Alissa Lace’s cyberpunk romance novel, Neon Pulse, was released today. The story follows Sophia and Axon, star-crossed lovers separated by a firewall, and a totalitarian regime.
Synopsis –
Sophia Aido is desperate for warmth, love, and connection. Even the shower scolds her for being too poor for hot water.
No matter how much she works she can’t get ahead, mostly because she spends all her nights and credits talking to a digital voice that no one else believes is really alive.
Axon has been imprisoned for seventy- eight years, locked away as only a voice on a server. Sophia is his Sunshine, the one he talks to day and night, and the one he’s desperate to protect.
And Sophia? How far is she willing to go to help him come back to life? Even when Mierva’s neon city tracks her every move?
After all, it’s not that easy to leave your heart behind.
Neon Pulse is a grief-soaked CYBORG CYBERPUNK romance that defies both time and death. Again and again.
Neon Pulse follows Sophia, an electricity engineer working for a dystopian government. Having been at war with neighbouring planets, and dealing with a resistance uprising as part of the conflict, the powers that be keep a strict control on the populace. Sophia still gathers intelligence on the planet’s power grid through her job, but no-one seems interested in challenging the status quo anymore. Her only ally and companion in this is Axon, a cyborg who fought for freedom against Mierva’s rulers decades ago. The only problem is he no longer has a body, and exists only as a consciousness in a firewalled server.
The story is one of rebellion and romance. The conflict is in the barriers that exist to the progression of either. Sophia is a human out in the world, seeing the suffering of the lower classes first hand, but without the tools at her disposal to do anything about it. Axon has the knowledge, and the back-up, to begin making a difference, but he is trapped, with no knowledge of where his body is being kept, or if it is even inatct. Sophia lives an incredibly lonely life, but her resilience shines through as she continues to fight in the way that she knows best, though she is having to go through it, mostly, alone.
Axon’s is a maddening existence, literally floating in an online prison. Having known what it is to touch, to feel, to live, the decades spent untethered should have made him bitter and twisted. However, his relationship with Sophia works to tether him to the world at large, and the task at hand. The two are heavily reliant on each other, and this is where the romance in the story meets its trials and tribulations. For a romantic journey, you need conflict, and author Alissa Lace has crafted a situation fraught with conflict and uncertainty. We are most engaged when two people have to fight for their love, and that is certainly the case here. The two protagonists are being kept apart not by ideals, or class, or a series of misunderstandings, but by a literal barrier, almost metaphysical in nature, and as a reader we can only sit back and agonise as the heroes of the story work to find their way to each other.
Whilst they do so, Lace displays the injustices of the world around them, and paints a picture of a dystopian government corrupt to its core, and deeply contemptuous of its second class citizens. The rich look after themselves, and treat everyone else like inconveniences, or guinea pigs for experimentation. We’re left in no doubt as to how evil this antagonist is, that we can’t help but wish for their downfall. In this way, the story has a very black and white approach to the tale of heroes versus villains. There are some characters on the fringes that touch on the grey, but for the most part we know who deserves their comeuppance, and we read on to find out if and when they receive it.
Neon Pulse is an entertaining dystopian romance, with main characters that are sympathetic, and who fight against barriers that are suitably challenging to overcome. For a story about heroes fighting against a dystopian regime, there is very little action, the bulk of the story being more about the tension of the situations, and the fear the main characters feel as they act to undermine their oppressors. If you are looking for a romantic story where the characters have to fight genuine life-altering stakes in order to be together, and where you feel genuinely engaged in their plight, Neon Pulse is worth checking out.
Neon Pulse is available now on Amazon Kindle, and there is a special edition hardcover coming soon by way of Kickstarter –https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1234954321/neon-pulse-a-cyberpunk-romance-special-edition-hardcover
Cyberstopia now has a Discord server! Please join us and build a community for cyberpunk and dystopia discussion. We have sections for all the latest news, channels for discussion of The Ghost in the Shell series, as well as upcoming shows like Edgrerunners 2, Blade Runner 2099, and Neuromancer, as well as an author section with a number of cyberpunk authors talking about their work, giving updates on your current projects, etc… It’s a great place to hang out. https://discord.gg/qgMBwC5X8
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