Unleashed

Unleashed concludes the story begun in Jinxed, about a world in which almost everyone has a baku instead of a cell phone. Monica Chan invented bakus, electronic pets that communicate with their owners, and the hugely successful Moncha Corporation sells them. But Monica has been missing for several months. Lacey Chu had rescued and repaired Jinx, a one-of-a-kind advanced baku with his own will. At the end of Jinxed, Jinx escapes from Moncha headquarters where he had been captured, and he runs away, and Lacey is put into a mysterious coma.

Unleashed begins when Lacey wakes up from the coma a month later. As she regains her memory about what happened, she slowly uncovers a sinister plot by Moncha vice-president Eric Smith. Using the bakus, he is “updating” people to take away their ambition and make them happier. Lacey realizes that her mom has already been updated and that Monica Chan has been updated and imprisoned by Eric Smith.

Lacey and her friends discover and break into a secret test facility where they find not only Monica Chan, but a number of other early Moncha employees, including Lacey’s long-missing father. But Eric Smith is right on their heels, and Lacey and Jinx have to escape without rescuing anyone.

Eric’s son Carter finds out that his mother is one of those imprisoned updated employees. He defects to Lacey’s side with the crucial information that Jinx has the ability to reverse the update. With time running out before Eric implements a city-wide update that would put everyone under his control, Lacey and her friends mobilize a mass protest to distract Eric while she and Jinx find Monica and reverse her update. Then Monica takes back control of her company and Jinx is used to reverse everyone’s updates.

Unleashed continues the combination of exciting escapades, mystery-solving, technical challenges and teamwork with friends that worked so well in Jinxed. The philosophical problem of free-will versus happiness is explored as Eric tries to convince everyone that taking away people’s desire for better things makes them more satisfied and, therefore, happier.

The last third of Unleashed feels rushed, and the climax skips over how Monica Chan fixes everything once she gets her mind back, making it feel like a deus ex machina solution. But the story is very readable, and Lacey is a strong, engaging heroine whose intelligence and problem-solving skills are believable.