The cyberpunk augmented reality setting was super cool - especially when we got to see how disorienting it would be to exist in (as they say in manga/anime) 2.5-D with the virtual and real overlaying in real time. It was also kind of validating (as someone who works in software) to see both the creativity and vulnerability to computing systems.

Where the story falls apart for me is just the rapid fire action where you don’t have a clear picture of the enemy or the goal. It’s a little too clandestine, to the point where our MC doesn’t know what she’s up against. It also ended rather suddenly with a conclusion but not much of a resolution. It was like I was in the middle of the action and then there were only 30 seconds left in the audiobook. None of the side characters really stood out, even Rose who was supposedly the fulcrum on which the story balanced, and the characterization relied too much on telling as Eliza puzzles through her information.

This was a very smart take on VR integration with a human brain. I really loved the main character, and it's a big kudos to the writer that although so much of the book takes place within the virtual world, it still feels real and urgent; the stakes and the tension are there, the plot is very interesting. My only comment would be that I found the ending just a tiny bit abrupt — I would like to read more, stay in this world longer. Perhaps there will be a sequel?

P.S. Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Extractionist was billed as cyberpunk. I was hoping for some good ol’, fight the system, punk ethic. Maybe anti-capitalist or anti-corporation. Maybe even some 80s retrofuturism. This wasn’t that.

After getting over my initial disappointment. I saw that it was still fun cyberpunk. Fast paced. An action-movie of a novel.

We meet Eliza McKay, our independent contractor protagonist, on business in Singapore. The action kicks in in the first chapter and takes us along with McKay through secretive clients and mysterious enemies, all in a fight for her life and livelihood.

The Extractionist is a decent cyberpunk novel that has an interesting virtual world called the Swim. There's a lot of well-done action, a likeable main character, interesting secondary characters, and a fascinating plot that moves along at a good clip. It's very well done and I recommend it to fans of this genre.

The Extractionist is a great story. In this world virtual realty has merged with life to create a separate world called the Swim. In this world, hackers reign supreme and one of the best is Eliza McKay, who specializes in extracting people lost in the Swim. This time, her client's extraction goes off the rails in a big time way. Excellent world building, felt like the Swim was real. Good action - very well-written. Ms. Unger's stories always goes to the top of my reading list.

3.5 stars***

This was an interesting cyber thriller - I liked some of the lingo the author uses, but some of it ended up being off-center and confusing at times. While I did like it, my interest wasn't fully there at times. It was very promising out the gate, but failed to deliver for me regarding imagery and its ability to pull me in. I would come back to it and lose the plot a bit. I did like some of the characters though, and they stuck with me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing a digital ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I wanted to like this more than I did because I'm a huge cyberpunk fan. However, I felt like the plot meandered and circled around in the middle as the protagonist was supposed to be deciphering clues. It unraveled in an unsatisfying way for me

Virtual reality in all its various imaginings always holds attraction for us. The idea that we can enter the world of dreams is as old as dreaming itself—many Indigenous cultures privilege the dreamworld and use it as a source of stories and even wayfinding. The Extractionist joins a very long line of science-fiction novels, then, that contemplate what happens if you get stuck in a dreamworld or virtual reality. Kimberly Unger imagines a world where this is common enough that it is someone’s job to go in and get you out. Throw in your standard double-crosses, action sequences, and murder attempts from any sci-fi thriller, and you’ve got this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the eARC!

Eliza McKay’s true passion is engineering nanomachines. Alas, the United States government revoked her licences to do so. Blacklisted, she resorts to other jobs—like extracting people whose personas have become stuck in the Swim, a collective cyberspace that people can visit for business or pleasure. Eliza’s latest job involves extracting a government spook, and as these things tend to go in a novel like this, everything goes sideways fast. The next few days entail tiny moments of respite in between intense scenes of terror and mortal peril. Along the way, Eliza has to decide whom to trust, who deserves her help, and how far she will go to finish the job.

Probably the inevitable comparison reviewers will make here is to William Gibson, who coined the term cyberspace (which is not actually used in this book, but that’s what the Swim is). Gibson’s vision of a virtual reality achieved by directly networking one’s brain has indelibly shaped this entire subgenre. Generally, comparisons to him will not be favourable, so this is one of those rare cases where I’ll come down with the utmost compliment that I think Unger actually takes up Gibson’s legacy in a very appropriate and interesting way. She builds on Gibson’s influence on cyberpunk while taking into account things like quantum computing and the proliferation of VR/AR in today’s world.

