The Garbage Man by Tessa Pacelli

 Clever trash concept but absurd techno-superhero world saving scenarios.

Kayla Mousavi, A Harvard grad with a poker habit, finds herself employed at General Recycling -- a company using specialized bacteria to solve the world's trash crisis. Almost immediately after going to work in the cloistered GR work world, she is invited to visit one of the staff perks, "Resilusio," a VR metaverse powered by data illegally mined from garbage. After a shocking experience while also learning how addictive Resilusio is, she goes on the run to expose a corporate conspiracy that will destroy lives and human existence. 

This speculative thriller starts with a clever premise -- trash-powered VR and predatory data mining -- but fails in its execution. The book leans far too heavily on Kayla's escape scenarios that are completely unrealistic given the physical toll they would take on her human body. Plus, the author seems fixated on Kayla and her refusal of food which further makes all of those unbelievable feats impossible. I got really fed up with all of the cloak and dagger sneaking in and out of places with supposedly high security that obviously wasn't good enough to keep one person out. Between the logic gaps and the protagonist's Teflon durability, the tension vanishes. It was so predictable and I really disliked Kayla's annoying inner voice self pep talks and her character. The other characters, especially all the villains, were forgettable and convenient with so many improbable rescues. It was an interesting writing concept that prioritizes frantic action over its own intellectual promise. If you took out all the wonder woman action, the poker, and the spy stuff, this might actually have been a decent novel and it's why I raised a 2.5 to a 3 star rating. 

This brings me to the audio book that I listened to while also following along in the e-book ARC, both provided by the publishers. The narrator, Caitlin Davies, was not able to maintain any distinctiveness between the all the different male and female characters, many who should have had global accents. All the men sounded the exact same. Her voice was unsuitable for this large a cast and I didn't enjoy listening to her. I didn't like the female protagonist in the book, so I don't know that I can say that this narrator's voice matched her essence. The whole thing felt like Kayla was talking to herself, which she did a lot of anyway in the book. I had to stop and restart the audio book because I just didn't feel immersed in the experience.

This is a standalone and is not part of any series.

Genre - speculative fiction , VR metaverse, poker, spies, conspiracy, corporate villains, ruin the world as we know it