Colour me pleasantly surprised.

The first book was good but not like this at all. An indentured detective back on Earth is tasked with solving the murder of a cult leader he has a tumultuous and complicated history with. We get much more world building around the Gov-Corps and world powers, but I think you could certainly read this or the first books as stand alone and not feel like you’d miss anything pivotal, yet still feel rewarded for seeing the connective tissue.

My favourite part is how everyone is chipped, and how Newman makes the concept of immersive UI and technologies accessible. Rather than info dump the idea of hybrid reality, she is incorporates it seamlessly into the everyday negotiation of life, and educates the reader as needed. Hybrid reality is still rather rare in scifi and especially cyberpunk trappings, probably because people like the idea of a more analog retro future in the subgenre. Seeing it done well is a treat.

This is a more plot heavy book than the first, though the character work is still very good, and the world convincing. It is less concerned with larger thematics, which isn’t a bad thing. I think much of what can be said about capitalization, Corportocracy, labour, stratification of class—has lost its heft, after being tread on over and over. While the themes are still present, Newman has at the centre the feelings around the loss of agency around digging yourself further in the hole to feel any semblance of humanity, and how crushing it is to feel owned.

It is a bleak world, as one expects from cyberpunk, and perhaps a bit of a surprise after the first book, with the idea of humanity on another planet bringing the assumption that maybe the world has pulls together somewhat, even if it’s overshadowed by the government corporations mentioned in the first book. Anxiety, though, permeates the main characters of both books, as well as the future. Yet there is a nice balance of embodied humanity in the characters, attempting to fight for any scrap of agency they can. It’s not about fighting back against the corporations, it’s about the human condition in such a place and future, which makes everything relatable.

A bit less interesting than the other setups, but mostly because the mystery revolving around a woman either experiencing psychosis or a conspiracy feels like it is well and truly drawn out, as are her musings on motherhood, atypical as they are. The character work and themes all feel thread upon and the cliffhanger from the previous book isn’t answered, nor is the macro plot line much at all.

Aside from pacing and what feels like filler, it was still compelling enough to get through because the mystery was done well.

This was a bit conflicting for me. The ending was fun but a bit tropey, yet it also fits the character work done, and does slightly plug the holes in the world building, especially for the factions, which were on the very light side, this go around.

It’s an improvement over the last one. Better, and more interesting plot and plotting; questions about the ship and the circle are answered; there is a murder mystery with a twist. It is also quite myopic. Dee interacts with so few people that the plot is a bit of a razors edge, the solipsism contributing to it feeling contrived, but the consequences feeling somewhat justified. I do think I overall enjoy the plot enough and how it relates to Dee in the end. Had it been more fleshed out, this could have been really great, though.

3.5 rounded up.

**Spoiler thoughts**

One of the detractors is that it ends up being technophobic, which feels somewhat antiquated, even if it does walk a certain line, since it’s the arguably true that Dee behaved and acted the way she did, and it does call into question her character, dealing with them in a satisfying way. But the whole morally grey but just self aware A.I thing feels like it there could have been more payoff across the series, rather than it being sprung on solely in this one. It feels like it slightly cheapens it.

2024 reread:
I still really enjoyed the colonists' challenges on an alien planet—most notably, the ecological and psychological problems between the factions. Strangely, Bobby didn't have more of a role; despite having a chapter early on, she didn't appear again. This book is a great launching pad for the second era of the series, though, introducing new ramifications of the start of colonization and the choices made on the planet by Holden and the team.

Original:
Liked this one quite a bit more than the last one. It’s similarly somewhat slower, but I found this much more interesting, and the new characters are more compelling to spend time with. I like how Holden's character arc is developed, and the challenges of the alien planet make for exciting reading. More psychology, more science. I love that the characters' obstacles are usually pretty inventive and don’t just resort to gunfights. It's probably my favorite thing about the books, and it also remains valid for this one.

This benefited a lot from my having read book one quite a bit ago, because in many ways it’s more of the same. While before we see the rise and fall of the MC and the main antagonist, from friends to enemies and more, this lacks that more solid macro plot arc. Yet it has more complex cyclical, vignette style micro plot beat structure. So much happens in each chapter, each one could be the entire season of a TV show. Sometimes introducing and catching up a new character to where the narrative is, other times spending time with them before moving around in its epic scope.

Thematically, this is where the book is weakest because, as with the first, every character is on trial and shown cause and effect, painting a picture where Everyone is The Cartel, from the U.S to Mexico, from those who remain silent, to those that are creating the demand for the product. Governments, officials, dealers, enforcers, workers. No one is just, or moral, and why the war on drugs is so complicated is well illustrated.

