent, not in virtual reality, but embodied in remote robots using quantum entanglement, which was cool, even if I didn't completely buy every aspect of it all the time. At one point, there's only a single channel to use to the remote location, so the other characters are unable to communicate with the operator. Because her consciousness is so totally embodied in the remote that speaking to her through headphones wouldn't work; she wouldn't be able to hear them. That, to me, was implausible, though generally I found it easy to suspend my disbelief. There was a little bit of "your consciousness is so involved in the technological situation that a glitch in the tech can be dangerous to your brain," which I usually find hard to swallow, but here it was sold better than usual.

There are two mysteries. One is who the local bad actors are and what their deal is, and the other is: what, exactly, did the protagonist meet out there in space in the first chapter? Both of these mysteries progress through gradual revelation. I have to say, as an experienced consumer of fiction I found the foreshadowing a bit obvious, and was well ahead of the protagonist when it came to figuring out what was going on, particularly with the Earth-based mystery. But that's tricky to avoid, and I didn't feel it was done badly.

The writing mechanics are generally good, except that the author has a terrible comma-splicing habit and a tendency to hyphenate things she shouldn't, and uses all-caps instead of italics for emphasis. There are occasional errors of reference (pronouns not referring to what they should refer to, dangling modifiers). The pre-release version I saw from Netgalley also featured quite a few words dropped out of sentences (or left in after editing), some mispunctuated dialog, and some misplaced or missing apostrophes, but hopefully those will be fixed by publication. The quantity of all of these is not overwhelming, and a thorough edit would soon have it in good shape.

The characters are not nearly as hopeless, aimless, or alienated as is often the case with SF set in the relatively near future; the protagonist has a strong personal reason (eventually, more than one) to get to the bottom of the mystery, and it provides good direction and momentum to the plot.

Overall, a very decent SF suspense story, with a fresh premise well executed. I would read a sequel, and I'll look for more from this author.

I was in a mood for an exciting science fiction adventure. I’d have probably settled for a somewhat entertaining one. But this book…let’s just say if it were a knife, it wouldn’t have cut through warm butter. I mean, I might have had more exciting time watching water boil than I did reading this book. Definitely have had more exciting time watching the cloud amble through the sky. Or just staring at the ceiling. In fact, the main characteristic of this book is its constant consistent lack of any excitement whatsoever. It doesn’t sound right, not when you read the description, not even when you go by individual sentences or paragraphs, but the sum total is torpidly tedious, like someone deliberately washed all the color and joy and fun out of it. Am I being too tough on this book? I don’t think so, I really don’t. It took a large percentage of my day to get through and at no time did it make it worth it. Not once. In fact, the very first chapter was so bland that had I not been such a freaking completist, this would have definitely been put aside and forgotten. But no, I plowed through. Lured in by a promise of a first contact story, which also…surprise, surprise…had got to be the least exciting one of those. There’s tons of tech jargon, meticulous procedural descriptions, loads (way too much) corporate espionage, uncompelling attempts at intrigue and suspense and also…zero excitement, zero fun, zero dynamism, zero wow factor and, notably, zero character development, like not at all, there are just there going through paces but displaying almost no personalities. It’s all so freaking mechanical somehow, technically faultless and strikingly unengaging and lackluster. It’s almost odd in a way, until the author’s bio tells you about her experience as a video game creator. Now I know video games these days are actually supposed to be very advance and indeed engaging, but it really isn’t for me and neither was this book in much the same way. Good graphics, but lifelike at best. If you’re into tech driven video game like science fiction, it might work for you. I wish I had nicer things to say about this book, since I am its first reviewer here on Goodreads. Sure, it has three high ratings, but no one has thought to say a single word about it before me and mine aren’t the most flattering, but this was an compete irredeemable waste of my time. So maybe my review can help someone save theirs. Thank Netgalley.