Review: State of Mind by Sven Michael Davison

State of Mind by Sven Michael Davison

Copy Courtesy of Bedouin Press and To Press and Beyond
Release Date: 3/1/2011

Summary
Former Officer Jake Travissi was kicked out because he skirts the law when he's making arrests, and now he is part of a program where a pchip is installed in your brain so that he can get back in. The pchip is a glorious little PDA in your head, and it has some nasty little secrets. As Jake's life spirals out of control, he and a handful of people race to uncover the sinister plot behind the p-chip.

Commentary
In some ways, this book is hard to read as it is meant to appeal to cyberpunk lovers. Thus, it is not a frivolous kind of book. You really have to pay attention to what is going because some scenes are really fragmented, and it’s hard to keep track of what is going on.

The whole story has a frenetic pace which adds nicely to the ultra-realistic feel as the Jake’s ability to figure out reality starts to fall to pieces. The pace also matches the building anxiety throughout the story.

Some of the book’s ‘hacking’ descriptions are a bit hand-wavey since it doesn’t go into great detail of how the software works, and the way it describes the way the people on the Jake’s side exploit loopholes seems rather implausible. This bothered me somewhat especially because this is more of a hard sci-fi book than many of the other books I've been reviewing lately.

I do think that the story/plot is pretty interesting, and it's a good look at the bad stuff that could happen with a chip implanted in the mind despite all the cool stuff that it could achieve.

Star Rating: 3.5/5.0

For an explanation of the Star Rating go here.

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Edit: This is now a book review party post!