Over the past month, we’ve had a diverse selection of books released, from mainstream IP in the Ready Player One Graphic Novel, through cyberpunk romance, to the latest frenetic action thriller from a best selling author.
Book – Neon Pulse
First up, Alissa Lace’s cyberpunk romance novel, Neon Pulse, was released. 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.
Book – Ready Player One Graphic Novel
A graphic novel version of Ready Player One went on sale in October. Released to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the original novel, it is published by Cornerstone in the UK, and Ten Speed Graphic in the US.
From the publisher –
Immerse yourself in the electrifying world of Ready Player One with this gorgeously illustrated graphic adaptation of the #1 New York Times bestselling sci-fi novel.
A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?
In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days.
When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune – and control of the OASIS itself.
Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on – and the only way to survive is to win.
Completely illustrated with breathtaking full-colour artwork, this stunning graphic novel adaptation brings you into Wade’s exhilarating quest like never before!
When Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One was released 15 years ago, it made a massive cultural impact. Whilst it didn’t necessarily trigger a huge wave of 1980’s rediscovery, it was a major bestseller. Steven Spielberg adapted the novel into a movie in 2018, and a sequel novel, Ready Player Two, was published in 2020. It could also be argued that although it isn’t LitRPG itself, the gamified virtual world in the book inspired a whole new set of readers to explore the Lit RPG genre.
This new graphic novel, by Ernest Cline with illustrations by Meredith Laxton, offers 320 pages of full colour artwork. If you weren’t a fan of the visual style of the movie, or are just interested to see a different take on it, this is your chance to check out a new interpretation of both the dystopian world the book is set in, and the virtual world of the Oasis.
Ready Player One the Graphic Novel is available now in hardcover and digital formats, with a paperback to come at some point in the future.
Book – Hard Exit
Next was the release of bestselling author J.S. Holloway’s cyberpunk novel Hard Exit. The next book in the Neu Berlin series following Hard Carry and Hard Traffic, the novel follows the series’ protagonist Felix on perhaps his hardest mission yet.
Synopsis –
The job was simple: Go to Bosnia, get the data, make the drop, and get the hell out in one piece.
But when the drop’s busted Felix has to break out of prison and go on the run with the border closing in eight hours, a warlord’s militia on his tail, and Kovač, a sadistic enforcer hunting him down. Getting out alive means running a gauntlet of gunfire, betrayal, and bad choices, with freedom riding on the outcome.
Can Felix survive this Hard Exit or will he end up as just another casualty of war?
Hard Exit, the third book in the Neu Berlin Arc, is a Cyberpunk Thriller that drops you in it and then runs like hell.
The first novel in the Neu Berlin arc, Hard Carry, was quick and dirty, cyberpunk the hard way, just how we like it. The plot forced Felix to be constantly on the run, moving ever forward, which kept a novel already on the short side clipping along at a blistering pace. The sequel, Hard Traffic, followed in the tradition, opening in transit, and never slowing down for very long.
When Hard Exit opens, we find Felix finally experiencing a period of stillness. OK, it’s because he’s incarcerated in a Bosnian prison, but it’s nice to catch a glimpse of him in something other than motion.
This situation, as you might expect, does not remain for long however. And we’re off again. The motif for the Neu Berlin Arc is very much fast, breathless storytelling, in JS Holloway’s distinctive, colourful literary style. We’ve seen Felix have to get from A to B before, but this time he has a lot more ground to cover, and a ticking clock to grind against. Holloway is great at putting his protagonist into grim, seemingly impossible situations, and continually raising the stakes.
The choice to put Felix into unfamiliar territory is smart. On Neu Berlin soil, he has contacts who can help him out, he knows the turf, so it’s a lot easier for him to get the upper hand. Dropped into the middle of a country he knows little about, with no friends close to hand to help him out of a tight spot, his situation feels a lot more hopeless. The worldbuilding is good, with the power dynamics and cast of characters laid out very efficiently over the course of the book, in a highly fluid situation where loyalties can change in the blink of an eye.
