While the narrator isn’t likeable, I half expected a Good Solider situation, since I know the author was influenced by it. Instead the main character was more honest or stripped bare, and it is difficult for someone like that to be disliked, at least for me. The crisis of faith wasn’t as interesting as the inner most thoughts of the lovers. For me, it rang very true. How much time could be gained with someone you love simply by saying what you really thought? While it feels more like young love to me. I wasn’t difficult to believe a man such as the narrator never had that lesson. Even at the sad end he remains more-or-less unchanged.

“She could become anyone she wishes. But how will she know she is still herself?”

More than anything, Slow River is, at least to me, about trauma. It is explicit in its focus on abuse and trauma, but I didn’t find it graphic in its depictions “on-screen.” Even still, it is a heavy and it makes it more difficult to talk about for me, since my reviews are usually what I enjoyed and found novel about whatever it is I’m consuming. There’s child abusive, emotional, physical, sexual abuse. It is supposed to be disturbing, so it is not for everybody.

Published in 1995, Slow River tells the story of a young woman named Lore, who comes from a wealthy family who made their money and renown creating cutting-edge sewage reclamation plants. That life, however, comes crashing down when she’s kidnapped and ransomed. Her family doesn’t pay, Lore escapes her abductors, goes off the grid and enters a criminal underground via Spanner, a grifter who’s willing to help her—so long as Lore pays her back, however she can.

The story alternates between Lore’s past and her present. When she gets out of the dark and seedy underbelly that is this underground and begins working at a plant owned by her very own former family. And her life before her decision to move on, recapping the events with Spanner, which rapidly becomes disturbing as they showcase what the marginalized need to do to get continue to get by, as well as the various coping mechanisms utilized to disassociate from the things done.

"The business carries your name. You’re responsible."

Lore comes from a life of privilege but, interestingly, the amount of focus on both of these worlds took me by surprise. Her family and her loved ones in the past are revealed to be as monstrous, if not more at times, than the slums everybody fears in that world, and where she ends up. So much so that when she does get free of her captors—she doesn’t choose to go home to them. This time Lore spends recounting these events seem like her attempt at making sense of a decision that doesn’t seem to make any sense. She’s processing what happened in a dissociative state because she needs to understand why she so adamantly refuses to go back.

“You’re too damn.. glossy. Like a racehorse. Look at your eyes, and your teeth. They’re perfect. And your skin: not a single pimple and no scars. Everything’s symmetrical. You’re bursting with health. Go out in the neighborhood, even in rags, and you’ll shine like a lighthouse.”

Spanner doesn’t understand why she’d stay. At any point, she can return home…which ultimately means that, to Spanner, she doesn’t embody the streets as she does. When Lore and Spanner’s relationship shifts from being complete strangers helping each other for mutual, temporary benefits, to something romantic. It begins to unravel them both—creating a sense of tension and unease that paces with the story well because of the alternating structure of past and present until they collide and you finally figure things out at the same time Lore does.

It is also surprisingly in-depth and thorough about water reclamation and other technologies, like digital currency and invasion of privacy technology and things like that. I wasn’t sure if this water reclamation technology actually exists or if it was completely hypothetical. Whatever the case may be, it certainly seemed completely believable to me, authentic or not. And that believability induced an element of horror. The problem of polluted water, and the fact that we’re going to have significant issues with water in a few generations, become both solvable and instantly already commodified. A simple solution for some, yet not available to everybody.

“All Lore understood about Spanner was that whenever Lore reached for her, she wavered and was gone, like the shimmering reflection on the oily surface of the river.”

That credibility permeates every other facet of the story, augmenting and accenting the terrible and the very human, kind moments punctuating the character interactions.

It becomes clear with these interactions that anybody of substance in the fiction carries some kind of trauma, and it is all rooted in systemic issues. What is so different and so captivating about this is—even if it’s never a “fun” story to read—that it points the finger at capitalism in a way that is so brutal; so messy and bloody and bare, that everything is always focused on this overall larger picture; rather than typical cyberpunk, which encases some of these same thoughts in a far more different style. This is not sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There are no mirrorshades and trench coats and futuristic weapons. It discards the trappings entirely.

