Geraldo Nascimento’s cyberpunk romantic thriller Tapeworld Induction was released today. It follows an ex-sport star, and the daughter of infamous revolutionaries, whose burgeoning relationship is tested when they stumble upon a conspiracy whilst exploring the mysterious Tapeworld.

Synopsis –

London, 2060. The climate crisis is over. The corporations won.

ReSports champion Isaak never expected his career to end with a shattered knee. Now he makes a living pulling dangerous heists inside the TAPEWORLD – a hidden virtual reality where every mission carries real consequences.

Dylan has spent her life preparing to follow in her revolutionary parents’ footsteps. Instead, she’s stuck working a dead-end government job, wondering if she’ll ever have the chance to change the world.

When a night out brings her face-to-face with the man she’s admired for years, Isaak introduces her to the TAPEWORLD. But what begins as an escape from their problems quickly becomes a fight for survival as they uncover a conspiracy that threatens both the virtual world and reality itself.

Hunted by ruthless tech corporations, Isaak and Dylan must battle impossible odds – and their feelings for each other – before the people controlling the future erase them both.

Tapeworld Induction is a tale of romance, virtual worlds, and corporate corruption. In that way, it’s a perfectly well-rounded cyberpunk story. The protagonists of the story, Isaak and Dylan, are two good-hearted people drifting through life without a rudder. Both are, in a way, trying to escape their respective legacies. Isaak was a celebrity, a successful sports star. Whilst he was in it, he must have felt like he was at life’s pinnacle. When that came crashing down, through no fault of his own, he was immediately and hopelessly lost. Dylan, on the other hand, has never managed to escape the shadow of her parents, a pair of infamous activists. The life she lives is coloured by everything that they were, that they stood for, and she’s never quite managed to step out and find her own convictions, her own purpose.

When the two of them meet, neither is in a good place, but both are looking for… something. Whether that ‘something’ is each other is unclear at first. Tapeworld Induction is a romantic story, but it isn’t a mass produced romance novel. Both characters are heavily flawed, no-one’s ideal of a companion. They’re not two perfect specimens, that just need the length of a novel to realise their compatibility. That’s what makes the story authentic and compelling – though the world of the book is fantastical, it is grounded by its two very human main characters. You can buy into their relationship, its ups and downs, whether you are interested in the cyberpunk thriller narrative or not, because you can either see yourself, or someone you know, in one of them. Their relationship is awkward, in the way they talk at cross purposes, or misunderstand each other’s intentions. It is also confronted by additional barriers because of the plot of the story – navigating a new relationship is difficult at the best of times, let alone when there is a grand corporate conspiracy playing out in a mysterious virtual world at the same time.

It is this conspiracy that drives the plot of the story, but we’re not thrown into that immediately. We are introduced, much like Dylan, into the Tapeworld slowly. Session by session, the secrets of the Tapeworld are shown to us, and every time we visit, we find out something new. This constantly evolving understanding of the nature of this world keeps us, as a reader, unbalanced. The weirdness of the way the user enter the world immediately suggests a menace about it, an unworldly surrealism that hints at a level of threat that isn’t obvious on the surface. Our two heroes are not necessarily unaware of this potential danger, but they are too wrapped up in the excitement of it, and each other, to let it stop them. They probably do realise that it can’t possibly be a safe state to exist in, but they don’t want to admit to themselves that it may be harmful. Because they’re having too much fun. The outside world is difficult for them to navigate, but inside the Tapeworld, they can be themselves. The best versions of themselves.

Both Isaak and Dylan have a desire to forge a new path in life, and when the threat within the Tapeworld begins to show itself, they are given that opportunity. Neither is fully aware of the rules of this new struggle, but still manage to rise to the challenge. The conspiracy at hand is the exact catalyst they need to move on to the next stage of their lives, but in order for that to happen, they must survive it. And that’s when the plot really ramps up. It turns out the heists he has been pulling in the Tapeworld have consequences, and as the danger to their lives increases, the pair are forced into bringing friends and allies into the situation with them, raising the stakes, and ensuring that they can no longer just walk away from the danger. 

Tapeworld Induction builds to a thrilling finale that very effectively pays off all that has gone before it. It is well constructed, fast moving, with a satisfying ending that ties in the struggles of Isaak and Dylan, enabling both to face their personal demons, and find catharsis. This is possibly the greatest success of the novel. The seamless integration of the characters, their backstories, their personal journeys, and the world built over the course of the novel is masterful, and clearly the result of a lot of hard work and planning on the part of author Geraldo Nascimento. The setting of the novel, its political climate, and the make-up of the world are introduced and explored over the course of the novel, but never explained in an info dump, leaving plenty more to learn in future stories. The mechanics of the Tapeworld are not explained, with the story taking priority, and whether that will be frustrating or not is down to personal preference. Again, though, it leaves scope for subsequent Tapeworld novels to explore, and fill in the blanks. If there are to be further novels set in the Tapeworld, we are eager to re-enter the world and discover more, which should be more than enough recommendation to check this story out.

Tapeworld Induction is available now, in paperback and ebook formats.