TheExtractionist
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
2023 PHILIP K DICK AWARD WINNER
In her breakout technothriller, virtual reality expert Kimberly Unger has created the iconic, badass, cyberpunk heroine that you desperately need: Eliza McKay. McKay is disgraced underground hacker who is just trying to take back her career one dangerous job at a time. But when her latest contract throws her into the middle of a corporate power struggle, she finds herself fighting for her life in both the real and digital worlds.
“Cyberpunk fans won’t want to miss this.”
—Publishers Weekly
Eliza McKay is, by extreme necessity, a low-profile Extractionist. McKay is an expert in the virtual reality space where minds are uploaded as digital personas. When rich or important people get stuck in the Swim for reasons that are sleazy, illegal, or merely unlucky—it’s her job to quietly extract them. And McKay’s job just got a lot more dangerous.
After McKay repels an attack on her Swim persona, hired thugs break into her house to try to hack her cybernetic implants directly. Meanwhile, the corporate executive she was hired to rescue from VR space is surprisingly reluctant to be extracted. Something is lurking in the Swim, and some very powerful people will stop at nothing to keep it secret. This job might be the big break McKay has been waiting for to reboot her career—but only if she can survive long enough to beat the hackers at their own game.
With The Extractionist, virtual reality and gaming expert Kimberly Unger (Nucleation) has created an unforgettable cyberplayground where the rich still make their own rules, but a skilled operator remains the wildcard.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Unger (Nucleation) makes hacking come alive in this fast-paced techno-thriller centered on the Swim, a virtual reality accessed by uploading a "persona," or a copy of the users mind, then downloading it again to retain the memories of the experience. Eliza McKay relies on her quick thinking and the computer system wired into her brain to make a living extracting people who've gotten stuck in the Swim. When the government hires McKay to extract agent Mike Miyamoto, it appears to be a normal job—except Mike's in the Swim on a criminal investigation, and what he's discovered has changed him so much that his persona refuses to reintegrate into the self he left behind. McKay must race the clock to extract him—but she's not the only one who wants what Mike knows, and her adversaries are willing to go to any lengths to stop McKay from reaching him first. VR programmer Unger mines her expertise to create all too believable scenarios and creative solutions, and the novel's at its best in the vivid, evocative descriptions of how hacking feels to a mind fully immersed in VR. The story dances between two worlds just as real as each other, pulling the reader along to an explosive conclusion. Cyberpunk fans won't want to miss this.