Felix is a compelling character, facing down every challenge with a weary sigh and a choice expletive, but one of the real strengths of the series is in the supporting cast, and Felix’s reactions with them. In Hard Traffic, he had a travelling companion to play off of, and in Hard Exit, he’s wisely given another comrade to banter with, but this time it’s a much more able verbal sparring partner. As a result, the author is given a lot more opportunity to use his skill with snappy dialogue and wisecracks, along with the conflict that comes from people with two dissimilar viewpoints being forced to work together towards a common goal.
The pace of the story is breakneck, and the action thrilling, making Hard Exit a very easy book to burn through in a few sittings. Is it the best of the Neu Berlin arc? Quite possibly. Is it Felix’s last impossible ‘easy’ job? You’ll have to check the book out to find out what exactly the Hard Exit of the title refers to.
Hard Exit is the 3rd book of the Neu Berlin arc, and is available now in ebook, paperback, and hardback formats. You can find out more about J. S. Holloway’s writing at www.jsholloway.com
Book – Horizon Fault
Horizon Fault, book two of the Transition Age Trilogy, was also released last month. Written by Tyler Corriveau, the novel continues the story of Iris Vale following her escape from a lower level covert research facility in Transition Age.
Synopsis –
Years before the events of Transition Age, a single city exposed the cracks beneath a carefully engineered future. In the aftermath of a catastrophic failure known as the Great Horizon Fault, the megaregion of Seattle became a test case the world would rather forget.
Following her harrowing escape from a subterranean lab, Iris Vale is thrust into the center of a global conspiracy. Guided by the chilling firsthand account of a surviving mother and son, Iris learns the historic disaster may not have been what everyone was told to believe.
To stop a new and escalating threat from dismantling the world, Iris must venture into Seattle’s irradiated ruins to search for answers in a void of quantum entanglement. What she may uncover in the shadows of the fallen city could challenge the future of the Transition Age, forcing everyone to question the mystery of the children who vanished that dark winter.
The first book in the Transition Age Trilogy, Transition Age, saw protagonist Iris Vale, with no memory of how she got there, waking up in a laboratory experiencing some kind of meltdown. She escaped, but was forced to evade capture by the forces that had held her captive, whilst trying to solve the puzzle of her own identity.
The first book functioned very much as an introduction to the character, and the new world she found herself in. This second book, Horizon Fault, feels like the beginning of the story proper. Iris has regained some of her memory, but now she longs to find out the truth about what happened to her, and the others who were taken and experimented on. She is pressed to assist in an investigation into what caused the historic disaster of the Great Horizon Fault, but there are some that do not wish the details to be discovered, and Iris finds herself in danger from more than one interested party.
The world of the Transition Age, in the year 2159, is very well thought out and meticulously planned by author Tyler Corriveau. As a result, he is able to slowly reveal more and more about both the present, and the past, world in which the protagonist finds herself in. A lot of the history of the setting was laid out at the beginning of the first book, but it was far too much information to take in and remember. That isn’t an issue though, as the most salient details are explained as the story progresses, and it may actually be more enjoyable to read the book without reading those summary passages first.
Horizon Fault moves quickly, in the best of ways. The story is fast moving, the characters in constant forward motion, and the plot develops at an exciting pace. The world that has been created is fascinating, and because Iris has been away from the world, and not fully regained her memories, we get to enjoy learning about it just as she does.
The description is well written, conjuring images of the vertical city, a mixture of modern technology and crumbling detritus, without getting bogged down in flowery prose, or being too self-satisfied with the atmospheric setting that has been created. Iris is an interesting character, haunted by her past incarceration, and the enduring horror of the experiments that were done on her. As she starts to learn more about her enhanced abilities, and how to access them, she is able to become a lot more proactive, without suddenly becoming a superhuman superheroine. It must have been tempting for author Corriveau to really unleash her and show what she is capable of, but that’s not who Iris is. She is a character with morals, and guilt, and regret.
