This book started out as four stars for me - a nice speculative tech thriller, and an easy, fast read. Not stunning enough to merit five stars, but definitely enjoyable and worth recommending to people who generally like this sort of thing. At the same time, though, there were a few things that bugged me, most of which point to poor editing.

For example, there were several rather extensive descriptive passages that were repeated two or three times in the first half of the book, which felt as if the author(s) had moved the passages around a few times in different drafts, but never got around to deleting or rewriting the other instances. Sloppy.

And then there was the repeated use of the term "jailbreak marriage," mentioned way more times than necessary and used as if it's as common as something like "shotgun marriage." Although I could figure out from the context what it meant, I'd never heard the term before, so I Googled it, and found only two real references - one citing its use in Gail Sheehy's "Passages," and another referring to Mormon culture. So definitely not as common as the author seems to indicate with its casual and frequent use here.

Finally in this category - MINOR SPOILER HERE - there's a character that disappears in the early part of the book, with no further information about what happened to them. On page 195, however, there's a very casual mention in the narration that another character has been "so thrown by X's death," as if everyone knows the missing person is dead, though there have been absolutely no previous hints to the reader that this is true. I wondered if I'd missed something, but going back over the previous pages didn't reveal anything. Then, however, 55 pages later, on page 250, there's a huge dramatic moment when the FBI shows up to announce to everyone in the story that X has been found dead. That's definitely poor editing.

What finally moved this book down from four to three stars for me, though, was the last 16 pages. I won't include any real spoilers here, but while some storylines seemed to be appropriately winding down at this point, I was starting to wonder how they could wrap it all up in the very few remaining pages. And then - quite literally from out of the sky - a Very Big Thing happens, everything spins out of control, several More Big Things happen...and the book ends, leaving me wondering what I had just read and what happened to the much more thoughtful story I'd been reading for almost 400 pages. Bleh.

But I do see a lot of five-star reviews here, so some people must have really liked it.