In her breakout technothriller, virtual reality expert Kimberly Unger has created the iconic cyberpunk heroine we need: Eliza McKay, a disgraced underground hacker just trying to take back her career one dangerous job at a time. But when McKay’s latest contract throws her into the middle of a corporate power struggle, she finds herself fighting for her life in both the real and digital worlds.
Eliza McKay is an Extractionist: an expert in the virtual reality space where people’s minds are uploaded as digital personas. When rich or important people get stuck in the Swim for reasons that are sleazy, illegal, or merely unlucky—it’s McKay’s job to quietly extract them. And McKay’s job just got a lot more dangerous.
After McKay repels an attack on her Swim persona, hired thugs break into her house to try and hack her cybernetic implants directly. Meanwhile, the corporate executive she was hired to rescue from VR space is surprisingly reluctant to be extracted. Something is lurking in the Swim, and some very powerful people will stop at nothing to keep it secret.
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Eliza Wynona McKay could have sworn that the red warning triangle on the side of the cup wasn’t flashing a minute ago, but you never could tell with cheap paper circuits – they failed just as often as they worked.
ONE
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(@TachyonPub, 12 July 2022, ebook, 335 pages, #ARC from the publisher via #NetGalley)
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I’ve read other books by the author and was looking forward to The Extractionist. I liked the world-building and the level of detail used to bring McKay’s world and job to life. It got a bit technical at times but I was fascinated. I enjoyed the thriller elements but preferred just hanging out with McKay and her strange life.
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