Lincoln Michel’s The Body Scout follows Kobo, a baseball talent scout who turns amateur detective following the gory, public death of his brother, baseball superstar JJ Zunz. It’s a propulsive ride through a near-future New York filled with augmented human beings, hybrid animals, and literal Neanderthals. This review contains mild spoilers.

What’s immediately impressive about The Body Scout is the author’s attention to worldbuilding. Each new detail about this future world is so specific and comes one after another, that you might miss a cool detail if you blink. The effect is both immersive and trippy (think The Fifth Element), which is what I love about my fave SF stories. There’s a high weird factor too, and because we are dealing with a world where people do all sorts of body modification, there’s a bit of visceral gore too. I particularly enjoyed the section where Kobo has to go to an underground sex club—the way people interact and the tech that is featured in those scenes really bring together the best elements of both SF and noir.

And that’s what the other half of this genre-blending book is: a detective story. The mystery plot finds our protagonist meeting all sorts of quirky characters in locales in a hypercapitalist NYC, which was fun in and of itself. The way the mystery unfolds sometimes feels a bit on the rails, but the reversals and reveals in the last few chapters more than make up for it.

Of course I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t comment on the book’s broader themes. The Body Scout succeeds in examining our relationships with bodies. From labor to narcotics to aesthetics to sex and desire, through moral, bioethical, and even legal lenses, the story deftly explores how we view and treat our meatsacks, and how our social structures exploit them.

Overall, this book fired on all cylinders for me. It’s fun, it’s insightful, it’s got a tight plot, and I’m looking forward to reading Mr. Michel’s future books.

[Originally posted at https://www.victormanibo.com/the-body-scout]

The Body Scout is an interesting novel, and its synopsis is what made me request it on NetGalley. I love any kind of science fiction thriller with a dystopian future and corporate-owned identities. Watching people fight back against the corporation will forever be one of the classic parts of science fiction. The Body Scout is no different, and the way it intertwines corporations into baseball was a great idea.

Being a biology major, I love anything genetic or biology based in stories. The premise of this book was pretty fun, having baseball players be subjected to genetic alterations and drug testing in order to play better. The major drug companies now own the baseball teams.

What I didn't care for was the baseball. I'm not going to give this book a "bad rating" because I knew it was about baseball going in. The baseball really isn't the forefront of the story either, so if you're concerned about not knowing anything about the sport, don't worry. If it's something really to be explained, Michel explains it. I did have a hard time connecting to the characters because they were so passionate about something I really couldn't care less about. The passion with the author, though, helped raise my rating.

It was also pretty funny seeing the baseball teams names, such as the Monsanto Mets.

Thank you to Net Galley, Orbit Books, and Lincoln Michel for this advanced review copy! The Body Scout releases on September 21st.

When I first requested The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel on NetGalley, I was expecting a pretty straightforward  whodunit murder-mystery with a bonus of a sci-fi world, I'm pleased to say that what I ended up getting was much more.
      Set in a very bleak approximation of what our world will be like in the future, The Body Scout, follows baseball scout Kobo as he sets out to find out the truth behind his brother's- a very famous baseball player- death. The world this book is set in is gritty and dark as it imagines what the future would be like if current issues such as corporate greed, climate change, and economic disparity are allowed to run rampant with no control. The environment has been all but destroyed to the point where wildlife is created in labs for the purpose of consumption or advertisement/entertainment, and the air is so toxic and disease ridden that the rich choose to live their lives indoors instead of risking illness outside. Through a series of pandemics, pharmaceutical companies have been able to gain power and take total control of the country, gaining wealth through the sale of cybernetic parts and biological "upgrades" and medication. Anything and everything that can be exploited, corrupted, and turned into a commodity has been- there is even a line in the book where a character mentions how The Museum of Natural History in Manhattan has been long since torn down and turned into an Amazon warehouse. The world is a corrupt and dirty and dark one where the rich and powerful prosper and grow while the poor are forced to live in the unsafe polluted leftovers of their "progress".
      Kobo, our main character, is a prime example of a victim of this world- having purchased so many cybernetic upgrades that he can't afford that he is now millions in debt to loan sharks and yet still dreams of the upgrades he will buy after every paycheck he recieves. Out of all the characters we encounter, Kobo is definitely the one who is most fleshed out and developed. My main issue with the story was how the side characters felt pretty two dimensional, without a lot of time being put into their characterization. It was very clear that the author put a lot of care and effort into the world and if that same level of care was placed into these characters then I could see this book very easily being a five star read. The story itself wasn't particularly surprising but it flowed well and had a steady pacing that never really seemed to slow down or lag which made for a very enjoyable (at times sad) reading experience as you walk alongside Kobo in this barely livable world where everyone and everything is just another object that the corporate elite can own.
      There is a lot of talk about baseball in this book but none of it was too in depth or technical to the point where you have to know the game to understand it- I for one know next to nothing about the sport and was still able to understand what was going on in the moments where Kobo was talking about the game. It was a actually pretty interesting metaphor for the world- to see the game still be referred to as "The Great American Pastime" and have the rules and plays of the game stay the same, the only thing changing about it being the players, who are all so enhanced and modified by bio upgrades that they can barely even be considered human anymore.
      The ending was satisfying and felt very realistic and true to the world that we were introduced to, it didn't feel out of place and although many of the side characters felt underdeveloped, none of their conclusions felt out of character or random. I would highly recommend this book to someone looking for a quick read sci-fi standalone and if the author ever writes another story set in this world then I'm sure to be one of the first people looking to pick it up.