McKay is also quite a likable protagonist, all things considered—yes, she has trauma and a healthy heaping of avoidance issues, but she is also very self-aware and emotionally intelligent. This is a nice departure from the hard-boiled hacker stereotype. At one point she remarks on how she’s going to need sleep soon; not only did this feel refreshingly realistic in a thriller, but it’s nice to see our protagonist considering her limitations. Similarly, she has a good support network: a friendly AI to help her out, actual friends she knows in person, some dysfunctional family dynamics (don’t we all?). All in all, Unger has put a lot of work not only into the world but her main character and supporting cast.

While the “good guys” are a force to be reckoned with, the antagonists in this story felt a little weak to me. On one hand, I like how the eventual “big bad” proves to be a sympathetic one. On the other hand, the red herring antagonist falls flat because he just doesn’t ever come off as much of a threat—and we only meet him once, then never really hear from him again. This misdirection, if that is what it is intended to be, misfires. The climactic battle in both the Swim and the real world is intense courtesy of Unger’s descriptions, but the build up to it feels lacking.

Indeed, the pacing at the start felt very slow (despite some explosive beginnings)—it really wasn’t until I was about a quarter of the way into the novel before I sat up and said, “Oh, there’s something here.” Even though a lot happens, I admit, the book dragged on for me. Fortunately, I was interested in enough in the story, in finding out who was behind all of this and why, and I liked Eliza enough, as I said above, to keep reading.

Equal parts exciting, then, and enervating, The Extractionist is a pretty strong contender for a new generation of cyberpunk that hews to the traditions of the subgenre while also carving out new ones given our modern society’s flirtation with a metaverse. Unger has a keen talent for description and characterization, even if her plotting and pacing left something to be desired (in my opinion). I had forgotten that I had previously read (but didn’t much like) Nucleation. So I’m glad I got to read another book of hers, one that I have enjoyed much more. Sometimes an author just takes a while to write the book that’s for you.

I enjoyed the cyberpunk ambiance of this novel. It’s action-packed with a likable protagonist and a well-encrypted mystery. Well-written and engaging. I recommend this book if you like the cyberpunk, metaverse genres.

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.

I had really high hopes with that teaser. It pains me to say I was disappointed. This was not a novel that had me compelled to read for hours. I easily found myself able to get distracted from the story. The pacing just did not flow the way I would expect in a thriller. I wasn't gut-wrenched, no pulse pounding, no sweats; simply put, no compulsion to turn the page and find out what happened.

Eliza McKay has been hired by the government that so happily blacklisted her for being a bit too experimental--a plot point where we get plenty of allusions but no actual story--to retrieve a prominent agent from the Swim. Problem number one: the persona doesn't want to cooperate. Problem number two: Rose. Despite all the very crazy scenarios Eliza found herself in, there was a certain lack of realism that didn't allow me to connect with the story.

I understand it is a slightly futuristic sci-fi scene with VR being a complete experience via xWire implants. But, I have read plenty of sci-fi that can suspend belief and make me feel like I'm living the story. Like their philosophical future is really possible. None of that is accomplished with The Extractionist. We start to investigate the concept of persona and its connection to reality, but the author just scratches the surface of what the Swim really means to the future. Hello, Spike, I'm looking at you. Unger even circumnavigates the fascinating development of hacking that seemed to be the entire plot of the novel.

The corporate power struggle also feels like an overpromise. Let's call it a personal struggle, Eliza versus Rose. Two styles of hacking facing down in the Swim. The foreshadowing in that relationship is a bit clunky and on the nose for the thriller category. There just also happen to be extraneous characters running all over the place for no apparent reason. None of them seem to actually develop with each other despite many personal interactions.

There are some hints of the Matrix when Eliza handles the extraction from both the real and virtual worlds with plenty of attempts at heart-pounding action. But yet another area where the descriptions do not build a solid world more a fuzzy impressionist painting. So many items that I wish would could have seen more details but only received wide brushstrokes of information. Then whole pages of dialogue that gave no definition to the story. There was an imbalance in the storytelling. Just when I would be pulled into Eliza's plight, the writing would become anemic and I would go do chores.

The novel releases tomorrow. Best of luck to it.

