4.5, worth a read!

This book was a lot of things I love in a casual read: fast, funny, and juuuust the right amount of ridiculous. Alice is a 19-year-old genius who casually dabbles in wormhole creation (as one does) and ends up in a conspiracy involving spectral soul networks. The pacing keeps you pulled through - twists, high-stakes science, and some solid.

Alice herself is a great protag —brilliant, bold, maybe a bit chaotic. I love when intelligence is paired with scrappiness. Her interactions with Eugene (who is both unhelpful and essential :) ) had me snorting. The author does a good job balancing the weirdness with actual plot. I cared what happened, but nothing was so intense that it strayed from being a fun, easy read.

If you like your sci-fi fast, weird, and not-so serious, this is a good one to pick up! I definitely enjoyed it.

Alice is a 19 year old scientific prodigy who ends up in a galactic adventure that only she would find herself in.

I loved the tone of this! It felt like one part old Hollywood noir, part comedy, the lightheartedness of Alice Pemberton's Bureau of Scientific Inquiry was such a surprising and delightful read.

The characters are really fun and well writing. Alice, in particular, is a great protagonist and you can't help but to cheer her on. Her relationships with the other characters are really fun to follow, and you feel like you're a part of the narrative.

This is the second in a series and I do imagine there will be more adventures to be had. With an omniscient detective and a 19-year old brainiac, you know there's bound to be some mischief and mayhem. The first book followed Eugene, the omniscient detective. This second book follows Allice, one of his partners in the detective office.

The book starts with Alice having put Eugene into a death-like state at the exact wrong moment. As soon as he is unavailable, the president goes missing, and alien beings are coming out of the woodwork. Without the help of Eugene's ability, Alice has to solve the case and hope people don't run across her partner's semi-deceased body which seems to be hanging out in the office.

I do think it would be incredibly beneficial to read the first book before diving into this one. There are aspects which cross over from the first which help this one make more sense and there's a better understanding of what has happened with the Krill and other aliens.

It does get a bit chaotic at times, and there is a lot going on, so that's probably my main critique. However, it's a fun, silly romp through a sci-fi fantasy adventure with low-ish stakes and cafeterias with back hallways to other places.

So I definitely like this book more than the first.

However, this book suffers from the way Alice is written, she honestly doesn't come off as a young woman. There's a point in the book where she's called a "teenager" and it's hinted she's pretty young in general. She just doesn't read as a super-genius teenaged girl. She doesn't read as a teen girl overall. And that is my biggest gripe about the book.

I also like that this book is in her POV, third person limited, but I think it could've stood to translate some of the film-noir narration, somehow, of book 1. That was really,, really good, and I enjoyed it.

I also much prefer Alice and her friendships to Jack/Eugene and his, I think the choice to make her a more motherly/sisterly/protective figure to Valencia was weird, but it was executed well enough that it worked out. Alice, while she wasn't written a lot like a teenager, avoided most of the pitfalls, if not all, of women written by men. Which I think is a huge credit to the author.

Definitely plan to read more books in Alice's POV.

There were moments where I really enjoyed this book. But it was really disjointed and didn’t make a lot of sense a majority of the time. I appreciate the world building and maybe the first book would have helped a bit. But don’t give me a mystery and resolve literally NONE of it. Cliffhangers are fine but you need to resolve something in the story to give readers a sense of closure. There was nothing satisfactory in the ending nor the continuation. It didn’t give me a reason to want to continue to another book if there is one. I wanted to like this, since I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy. But this just didn’t do it.

This book is a wild sci-fi adventure that’s both quirky and thrilling. Alice Pemberton, a 19-year-old genius, dives into a galaxy-wide conspiracy involving aliens, ghosts, and a mysterious death particle. With plenty of twists and a touch of humor, the story kept me hooked, even if some parts felt a bit over-the-top. It’s a fun, fast-paced read for anyone who loves a mix of noir and sci-fi absurdity. Overall, a solid 3 stars

I was hooked from the first book in the McGilliverse series and this had that charm in the genre. The plot worked with what I was looking for and enjoyed getting back into this world. It had that humor and scifi element that I wanted and thought George Allen Miller wrote this perfectly.

Alice Pemberton's Bureau of Scientific Inquiry is a super fun, fast-paced sci-fi adventure with awesome world-building and quirky characters—it’s one of those reads you just fly through and love every minute of.