Described as a near future dystopian noir, rest assured this book is like nothing you’ve ever read before. This author’s world building is unparalleled.

Kobo lives in a world ravaged by climate change and never-ending pandemics, where back-alley body modifications offering the best in augmentation are the norm. While working as a baseball scout and doing his best to avoid the cybernetic loan sharks out for his sorry ass, he is suddenly pulled into the mystery of his brothers’ sudden death. A rather unpleasant and unsightly mess of a death that haunts him and spurs him to seeking justice in what we readers soon learn is a world that is in every way it’s antithesis.

As Kobo comes to the realization that vengeance might be his better purpose, we meet quite the cast of characters, the best of which is a tough young girl that everyone seems to want a piece of. I mean that literally.
Secrets start to ooze out of every corner of this story, everyone has their own and everyone is the keeper of others. Many of them involve bodily alterations and enhancements, the details of which will hopefully leave the reader grateful for a body that feels itself. It’s pleasures, its pains, all of it.

The Body Scout is a futuristic, cli-fi, sportsy, hard-boiled noir thriller. Seriously! Lincoln Michel successfully took tropes from all these genres to craft a story that you won't want to put down.

Kobo and Zunz were best friens growing up as basement dwellers in a New York that is now run by biotech corporations. Zunz has made it big as a star player in the Mets; Kobo is a small-time agent with big medical bills and no prospects. When Zunz dies on the field, Kobo is hired to find out whodunit. He runs into Neanderthal goons, shady doctors, renegade purists cults, and of course, some dames

Great for fans of
The Jerry Maguire movie
Blade Runner
Escape from New York

4/5 stars

3.5 stars but really a pretty good debut. Thanks to NetGally for the ARC for this.

I found this by just randomly looking through netgally for some sci-fi books so I really did not know much about this book going in. This is basically a book imagining what the world might look like given the progression of current technology, capitalism, commercialism, climate change, etc. etc. Kobo is a scout for futuristic baseball teams which are now all owned by big pharma companies and his brother, a professional baseball player, is killed while playing a baseball game. Some it felt very realistic (like there's a quote about how people started rooting for pharma companies after they brought sports back after a pandemic and Pfizer is specifically mentioned...) and some of it felt less so but the whole story was at the least very interesting.

The world building is definitely the highlight in this book. It's clear that Michel spent a lot of time developing this part of his story. You can tell while reading that there could be a lot more of the world building put in this book if the author chose to do that. It makes the story feel a lot more developed because of the level of thought put into the world. Again, sometimes it felt like the future being imagined bordered on caricature or satire but when it worked I thought it really worked.

The issue I would say about the world building was sometimes it dominated the book a little too much. This is a mystery story but I felt that a bit of the mystery gets lost in the descriptions of everything else that was happening. I was okay with how the mystery resolved, though I definitely had some issues but along the way I never felt like I ever had an opportunity to figure anything out. Sometimes the pace of the mystery slowed to a crawl while other times it felt very fast. I just never got a sense of the stakes of the mystery itself outside of it's relationship to Kobo paying off his medical debt. I really just felt like the impact of that story got buried by everything else.

The other thing I felt got lost a bit was characterization. I did like the character of Kobo and one other character that shows up later but everyone else felt so tangential. I felt like I knew nothing about Kobo's sort of girlfriend Dolores besides that she was Deaf and another scout, Kobo's cop friend was really underdeveloped, and even his brother, a main motivator of the story, felt more like he was just motivation rather than an actual character. A lot of those characters had important moments later on but because I didn't feel like I knew them at all, any twists they were involved in fell a bit flat. Like I said, I did like Kobo and as he's the main character that was enough to keep me going and invested in the story but I would have liked to see a bit more work on the side characters. I honestly think this book would be so improved if it was just tightened up in a few places and maybe one side character and one or two events from Kobo's past were just taken out so that the story could be more streamlined.