I liked that about it because I found it to be very honest fiction that seemed very personal. The fiction is pretty clear that this system, capitalism, that we trust for no good reason—hurts us and traumatizes us, and it’s absurd and mean and unfair. These things are far too real in the fiction and thus it refuses to make them vehicles for catharsis or power fantasies. It’s just not going to be that kind of story and you find that out from page one. The future becomes much more profoundly upsetting when the predators are shown to be manufactured by a system that manufactures trauma, and is far from being reclaimed.

“Spanner said, without looking up from the screen: ‘I’ll see you again. You’ll always need me.’”

"A bleeding sun in a nuclear haze"

I enjoyed my time with the previous novel, Necrotech, a lot. Be forewarned that if you don't like the "unlikeable" protagonist trope, this might not sway you. But then again, it just might. Necrotech was the day after a hangover. Riko was figuring her shit out and although the emotional reaction was there...it didn't hit me as hard as Nanoshock.

"...was half out the door when the chipset installed at the base of my skull thrummed; a haptic tap, like a finger poking at the top of my spine. A projected call, right to my personal frequency."

In broad strokes, Riko woke up naked, alone, and angry. In this cyberpunk world, everyone has Nanos in their bloodstream. They facilitate a bunch of tech and also heal your wounds. There's a catch, though. The Nanos work too hard, you go necro. Essentially, they take over your chipset, a microchip fused to your mind, and you turn into a kind of cyber-zombie. It sounds a bit tropey but I fully enjoyed it. Not because I hadn't read a cyberpunk zombie novel, but because Riko herself is incredibly likable...in an unlikeable way?!

"Any children born within the city are squeezed out with the standard nano package. It’s programmed in, parent to kid. First thing they do is carve a Security Identification Number into the fetal brain, upload that data to the system."

Her reaction is human and her character is crass beyond words, has some toxic masculinity to her--makes sense since she is a runner. Think Shadowrun and you'll have most of the terminology in the book, as well as what the criminal underworld mostly looks like. Chummers, runners, fucking the corporations over, etc. Riko wears this label in such a way that only a feminist could. I don't think a male writer could have pulled off this character as well. She's angry, her reactions are honest, and her own difficulties are interrogated via the people she knows in the story.

"She flinched. I tore the part of me that cared out and stomped it bloody into the spreading liquid on the floor."

We see the ramifications of the previous book as Riko struggles to maintain her relationships while she is mad. But this "madness," so to speak, is put under a microscope. And it's done very well. I was entirely happy to have another quick read where she tore shit up and punched guys in the face that asked her to smile more. K.C Alexander places some normal bullshit women have to deal with in the book as a form of catharsis, as Riko wrecks. Fucks. Their. Day. Up. And I tell you what, I am here for it.

"I breathed. Took in a gulp of air I didn’t know I was missing until her voice crashed into my daze and oxygen tore my world back into pulsating, vibrant color."

It transitions into unfamiliar territory not too far in, though. Where Riko is getting her ass handed to her and nevertheless, persisting. She is also dealing with what I can surmise as some form of PTSD, as well as the loss of her team. This was surprisingly affecting for me. I already enjoyed Riko as a character for her subversion of typical tropes, especially in first wave cyberpunk. But this additional layer felt like an examination of the politics worn on its arm. Not incredibly in-depth, but it is there; I appreciated it.

"...a Bolshovekia. Beautiful assault rifle, kicked like a drunk and killed like a dream."

Riko is still badass. Still gets her ass handed to her. Still is trying to figure out what happened to her and her girlfriend, as in the first novel. But we also get a much clearer picture of where she is at emotionally, as well as more structure to this criminal underground. I don't even like Shadowrun and I had a hell of a good time with the book. I am always pleasantly surprised when a cyberpunk decides to say more, and I'm glad the author made space to examine some aspects of the "angry feminist," while still unequivocally flying the middle finger at most everybody.

"Keep your eye on your side,” I shouted. She whipped back around. “Lo siento!” “Sorries are for funerals"

Come for the viscera being splayed, the angry, fuck off protagonist. Stay for a story that has you rooting for her to knock the teeth out of a guy that grabs her ass, all the while missing her family, her lover, and her home. I was going to talk about it a bit more than these broad strokes, but I think it is enough to say it surmounted my expectations and has more to say than Riko being angry and killing things. Check it out~

"...the core of my whole fucking world – sank through my fingers, something inside me broke. This time, I felt it."