Kimberly Unger writes tech adventure novels. Eliza McKay is a coder who has run afoul of the law and has had some of her privileges revoked. But she can still work as an Extractionist, a specialist who pulls people out of the net - the Swim - if they get stuck there. The technology of immersion is a bit unclear but it seems as if you jump into the Swim as an electronic copy of yourself, and when you are ready, you jump back out into your body. Except sometimes you don't. Mental trauma in the Swim means you don't fit back into your old mind and you get stuck. Extractionist pull you out. The easiest way is to prune off all of the new stuff ie memories and cram you back into your mind.

McKay is a very high level Extractionist who is called in on very special cases like this one to pull a client out but include the new memories and gently slot the altered mind back into the body.

This would not be so hard if there weren't some very sharp people who are interfering. The central questions are who is interfering, why, and what they want.

The book is fast moving and throws a lot of tech ideas at us that it's easier to just accept rather than try to figure out how things work. Like coding on the fly. If you read urban fantasy you accept spellcasting on the fly so why not go with this.

I think there are too many characters and too much going on, but I figure this is world building for the series.

My thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book, all opinions are my own.
The Extractionist is a tolerably good read, with very good pacing. I'm not too sure that the characterization holds together completely (the protagonist is not really what I would consider a "bad-ass", and her motivation for taking the dodgy job is not entirely logical; neither are we given enough info on the reasons for her persona non grata status). Also, the tech can be a bit top-heavy at times - but there is enough real-life action to carry the average reader over it. The prose can be quite awkward in spots, but probably only old-fashioned readers like myself will be bothered by this; certainly, the tech-savvy reader will be more interested in the visualizations of the Swim (the virtual world), than the mundanity of mere human verbalization. The plot isn't very intricate, either, fairly basic task to be completed, complicated as per usual by interaction with the baddies, and the real bad guys turn out to be rather mundane (not quite the paradigm-changer that should result in a person preferring to stay in the Swim rather than come out and lose their intel, I would have thought), but then, most thrillers that work themselves up to having a massive climax turn out to be something we've all seen or heard before, so that's no biggie. I found it quite amusing that, despite the increase in technological abilities, tech-people still congregate in what we would all recognize as an internet café!

The author did a very good job of anthropomorphizing the virtual world, putting an experience that will obviously not be visually as exciting at all into a very digestible package ( I don't, for example, think that data streams will present as octopi or tigers but, hey, I could be totally wrong there!)
In short, this is no Neuromancer, but it's not a bad genre-read.

* Thanks to Tachyon Publications and Netgalley for an advance copy for review purposes *

It is easy to get lost in the world of "The Extractionist", a not so far future where virtual reality and technological human interface enhancements are the norm. The main character, Eliza McKay, works in a niche of rescue operations for people that get stuck in the virtual world, often in embarrassing or not quite legal situations. Her latest job, initiated by a governmental agency in order to salvage a potentially compromised operation, turns into a deadly chase involving thugs and seriously overpowered hackers. I really enjoyed the world created by Kimberly Unger - some sections are gritty, but some parts are not too different from our urban landscape today - people choose the extent to which they get involved with technology, and you can find your regular tech characters, alongside augmented hired muscle and social media darlings. Eliza is nuanced and complex - she is highly skilled and would have thrived as a nanotech designer if only not for "the incident". A lot of the danger in the story comes from her own poor decision making, and while self inflicted damage is not usually my cup of tea, it is easy to understand how a sleep deprived person running on neurotransmitter enhancers would have some judgement impairments, and how her "keep pushing no matter what" mentality might have gotten her in trouble to begin with.

With The Extractionist, Kimberly Unger presents a pretty typical futuristic-internet-cybersetting-with-a--name background (in this case the cyberverse is called “the swim”), but enhances the familiar setting with an original spin — a class of workers called extractionists whose job it is to rescue people who get “stuck” in the swim by reconnecting their swim persona and their real-world body. I loved the idea, and mostly loved its embodiment in Eliza McKay, the book’s protagonist, but felt the story could have been executed better.

McKay’s job is actually a fall-back position she takes on after she was banned from the high level nanotech research she really wants to do (the reason for her being “burned” is gradually revealed). Extracting is part engineering/tech know-how and part art, and McKay is good at both aspects, helped by her own abilities and also by her cutting-edge “X-wire” technology that allows her to plug directly into the swim via embedded tech in her brain. X-wires are rare not just because of the sophisticated technology, or the fact that many people don’t want connectors in their brain, but also because they have been known to cause psychotic breaks during or post=installation.

