Drunk on All Your Strange New Words is not your standard locked-room mystery. First, it takes place in a future New York City after First Contact. The Logi communicate telepathically with the aid of human translators. Lydia is someone whose world opened up to opportunity when she tested into an academy to learn to translate. When the story opens, she is attending an opera with the Logi cultural attache, Fritz. The opera ran long and telepathic translating can make a person feel drunk. Lydia stands up too fast, falls off the balcony and is snatched from disaster by Fritz. Of course, someone recorded it and it went viral.

Society has progressed on its current trajectory with increased economic inequality. Social media is a constant, people wear headsets that record what they are doing, wearable computers connecting them to the net. AI is used to rate news on its trustworthiness, though, just as today, it proves unreliable. In many ways, it’s a surveillance/police state made possible by addicting people to social media.

Fritz is murdered and Lydia is the prime suspect. She saw and heard nothing of the murder even though she lived in the same house. She doesn’t remember anything, she was passed out and can’t prove it because she took off her recording headset. She must prove her innocence and her ally is a surprise, Madison, a logi who disliked her and the feeling was mutual.

And when Fritz starts speaking to her from beyond…oh my!

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words is a fantastic read. It feels like it’s happening just ten to twenty years down the road, a realistic trajectory of our propensity to give up our liberty for security and entertainment. The logi are fascinating aliens and I love the idea of special translators with a gift. I love that translating makes them drunk. I liked the characters who were complex enough to be interesting. The mystery was fair and sufficiently complex with a few twists to surprise us.

This was such a fresh take on the alien invaders story. I was caught up from the first and read it straight through. I want to read it again.