Head On by John Scalzi

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps," robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.Is it an accident or murder? FBI Agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth--and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

Tons of fun, and completely effortless read now that I know the world from Book 1. But Lock In isn't required reading - Scalzi includes enough background and catches new readers up on the world of Haden's Syndrome.

This rests on a pretty standard police procedural framework - and that story is intriguing and generally well-told. There are multiple times when things are a little too convenient for Chris - imagine the luck of living with a ready panel of experts on all the elements of the case! It's unrealistic, but it also avoids rabbit holes exploring tedious FBI process and introducing a bunch of characters we don't care about.

But anyway, for me the investigation is just the required foundation for:
1.) great interplay between characters (Vann is just the best)
2.) speculation about everything from VR and wearable tech to post-gender culture.
3.) Scalzi setting up a parameter then playing with the idea right to its limits. I found the idea of near-teleportation fascinating, for instance.
4.) And of course, there are themes regarding disability, healthcare, economics, cultural identity, and discrimination. All woven neatly into an entertaining narrative.

(There's also a terrible/wonderful throwaway joke late in the book, that plays with the title. I groaned and laughed in equal measure! Won't spoil it - just go read this!)

Good continuation of the Hayden universe. I think I enjoy the more sci-fi enriched Scalzi novels but I do enjoy this dive into the crime/who-dun-it murder mystery set in a near future. I think I may have enjoyed this one a little more than Lock In.

This is my favorite of Scalzi's books so far, and I enjoyed it more than Lock In. Head On is sharp, witty, and fast-paced, with a gripping plot and lots of unexpected turns. I laughed out loud often, especially at Chris and Agent Vann's banter. And I am now madly in love with Agent Vann, who is an amazing and abrasive badass at every moment. If she ever changes her mind about living in suburbia, I'm available!

So, we don't know Chris's gender, which I love, but I also appreciate the fact that gender seems incidental in this world. The only differences between people that are important are wealth and Haden status. There's very little traditionally gendered behavior at all; pretty much any of the characters could be any gender. This is slightly relevant to the plot, in that one Haden character's perception of his own gender probably contributed to his marital problems.

There's a decent amount of character exploration - not a lot, but more than I expect from a plot-driven book. I feel like I know all the characters better than I did at the end of Lock In, especially Chris, Vann, and Chris's flatmates. We also see several characters' personal spaces within the Agora, and how those spaces influence Chris's perceptions of social class, which is interesting.

The mystery is very good. It's a fairly cynical vision of human nature, in that there's quite a lot of murder and exploitation for profit going on, but the actual heroes are definitely ethical themselves. I might not have enjoyed it as much a couple of years ago, but recent political events have made me somewhat more cynical than I used to be.

Overall, I recommend these two books highly, and I hope that there will be more books in this series. I wish the book were twice as long; the story was completely wrapped up, but I didn't want my time in this world and with these characters to come to an end.

“Head on” is the 2nd book in Scalzi's Lock In series. The series features a world where about 1% of the population have Hadens syndrome, a disease which “locks people in” to their body, although their minds still work. People with Haydens have a oasis/mmorpg-style world to interest with others virtually, or can take control of a robot, called threeps, where they can interact in the real world.

This second book in the series builds on the world in a fun way. Similar to the first book, it plays more like a detective novel in a science fiction world. I mentioned it reminds me of Asimov's “Caves of Steel”, which is true for this one as well.

The story follows the investigation into a death during a football-like game played by threeps (the robots). I'd put Head on fully in the “fun” category of books. It was immensely entertaining, great at world building and overall just a great ride. As a bonus, the audiobook is read by Wil Wheaton!