I do think for a debut, this is good. There's a lot of interesting ideas here and I think if Michel publishes more novels, they will only get better from here. I think my best advice would be to take a few important elements of the world building and really focus in on those to create a more streamlined narrative. I liked the imagination of the future and as a baseball fan, I liked the baseball stuff. I'm definitely interested in seeing what this author does next as well as seeing other reactions to this book. If you're looking for a weirder sci-fi book, this might be great for you.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for providing me with an advanced copy of this book.

This is the first book I’ve read from this author and I want more!! I’m not particularly fond of thrillers but this Sci-Fi and thriller mashup was just what I needed. It is a very easy read, nothing too complicated, but it was so engaging. The book was paced very well and world building was dynamic. I am definitely looking forward to what this author will put out in the future. I will be purchasing a physical copy to add to my shelves.

I requested this one because it might be a 2021 title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one rather than push myself to finish the digital copy on my phone only to give it a poor review.

I've never read a noir/sci-fi story before; wow. It has piqued my interest. It was enjoyable and kept you on the edge of your seat. As well, I thought it was beautifully written. I found it to be quite fascinating, I thought the pacing was perfect.

The Body Scout is a scifi/noir tale following Kobo,who is a former baseball player turned scout investigating the murder of his best friend JJ Sunz, who dies suddenly in the middle of a game.

This book was a very fun read with great world building and suspense. This to me is more plot driven, but the characters are fleshed out well enough to get a good sense of who they are. The pacing is excellent and leaves the reader wanting to see what happens next. The baseball element of the story is well done as well. There's a whole lot of baseball here, so if that's not your thing, it may turn you off of the story. If you enjoy a good gritty scifi book and baseball, then this is for you!

Thank you to OrbitBooks, author Lincoln Michel, and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review..

This is a really interesting, well written story. The setting takes concepts we are looking at presently, like corporate greed, wealth inequity, big pharma, and climate change, and imagines a world where they've run unchecked. Most wildlife is gone, but scientists create new species in labs. Governments are broken and bankrupt, but pharmaceutical companies are raking in profits on medical treatments and upgrades, including replacement body parts. People still work, can't make enough money, accumulate debt, succumb to addictions, and fail at relationships. The dystopian setting is just a backdrop, it's not at all preachy. The main character Kobo has a lot of problems, but when his estranged brother is murdered he feels he needs to uncover who killed him. This turns into a very complicated story with a lot of big players, including some Neanderthals. Kobo has many flaws, but he's likeable, and you want him to figure this out as he goes from one disaster to the next. The book concludes very nicely, no cliffhanger, and appears to be a stand-alone novel. Well done!

This was received as an ARC from Netgalley.

In an alternate/future world where humans can swap their body parts for newer models and use lab created drugs to enhance their body, Kobo (the protagonist) becomes addicted to buying upgrades for his body. He is 6 figures in debt with no way out on his salary.

There are confusing names in the book. A lot of the baseball teams and products mentioned are entirely fictional; this takes some time to get used too at first. This book was adequate and interesting; the only real issue is the length. There a great deal of slumps between the action. This caused it to be cumbersome to read to reach the next peak.

I received an eArc of this book in exchange for a fair and honest reivew. My thanks to NetGalley and OrbitBooks

The best way to describe The Body Scout is RepoMan meets Noir Detective.
In the dystopian future the pharmaceutical corporations have taken over the world through medical advances. They've cured diseases, perfected cybernetics, and have millions addicted to the latest upgrades.
Our protagonist, Kobo, is a down on his luck scout for the Yankees trying to close an acquisition to make rent and his medical debt payments. Luck, however, is not on his side. The prospect is sniped from under him and his adoptive brother liquifies into a puddle during while playing for the Monsanto Mets during a World Series Playoff Game. Kobo dives into the mystery of what happened to his brother and is soon drawn is an a tangled web of corporate espionage, politics, and mad science.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. The plot was interesting and paced well. While none of the characters are particularly likable, I appreciated the journey that Kobo goes on during the story. Some of the side characters are also very interesting. I did feel as I was reading that several of the side plots introduced were dropped in the falling action as we were trying to wrap everything up. The themes and messages were also a bit heavy handed. I do also wish that the author had extrapolated what the pharma industry would really look like in the future. Companies are contently merging and rebranding so the idea that Monsanto or the other real companies mentioned make that long is just a bit far fetched.

I would recommend science-fiction enthusiast and lovers of Cyperpunk 2077, William Gibson, or Blade Runner.
I would not recommend for people that want a lot of world building in this science fiction.

I was very intrigued by the premise of this story, but I had a really hard time getting into it. This may have been my apathy toward baseball or the amount of world building. It is obvious that the Michel is an amazing writer and knows his world and characters deeply. This just wasn't for me or wasn't for me right now.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Orbit Books for an advanced copy of this science fiction novel.

