This is one of the worst books I have read in recent years. I only finished it because I was in awe at just how incredibly, defiantly, boldly atrocious it was.



If you fed an AI a whole bunch of boilerplate cyberpunk novels full of all the cliches and tropes and had it produce a cyberpunk novel of its own, and then took THAT book and gave it to another AI to make yet another boiled down collection of tropes and stereotypes then this is the book that you would have.



The following checklist is not ev

This is one of the worst books I have read in recent years. I only finished it because I was in awe at just how incredibly, defiantly, boldly atrocious it was.



If you fed an AI a whole bunch of boilerplate cyberpunk novels full of all the cliches and tropes and had it produce a cyberpunk novel of its own, and then took THAT book and gave it to another AI to make yet another boiled down collection of tropes and stereotypes then this is the book that you would have.



The following checklist is not even close to complete, but it will give you an idea of how astoundingly derivative and unoriginal this book is:



Cyberspace with pyramids of data in it

Stims and other drugs liberally taken

Flying cars

People suddenly speaking Japanese for no reason

Cyborg enhancements

Bad ass priest

Aging scientist protagonist suddenly becomes action hero

Lots of alcohol and cannabis

Street punk who is super tough but has a heart of gold

Gazing out over the city at night

Protagonist has estranged wife and two daughters

Evil corporation

Bad ass, hot Japanese woman who loves protagonist

Mind experiments on animals and humans

Dangerous riff-raff living in a Tenderloin type no-go zone

Ironic juxtaposition of corporate ads alongside real-life squalor

Massive anomaly online that threatens to destroy/take over the world

An artificially-prolonged aged evil man living at the top of a high-tech pyramid

Background of future wars that have split America

No more animals because pollution



It's like the writer read Neuromancer and just decided to write his own crap version. There is literally a big grizzled bartender with cyborg-type augmentation who knows the protagonist. I'm amazed that at some point the sky wasn't tuned to the color of a dead cinema screen or something. Sheez.



And I haven't even mentioned the writing yet! Reading this book is like being deprived of your senses. You will have no idea what is actually happening for long periods. People just pop out of doors that you had no idea they were walking towards, or are suddenly talking to someone even though they were just alone.



There are these weird "thoughts aloud in italics" at the end of most paragraphs that are just laughable. Like, we're supposed to think that this guy just reflected on his past career while he's fighting his way up a tower full of cyborgs. Yeah.



The characters have no consistent voices, and all of them swing wildly between street-smart thuggish cool and learned intellectualism at the drop of a hat.



The word "taught" is used repeatedly instead of "taut". Who the fuck edited and proofread this piece of shit?!



At one point, in a scene meant to be gut-wrenching and full of wistful sadness, the estranged wife is revealed to have a "bodacious" figure. I shit thee not. I laughed out loud. Thanks Joseph!



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There is SO much to say about this waste of bytes and paper. No tension. No character development. Almost no stakes. No arcs. People do things and say things and go places for reasons. It's all a mystery to us, the readers, and never makes sense.



It's ludicrous. If you decide to read this, read it just as a lesson in how not to write, or how to really lend the word "generic" new meaning and new depth it has never had before.



Even if you are heavily into the genre, this book will spoil your day and put you in a hell of a mood if you actually try to take it on its own terms. Read it for the shits and giggles, if you can find it for free, and then share the horror and the joy with other people who care about books.



A debacle of towering proportions.