FOX FOREVER

Picking up directly after The Fox Inheritance (2011), this colorful, high-stakes finale is a speedy thriller through the streets, neighborhoods and deserted subway tunnels of future Boston.

Under Locke’s skin is blue BioPerfect, capable of things he barely understands. His existence is illegal. He’s determined to hunt down any backups of his consciousness that may be trapped without sensory input inside technological environments—just as his own mind spun in a pitch-black hell for 260 years, bodiless. But first he owes a Favor to the Network, an underground and undefined rebellion, so he insinuates himself into the life of Raine—wealthy daughter of a dangerous Secretary of Security—to glean information about a political prisoner and a pile of money. Fast-paced action and clear settings make for a vivid page turner, told in tight first-person. As Locke falls for Raine, his emotional desperation ratchets up. Revelations are about people’s connections—past and present, tugging on threads that reach back through the series. Broad politics takes a narrative back seat to the circle of protagonists, and the treatment of minds trapped without bodies is anticlimactic for a series centered around that concept; however, the previous title’s theme about Bots with human dreams reaches gratifying and tragic fruition.

The mind-bending Adoration of Jenna Fox (2008) can easily stand alone, but this is a crucial, memorable conclusion for readers who have moved on to Inheritance.