When a government agent working a major case gets stuck in the Swim, his team leader hires McKay to perform the extraction and as one might assume, things do not go according to plan, nor is everything (or possibly anything) what it seems to be, and McKay soon finds herself dangerously embroiled in a complex and possibly fatal tangle involving corporate crime, rogue agents, AIs, killers software, and possible double-agents.

The technology in the novel is vividly imagined and presented, both within the Swim and in everyday life, at least within the tight focus of the plot (the big picture impact of the tech is not quite as clear). Unger has a deft hand in smoothly and clearly introducing a new tech and the ways in which it might be used (or abused) and also, as with the extractionist job, puts an original spin on certain well-trod elements. For instance, one enters the Swim not as oneself, but as a “persona”, a “programmatic copy of the mind that could think the same, act the same, experience the same [then] the new memories are copied back and the person woke up with all those experiences in place, as if they had experienced them literally.” It’s this difference that allows for what McKay does, because if someone while in the Swim experienced something “game changing, life changing, a shift in perspective,” they couldn’t simply be copied back as the persona was no longer quite the same person.” Beyond the necessity for plot purposes, though, it also offers up some intriguing questions about personhood, and whether personas are “real people” or not. Questions that also arise with the AIs and bots that pepper the story (McKay treats them all with the same respect, sometimes more, she gives “real people” and is annoyed/angered by those who do not). So as far as the “techno” part of the techno-thriller goes, Unger pretty much nails it.

Characterization, with McKay at least, is also a strong point. Smart, quick-thinking, and willing to take risks, she is also prickly, desperate to get her ability to research back, and self-aware of her flaws (such as that willingness to take risks, which has two sides to it). She’s an engaging, lively, entertaining character, one who is easy to spend a lot of time with. And while at the outset she is presented as the typical lone-wolf hacker with no true bonds (something highlighted by opening the book with her working a case in Singapore), as the book progresses Unger makes clear she in fact has a network of friends, and when the novel nears its climax she turns to them to help get her through things in one piece. While McKay comes fully alive though, the other characters are far less well drawn, more like sketches of characters.

Meanwhile, if the techno part is excellent, the “thriller” part I’d say is the weakest and least interesting aspect of the story. I’m not going to go into details so as not to spoil the plot, but little of it felt compelling, fully thought through or brought to a natural conclusion, so that it all seemed more a bare bones skeleton constructed more to hanging the far more interesting aspects (the technology, the main character) on. Honestly, the whole corporate scheme snd government agency twin elements have been completely excised and it would have been enough to just watch McKay go through what she does without the alleged high stakes. I was far more interested in her responses to the bots in comparison to others, her relationship with her own AI, and the questions of personhood and how workplaces can be toxic. That said, I’m generally not a best-seller/thriller kind of reader, and so I’m happy to admit this could just be my preference for greater focus on character and theme, though I still think there are plotting issues aside even if one sets that aside.

The prose is serviceably smooth throughout, elevating I’d say when describing the Swin. The only real issue I had with the prose, and I’m assuming/hoping this is just an artifact of an advanced reader copy, is that the pronouns were noticeably and frequently problematic, with multiple moments where the pronoun was unclear as to its reference, some moments where pronouns or descriptors felt off, and even several occasions where pronouns switched gender for the same person. I even began to wonder if McKay had originally been written as a male character and then switched to female with the author catching only most but not all of the necessary changes, Here’s hoping that gets cleared up in final publication.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in McKay’s head and Unger’s descriptions of the technology in this futuristic world while finding myself mostly uninterested in plot machinations, An enjoyable quick read that left me wanting more.

An extractionist is someone who pulls souls who are lost in the virtual world back into offline reality. Such is the premise of Kimberly Unger's novel: a science fiction near-future techno-thriller. The technology is believable (at least to someone who barely understands how to use email), and the virtual world - the Swim - is intriguing and even seductive.

While very little conversation happens between humans in the real world, the characters (human, AI, and sort-of hybrid) are generally realistically drawn. The story is well-plotted and moves quickly, and the choreography of the action sequences is deft. The hero is someone you can cheer for; and there's enough suspense that it's not entirely clear which are the good guys and bad guys until the climax.

A gripping read, worth checking by readers interested in intriguing worldbuilding, solid characterization, and clever plots. Recommended.

When I reviewed NUCLEATION, the debut novel by Kimberly Unger, I said in part "The story has really just begun, and I'm interested in finding out what comes next, whether it's in the NUCLEATION universe or something else from Kimberly Unger. I believe she's a writer to watch." Unger's new novel, THE EXTRACTIONIST, has done nothing to change my mind about that assertion.

