It's the third book in Curtis Chen's Kangaroo sci-fi/spy/comedy series. It continues the tradition of witty banter, action, and intrigue. Of course, I was mostly focused on looking out for the puzzle-y bits; Curtis was a pillar of the SF Bay Area's puzzlehunt community while he lived around here. This novel comes through: Our young and snarky protagonist, seeking to annoy a fussy fellow spy, uses the least secure variant of Pig Latin. Yes, Curtis used puzzlehunt-y lore to demonstrate character. (It's not puzzle-y, but I also noticed when the young and optimistic protagonist said, of a man-made sci-fi nanobot-altered-virus disaster, "because it's in the history books now and no one who lived through it will ever forget." And of course in my head I was already plotting out the 30-years-further-in-the-future sequel in which our now old and jaded protagonist, facing yet another nanobot-altered-virus disaster thinks oh for f*ck's sake, not again.) It's fun, give it a read; or if you haven't already read the first couple of books in the series I guess start there.
Tags: book puzzle scene