Mostly, though, the enjoyment from this comes from the dramatic and complex plotting, so it doesn’t surprise me it’s polarizing. It’s also extremely brutal, just like the first. If you liked the first one, you should know what you signed up for. Ordinarily I don’t like gangster-type crime narratives but both of these did have me fairly riveted. I’ll probably finish out the trilogy.

3.5 rounded up

Had this been shorter I don’t think I’d have finished it. It’s fun, some of the time, but mostly the narrative voice was so sterile and the humour not my thing, the annoyances outweighed any interesting aspects it had, for me. Nothing evocative or specific made the prose work incredibly bland, the absurdism lacked any bite, so that the main emotional drivers didn’t connect, and some character decisions were unconvincing, feeling in service to a plot beat or the aping of what a patriotic stoic veteran would say, rather than what he says is important to him.

I doubt I’d have finished this if I didn’t own it already. Another “must-read” knocked off the ol’ TBR, thankfully, but unfortunately, quite the trudge. It should be a lot of fun. Time travel, paradoxes, magic. The problem, for me, was in the quality of the prose, the unconvincing antagonistic devices, and the incredulity of the MC to get to where he ended up. Maybe if it was more Cohen-brothers-esk, I could find myself believing the outcome, but the stumbling and plotting is obviously toward a narrow, prescribed ending, that it all just feels a bit too overworked and overwritten.

Somehow, when the time travel actually happens and the fallout occurs, for some time it’s endlessly boring. It takes forever to get going. The women aren’t written well. It’s got some good ideas, and the macro plotting is impressive, but the execution of everything else, even to the similes, is not good. Reading scifi from this era always makes me wonder what editors were up to.

The first book had a section that dragged quite a bit, for me, and most of this book (unfortunately) was interested in modelling itself after it.

Now firmly cemented as rich, “the blowback” (I refuse to capitalize), a group of VR entrenched conspiracy jobs, spin Zoey’s rise in a misogynistic, disgusting light, in an effort to galvanize various other factions against her.

A lot of this novel is spent with Zoey experiencing a crisis of faith in herself, questioning her power and wealth, vacillating between being ineffectual or else a complete tyrant because she’s not doing enough. While some of this book does a descent job at showing how hate groups work, it doesn’t make for interesting or tense reading, so it’s just people standing around talking or Zoey doom spiralling internally or verbalizing it. The humour actually worked against it numerous times too, deflating any sense of actual stakes or crises.

Contrary to the title, the resolution to everything is maybe an alright progression of Zoey’s character, but also antithetical to what made the first book a fun read. Moronic jerks keep trying to make Zoey feel like crap and there’s no actual agency to speak of, physical otherwise, for her to deploy. What winning looks like in those circumstances, is kind of anticlimactic. I thought she’d have taken self defence classes or learned a bit, but no, especially given the title. Instead, there’s a cohen-esk bumbling around to an ending, which fizzled out.

Which is kind of a shame, given the third books’ cover looks really good. I’m not sure I want to bother with it after this, though.

Honestly, almost a four star read, but dragged a little too much. This felt like Kristen Bell in Veronica Mars all grown up, slapped into futurism, and obviously, she’s not an investigator. But the humour and mannerisms, especially feel like it, and probably endeared me to the character more. Which is funny, because I hated Snow Crash’s humour, yet got on with this. In the right mood, I guess.

In a very, very broad sense, I can see why people classify this as cyberpunk. It does have high tech and low life, with Zoey herself being on the lower stratification of class, and technology being repurposed to take back some agency. There’s an underlying message in-line with the sub genre too. But it’s so silly and operatic, so much less grim that it doesn’t totally feel like it either. But that’s probably what makes it a nice inclusion to the sub genre, too.

This is a pretty quirky book. You need to be in the mood for both a dude-bro villain and a shallow mystery, unspooled relatively quickly in favour of a fast paced action ending. But somewhere in the middle, after the mystery, it does have trouble, dragging a bit at the transition. It gets bombastic and zany, but by that point, you’ll know if you’re on board for it, since there’s smaller moments onboarding the reader pretty much from the get-go. I had a good time with it, which is a lot more than I expected.

Another novel shelved as cyberpunk, but is missing the low life aspect of the subgenre, so is miscategorized. The notions around collectivism embodied in a cell structure are interesting enough, though the plot and characters are very much secondary to a few of them. So much so, some characters are forgotten about entirely while others feel like little more than a cog.

I floated between that dissatisfaction and an implacable incredulity of the actual conceit. I wanted to know where it was all going, but was fairly certain of the outcome, because all collectivism in scifi leads to seemingly the same road. And this is no different.

It is better written than some other masterworks I’ve tried though; had there been more than the ideas, there was a possibility of really enjoying it, like so many others seem to have.