I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.
The Dispatcher: Travel by Bullet by John Scalzi
Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Genre: Science Fiction
Series: Book 3 of The Dispatcher
Publisher: Subterranean Press (March 31, 2023)
Length: 224 pages
Author Information: Website | Twitter
I just want to start off by saying I love the idea behind The Dispatcher series: Imagine a world where it is virtually impossible to kill anyone. There are certain stipulations to this, of course, but essentially, you couldn’t be murdered. If someone were to intentionally take your life, 999 times out of a 1000, your body would simply disappear on the spot and reappear again in the place you feel most safe. Keep in mind this wouldn’t happen if you committed suicide, died in an accident, or passed away due to illness—in all these cases, you’d stay dead.
Naturally, people found a way to game this system. If you were having risky surgery, for example, you might want someone to end your life in case the operation goes horribly wrong, giving you a second chance. The government knew they had to step in or everything would be chaos, so they created an official role known as a Dispatcher. That’s where our protagonist Tony Valdez comes in. He is a fully authorized and licensed killer, ensuring that citizens using his services are doing so safely, lawfully, and mercifully.
We catch up with Tony in The Dispatcher: Travel by Bullet, which is the third novella in the series, during the midst of the pandemic. Our protagonist is in the middle of an assignment in a Chicago hospital when he is suddenly called to the emergency department on behest of an old friend and fellow Dispatcher. Without warning, Tony soon finds himself entangled in a web of shady dealings involving unscrupulous parties and a vast fortune in cryptocurrency hanging in the balance. In order to help his friend, Tony will have no choice but to get his hands dirty.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did, since I enjoyed the previous installments quite a bit (the first one more than the second one). But something about this one felt off. Something about it felt a little too real. After all, you have a series that is built upon a premise that is completely bizarre and outlandish, because no one can explain why in this world people can’t be murdered, or why one in a thousand people who are dispatched won’t come back to life, or how you can be “reborn” naked and whole thousands of miles from where you are killed as long as it’s your safe place. Clearly, the natural laws of life and death don’t apply in this series, so then why set it in our world restricted by the realities of the pandemic and the fickleness of the cryptocurrency market?
I would have preferred a story that was more relevant to the societal, cultural, and institutional changes that would have no doubt occurred in this world where people can’t be murdered, and I think this is where John Scalzi falters because he just isn’t the best at worldbuilding. Despite establishing a fascinating concept with the potential to spawn countless unique plots, he fell back on a rather uninspired mystery involving scheming billionaires and crypto. As I recall, I also had a similar reaction to the plot of the second book, so I will reiterate here what I wrote in my review for The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means: I don’t mind a good mystery or noir story, but at the risk of losing a lot of the novelty after the first book, Scalzi needed to build upon the foundation of the concept for this series in order to keep things fresh. And well, I don’t think he achieved that with Travel by Bullet.
At the end of the day, all the cool concepts just seemed a bit wasted on a more contemporary and traditional style mystery. That said though, if you’re a fan of the author’s laidback writing style and humor, you’ll still probably have a great time with this novella, and I won’t deny it was quick and fun read, but I personally would have liked to see the plot push harder on the envelope to explore the limits of what is possible in The Dispatcher world while moving farther away from our own.
More on The BiblioSanctum:
Review of The Dispatcher (Book 1)
Review of The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means (Book 2)