Eliza McKay is an Extractionist. She didn't necessarily start out as an Extractionist. She messed around in a dangerous way with nanotechnology that put her in a bad way with the law. Her licenses for that kind of work were revoked, and now she is working to get back her licenses and respectability by taking contracts to go into the Swim (think cyberspace) where people upload into digital persona for various reasons and get them out when they're stuck in there. She's really good at it. She has a high-powered computer system wired into her
brain, and the combination of that computer system and her programming and virtual reality skills make her a highly desired Extractionist.

She takes a government job to go into the Swim and find the digital persona of Mike Miyamoto, an operative who is investigating a criminal case. The goal is to preserve the evidence that he has found there. The problem is that he has found something so disturbing that the persona doesn't want to come out of the Swim. With McKay's employers - yes, the government, but the explanation is not as straightforward as you might think, and that's not so surprising given the nature of the story - not being the only ones trying to retrieve Mike's persona, McKay must race against time and her opponents in an effort to get Mike's persona out of the Swim. When McKay is actively attacked by a malicious program in the Swim during one attempt to find Mike - a program dubbed the Beast - it becomes obvious that there is more going on here than she bargained for.

McKay runs into what seems like non-stop attacks that are designed from preventing her from achieving her goal. In addition to attacks by the Beast in the Swim, there are hired thugs who break into her home in an effort to hack into her cybernetic implants, and she is injured in an accident when her self driving vehicle goes on the fritz - something that never happens in her world (but we're still worried about here in our day). What she discovers throughout the course of the novel is a massive, complex coverup involving a big corporation and the government.

Unger has woven an action-packed tale that is a spy thriller with believable science, technology, and situations that keep the reader engaged. At one point in my life I wrote software for a living, but I can only dream of being able to write the code that McKay does in the novel or that Unger does in real life. In order to make this story work the Swim and the interactions with it must be believable, and while maybe some of the concepts are beyond our abilities right now, I never felt as if what McKay was doing was not achievable. Maybe not in the near future, sure, but somewhere along the line it could happen. Combine that with a fast paced and complex tale of corporate and governmental intrigue, Unger has given the world another winner.

I said at the top that Unger is a writer to watch. With what I feel are two winning novels under her belt, she's not only a writer to watch but a writer that will be contributing great stories to the science fiction field for a very long time to come.

"The Extractionist" by Kimberly Unger is a fast paced cyber thriller that will appeal to fans of early works by William Gibson and Nexus by Ramez Naam.

The protagonist, Eliza Nurey Wynoma McKay is is a freelance "Extractionist" who uses her nanotech based cyberconnection abilities to rescue people who get stuck in virtual reality. Since it wouldn't be a very interesting novel if everything works well, this story has no shortage of weapons fire, biohacking, cyber hacking, maker culture, robots, sentient AI, spy-craft, betrayal, and even an explosion or two for good measure. Unger's descriptions of cyberspace are quite vivid and would likely make for an interesting movie.

This was a fun book to read. I recommend it to those who enjoy cyber punk tales.

I thank Kimberly Unger and Tachyon Publications for kindly providing an electronic review copy of this work.

In a world in which people upload their minds into virtual reality, things sometimes go awry and they get stuck in “the Swim.” Enter Eliza McKay, freelance Extractionist. Highly skilled in navigating virtual reality, thanks to a combination of experience, native talent, and extensive implanted hardware, she’s the go-to specialist for difficult retrieval cases. Now she’s on assignment for a government agency, trying to preserve the investigation results of an agent’s digital persona gone missing in the Swim. One thing after another goes wrong, and soon she’s faced with a choice of pulling the agent out without what he’s learned or having to try ever more risky strategies. Then thugs break into her house and try to hack her cybernetic implants. And something dangerous is lurking in the Swim.

Like Unger’s debut novel, Nucleation, The Extractionist features vivid and highly imaginative hard science fiction world-building. I’m not a tech person or familiar with virtual reality, but the characters and situations were compelling enough to keep me reading, and eventually the internal consistency made sense to me. The story is full of fascinating details, like the need to replace neurotransmitter chemicals after a prolonged VR session. Unger writes with the ease of familiarity with challenging technical material, so that even if I couldn’t explain what was happening, I knew she could. The sureness of an author’s voice can carry us into worlds and situations we’ve never experienced for ourselves. Unger’s work is cutting-edge science fiction. I can hardly wait to see what she comes up with next!