John Scalzi’s Lock In Review Round-Up

John Scalzi’s most recent book, a near-future science fiction thriller featuring a paralyzing world-wide epidemic and a detective plot, looks to be one of the best-selling SF novels of 2014. Scalzi, a broadly popular author—he has two television series in development, based on his Redishirts and Old Man’s War novels—is a strong Hugo contender with this book. I projected a nomination for him in my Too Early Hugo 2015 Prediction. He already has four Hugo nominations for Best Novel, including a win for Redshirts in 2012. Lock In seems a little more ambitious than his recent texts; it’s not a continuation of a series, like his Old Man’s War books, and Redshirts was more of a semi-humorous take on the Star Trek mythology.

The novel has also received a broad and impressive marketing push: Scalzi released an e-book prequel, and reviews and information about Lock In have been plastered all over the web. The book even has a theme song! High awareness + Scalzi’s Hugo history should equal another nomination. Interestingly, Scalzi’s novels have never done well in the Nebula awards, racking up exactly 0 Nebula nominations for Best Novel. He might be perceived as too “commercial” or “mainstream” for that more “literary” award, whatever all those words mean. While this might be a possibility for the Nebula, we’d need to see some glowing reviews to push it up in that category.

On to reviews:

Book published August 26, 2014.

About the Book:
John Scalzi’s web page
Scalzi blogging about Lock In reviews
More reviews from Scalzi’s web page
Amazon page
Goodreads page
Publisher’s page (MacMillian/Tor)
Tor.com page

Mainstream Reviews
Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
NPR
A.V. Club

WordPress Blogger Reviews:
Ristea’s Reads (4 out of 5)
Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!
Bibliotropic (5 out of 5)
Alison McCarty (9 out of 10)
As the Plot Things (9 out of 10)
The BiblioSanctum (4.5 out of 5)
Infinite Free Time
Lucy Moo’s Book Reviews
Books, Bones, & Buffy (4 out of 5)
For Winter Nights

As you can see, that’s already a lot of reviews, and they’ve been pretty uniformly positive, averaging out to a solid 4.5 out of 5. The number of reviews is a testament to Scalzi built-in fanbase; the high scores speak to the book being well-liked. If Lock In continues along this trajectory, it should have no problem snagging a Hugo nomination.

I’ll try to keep the post updated, particularly with WordPress reviews. If you have a review you’d like to me link, let me know in the comments.