Hard Carry, the latest novel from author J.S. Holloway, is now available for pre-order. Hard Carry, like Holloway’s previous The Veil novel trilogy, is a gritty, hard boiled cyberpunk novel. The author has a keen interest in how humans live alongside technology, and how that will evolve, and this latest novel continues to explore that subject.

From the publisher –

The job looked simple: take the data, make the drop, collect the money, and be back in time to get the girl.

But when the clinic gets hit, the broker dies, and the route burns behind him, Felix has one night to cross Neu Berlin’s underbelly before the package leaks and cooks his brain from the inside. Hunted by a corporate recovery team, revolutionaries, and the Mob, can Felix survive this hard carry, or will he end up as just another body on the streets of a City that doesn’t care?

Neu Berlin is the city they promised would save the future. But only one thing is certain: you fight back, or you leave in a body bag.

Hard Carry is fast-paced, gritty and fun Cyberpunk that hits the “punk” hard and never lets up.

Neu Berlin.

The city they promised would save the future.

But one thing is certain: you fight back, or you leave in a body bag.

Felix is a human courier, using the most secure data storage method available – his own body, by way of a courier implant in his arm. The problem with this, though, is storage space isn’t infinite, and when someone is intent on stealing your cargo, it’s your own personal well-being at risk – there’s no option to cut and run. So when the situation goes immediately south, Felix is forced to endure an odyssey, of sorts, as he navigates the shady streets, canal paths, and underground trails around Neu Berlin.

In the process, Felix encounters friends who might be foe, and foe who might be friends. When you’re a courier working for the undesirables in a big city like Neu Berlin, you’re forced to negotiate with some powerful and unpleasant characters. The data in his courier implant begins to take its toll on him, and as time threatens to run out, he has big decisions to make. Who can he trust? Who DARE he trust?

Hard Carry’s first scene is an intense race against time, and from that point on the novel never lets up. Hard Carry is a relatively short novel, which allows Holloway to turn the screws tight on his protagonist, and keep the story moving along at a clip. Hard Carry is quick and dirty, cyberpunk the hard way, just how we like it. The plot forces Felix to be constantly on the run, moving ever forward. Any time he thinks he might find some respite, his grim situation comes crashing back in on him, literally. 

This is the very definition of a bad night. Not only does our hero have to make his way to the arranged drop point, he has to dodge bullets, placate some powerful people, and as the story progresses, get to grips with an increasingly complicated situation. Each event is more brutal than the last, and political intrigue is introduced, a broader conspiracy comes to light, all building to a fitting climax.

Felix is not your over-the-top ass kicking hero. He’s an average, by criminal underworld standards, working man. He’s a flawed hero, with a complex past, relationships that fall far below functional, and an increasingly difficult physical impairment to deal with in the form of the overloaded implant.

Alongside the blistering pace of the story, one of the book’s great strengths is in J.S. Holloway’s visceral description of the world. You can see it, you can feel it, you can smell it. The locations are obviously very clear and real in the author’s head, and he has a talent, and a real turn of phrase, for putting that vision down on the page so the reader can share it.

There are more books to come in the setting of Neu Berlin, starting with the next novel, Hard Traffic, and there are plenty enough threads woven through Hard Carry to be pulled in subsequent books.

J.S Holloway’s previous cyberpunk novels include The Veil Trilogy of Neon Veil, the Ascendant, and Analogue Dreams. 

Hard Carry is due for release on 31st July, and is currently available to pre-order, at his website, www.jsholloway.com