Active Memory (Mirador Book 3) - Dan Wells

Publisher Summary:

"Even in a world where technology connects everyone’s minds, it would seem that some secrets can still remain hidden. For all the mysteries teen hacker Marisa Carneseca has solved, one has always eluded her: When she was two years old, she was in a car accident in which she lost her arm and a mob boss’s wife, Zenaida de Maldonado, lost her life. No one can tell her what she was doing in that car, or how it led to the feud between the Carnesecas and the Maldonados. The secrets from the past rise violently to the surface when Zenaida's freshly severed hand shows up at the scene of a gangland shooting. If Zenaida is—or was—still alive, it means there’s even more about Marisa’s past that she doesn’t know. And when everyone from Los Angeles gangs to the world’s largest genetic engineering firms becomes involved in the case, it’s clear there’s more happening under the surface than anyone cares to admit. The truth is out there, and Marisa will have to thread together lost friends, corporate assassins, a gang lord’s digital brain, and what might be a literal ghost from the past in order to find it."

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My Review:

Rating: 7.5/10

Marisa is now at the climax of her journey, and I'm pretty invested in it! I love how both the story lines are turning out, and the new story line is growing on me more than the first. In fact, I feel that Wells did a great job shifting the focus from Overworld to Marisa's larger mission.

Wells' writing has continued to be of the same quality as the previous 2 books, I have nothing bad to say about it. It's still dynamic and concise, all qualities which I think really added to the fluidity of the novel.

In Active Memory, the plot of the Mirador series continues to thicken. One thing that stood out to me was that there seemed to be some gaps in logic in the book for me. There were both illegal and legal methods to buy a certain good, but it seems that certain government organizations choose to use the illegal method instead. This was really the only negative plot point that I found stood out, otherwise I felt that each storyline continued evenly through the book. I don't think that the two storylines came together as nicely as I would have liked, but it did provide some flavor to the book which I hadn't seen before.

Overall, I think that the Mirador series was a really great read. I loved how it included elements of video game challenges, but also social conflicts and real life mysteries. I think rather than focusing on the video game, Wells focused more on the problems of this dystopian society as a whole.