The good thing about The Body Scout, the debut science fiction novel from Lincoln Michel is that in the future the cities might be flooded, the air unbreathable, but people will still have baseball. America's pastime will flourish, played in stadiums bigger than anything built today, to huge ratings, for teams that are owned and branded by corporations and featuring players who are genetically altered to play the game. Sort of like that old Saturday Night Live skit about the all drug Olympics, only brought to you by Monsanto.

Our "hero" Kobo, is a retired baseball player who played in the cybernetic leagues of baseball, since considered unsportsmanlike. He survives as a scout for the baseball teams looking for talented players and even more talented scientists to work or be worked for the pharma companies that own the teams. His brother is a star player for the Monsanto Mets who is murdered at home plate during the World Series. Kobo is hired to find out what happened.

The future painted here is bleak. Smog kills. Enforcers demand payment for medical debt, cigarettes called erasers make the days pass. Friends aren't and lies are everywhere. A very noir world.

The world building is interesting. New York is New York, battered, yet recognizable. The story gets a little lost at some points, there are so many ideas the author has I think the plot was sacrificed for a bit, but it comes together. I would like to know more about this world, as sadly this seems to be the world we are heading for. Definitely for fans of early cyberpunk novels, or for fans of weird speculative fiction.

This is the best Sci-Fi I've read in a long time. <i>The Body Scout</i> is smart, funny and weird and I loved every second. Kind of a techno-thriller of Crichton-esque proportaions; a mix of <i>Snow Crash</i>, <i>Repo: The Genetic Opera</i> and <i>Moneyball</i>. The entirety of the world is run by mega biotech corporations and anything and everything is branded. Anyone can be anything if they have the cash.

<b>Awesome things:</b>
1. Transgender and non-binary individuals normalized!
2. Sports teams are all mixed-gender.
3. Highly realistic projection of the future both technologically and politically.

<b>Not so awesome things:</b>
1. Transitioning (genders) is portrayed as more of a strategic career move than as a natural step to becoming oneself.
2. The "highly realistic projection" I mentioned is bleak as fuck. Rampant racism and classism, corporate monopolies and toxic capitalism are the norm.

<b>Some dope quotes:</b>

"America had always been like that. Coke or Pepsi. Republican or Democrat. Monsanto or Pyramid. You were expected to pick a side and then scream like hell."

"We've got 'em all. Mammoth burgers, teriyaki tyrannosaurs wings, saber-toothed gyro platters. Those cocksuckers thought they could avoid being eaten by going extinct. Bunch of bufoons. Didn't count on human ingenuity. We can eat anything these days. Eat the past, present or future."

I highly recommend this not just for Sci-Fi fans but anyone who wants a fun ride through an all-too near future.

I absolutely loved this book. A cyberpunk mystery set in a future where, surprise surprise, corporations are pulling the strings. Very few real animals and plants exist anymore that aren't in some way programmed or created in labs. Except for a very small minority of people, everyone has some form of cybernetic or genetically modified part in their body. The smog is literally poisoning the planet tenfold of what we see today, but baseball is alive and well and stars players bought and paid for by mega corporations filling their body with hormones and experimental drugs. If you enjoy a good semi-dystopian cyberpunk tale, you owe yourself a read or at least throw it on your TBR.

Wow this book was so strange! And I liked it... I think?
It wasn't bad, but I also felt myself losing interest in some sections and I'm not sure if not being a fan of baseball automatically had me less receptive to the plot device.

The drive towards body alterations is frightening, especially because society is already plagued by this idea we see in media about what body is 'perfect' looking etc. And yes, we as a society are slowly being more accepting (despite the fact that we obviously still have plastic surgeons etc.), but we are still so far off from being a society where any type of body is accepted... it's scary to see that this world has decided against it!

Being a fan of sci-fi themes, I really enjoyed the futuristic elements in this and enjoyed learning about this world. In all, I thought it was a good book!

I absolutely adore this type of book. Speculative, far too reasonably close to probable to be comfortable, human made near future techno dystopia. While I would love to live in the utopia that was Doctorow's 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom', I know that The Body Scout's future is far, far more likely. Especially the biopharm sports leagues. The final twist left me reeling, something that I should have seen coming but was too wrapped up in the glorious mess that was NYC and its inhabitants to look at too closely. The entire ride is one I'd love to take again, and I'm looking forward to pitching the Monsanto Mets and their machinations to my customers when this hits shelves.

I wanted to like this but I could not get into the story at all and had to DNF the story at 27%, and I'll tell you why.

This very much felt like a debut. I think that the author's next book will improve in so, so many ways. This sometimes happens with debuts, and that's okay. I also think that people will eat this story up, with its mysterious premise and gruesome cover. But I felt totally disconnected to these characters to the point I was yawning.