The supporting cast of characters are all three dimensional interesting too, with believable motivations and obligations that they are beholden too. As the story progresses, we along with Iris get more of a feel for who can be trusted, who her strongest allies are, and who the hidden threats might be. And there are many, it seems. Horizon Fault develops the story, and offers satisfying plot developments, whilst leaving plenty of threads to be explored in the third book. This means when you reach the end, you have enjoyed a satisfying read, but are also hungry for more.
Horizon Fault is available now in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats. Book Three, The Uncounted, does not yet have a publication date.
Book – Tab
Finally, Jon Scrivener’s debut dystopian cyberpunk novel, Tab, was released. Set in a post-climate change future London, it sees protagonist Tab’s life turned upside-down when she pickpockets the wrong mark.
Synopsis –
Are you ready to face the future?
Ravaged by fires and deadly pandemics and inundated by a series of devastating floods, London is a city divided. At the heart of this drowned and fractured metropolis, a privileged elite basks in jealously guarded luxury, while for most, mere survival is a nightly challenge.
In the steamy neon heat soak of old Soho, beneath the looming presence of The Wall, 17-year-old Tab plies her trade as a dipper, preying on the wealthy slirks who come each night in search of illicit thrills. Scarred by trauma and cursed by her own skin, she’s a broken thing in a broken world, living solely for the crack of klepping from elites.
But for chancers like Tab, fortune ebbs and flows like the dark and toxic River Thames. One easy mark, and she finds herself the proud owner of a Sirius X-eight, a sweet piece of cutting-edge tech worth a fortune on the streets. It seems almost too good to be true. And it is.
Pretty soon, Tab’s being hunted, and in a city where life is cheap and everyone has an angle, she’ll need to face her demons and find somebody to trust if she wants to make it out alive.
Tab lives in a future-set London, where the haves have walled themselves away from the have-nots. She’s an orphan, and has seemingly never really managed to find family, as even the people around her she might call ‘friends’ can never really get past her prickly outer barrier. Getting buy by pickpocketing, or dipping as it’s called in the story, she lives a day to day existence where ‘hope’ is a forgotten word.
And who can blame her? The London of Tab is a post-apocalyptic wasteland of detritus and decay. The wealthy have walled themselves off from the great unwashed,leaving those living outside the wall walking a tightrope. There are police, of sorts, but they can’t be relied on for assistance, and only exist seemingly as one more hazard to be avoided in the dystopian capital.
Jon Scrivener’s cyberpunk is not a neon bathed, futuristic metropolis populated by technologically enhanced cyber gangs. It’s a dark, dingy gutter where every step in the city takes you closer to danger. The author has gone for a gritty realism, a future setting that can be traced forward along a certain path from our present. This is portrayed particularly effectively because of his use of an existing environment. Tab lives in London. The real city of London, with the districts and landmarks that are recognisable. This, along with Tab’s very London attitude and manner of speaking, situates you firmly within the geographic setting.
It is, however, Scrivener’s description of the city, and his use of real locations that show you just how bleak and broken London is. Buildings with grand histories have fallen into disrepair, repurposed by street gangs and criminals, their past grandeur long forgotten. You can be told that a dystopian setting is damaged, devastated, and utterly fallen, but it’s in the showing, using a frame of reference that has some meaning, that Tab excels.
Tab, the character, is a lost soul. Living day to day with no real direction, it’s ironic that the hopeless situation that she suddenly finds herself in burdens her with purpose for the first time. Forced to go on the run having become a target of some dangerous people, she begins to learn about herself at the same time we do. Her newfound motivation drives her forward, but it also puts her into situations where she discovers some things within herself that she was never aware of before. These revelations come slowly over the course of the story, paced out perfectly by the author, and though by the end she is a different person, we’ve seen for ourselves exactly why this is the case.
As the finale of the book draws near, Tab is just as surprised as the reader when things don’t go exactly the way we might have expected, and this again is a sign of the author’s commitment to creating a realism, rather than merely constructing a plot. Tab is Jon Scrivener’s first novel, and based on what we’ve read, we’re very interested to see what he does next.
Tab is available now in paperback format from all good booksellers.
CYBERSTOPIA – Discord
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/purcXCnXzE
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