Fantastic characters; incredibly cool magic and lore not Westernized; some of the best and endearing dialogue I’ve read; and the a story with many mysteries. Can’t wait for City of Copper. I loved this book.

Even more fun than the first one, I think. Dug the new characters and deeper characterization. More world building and lore. More face paced and action-packed. Love this series.

Remender can be hit and miss with his stories but with Tokyo Ghost and Low, he's really hitting his stride now. Tokyo Ghost is a brilliantly realized and fleshed out setting with classic cyberpunk underpinnings. Utilizing and making relevant again, classic themes already explored by tapping into technologies of today and projecting them into the future. There's a lot of societal behavior today being brought into the setting and then turned up, this doesn't mean it's "tired", it means its appealing to a wide range of people reading the book who haven't already been immersed in these themes being explored. If you have, it's more realized, fleshed out and gorgeous than ever. The artwork is fantastic, the character arcs are even more great. You empathize with both of them at different times, there's over the top violence being desensitized, all with the backdrop of some good characterization. I've read the next two issues after this and I continue to be impressed and want to read more. Recommend it!

“Death, the Sun, the Lovers. Lots of major arcana. Your future's controlled by others. There's powerful people playing with it. You're gonna have to fight to get it back...this is the country of truth. There the Devil, the Star, the Tower. In this country of truth, where your spirit lives, your life still isn't your own. Other stronger spirits, or maybe gods--they've got the say in what happens to you.”

Content warning for talk about sexual and physical abuse and minor spoilers for Bone Dance.

In a city gripped by a single man with a monopoly on energy, Sparrow is what I’d call a Nostalgist. They find old curiosities and sell them to people who can afford to collect remnants of the past in a future that only serves the wealthy and privileged.

“Happiness, in the land of Deals, is measured on a sliding scale. What makes you happy? A long white silent car with smoked-glass windows, with a chauffeur and a stocked bar and two beautiful objects of desire in the back seat? An apartment in a nice part of town? A kinder lover? A place to stand that's out of the wind? A brief cessation of pain? It depends on what you have at the moment I ask that question, and what you don't have. Wait a little, just a little. The scale will slide again.”

After a big deal, Sparrow remembers nothing of the night before, waking up with a killer headache. Turns out it isn't booze. A horseman took her body for their own and now powerful forces are coming for Sparrow. It's harrowing and heavy material and not for the faint of heart.

“Suddenly I could imagine all the things my body might do when I wasn't there to stop it and I felt so vile they might as well have happened. Maybe they had; they just hadn't left marks. I thought about a future full of blank spaces, and I knew I couldn't bear it. If that was the future, I had to escape it.”

I say “them” because, in this young adult cyberpunk novel, fantasy elements are bolted on; often to great effect. The story goes that years back these horsemen created by the government were made to be perfect weapons. They can infiltrate anyone’s mind, pushing their consciousness down—sometimes long enough to kill them outright. They made political changes and shaped the future, engaged in social engineering, topples empires from the inside. But their lives also cultivated a kind of insanity within them. The Big Bang. A horseman turned a key and detonated a nuclear bomb, ushering in a dystopia.

This same government also created androgynous bodies supposedly devoid of thought that were to be used by these horsemen. One of the main points of tension is the origin of Sparrow however, because bodies such as theirs are meant to be empty and waiting. They pass for male or female depending, generally, on the people they’re around at the time. Sparrow leveraged this to fade into the background and make a life in the shadows. They don’t really have close friends and their life, ironically, is in their media collection, which is massive and references pop culture from before the book was made. This past is the only thing they care about. Not their own; the history of others.
“Her skin was translucent pale, the complexion of the rich. Money made an excellent sunblock.”
But that anonymity is no longer an option as they get embroiled in a plot that puts them at a crossroads with horsemen at the other ends.

As the story unfolds, we learn about Sparrow as they learn about themselves. Often painfully. Cyberpunk often puts marginalized on display but this time it’s embodied fully in Sparrow. Performing gender, unfair power dynamics, and forces and powers people really don’t understand but are none-the-less leveraged for their own selfish ends are placed front and center in the fiction.

“The origin of my body and my mind didn't matter. I, the part of me that learned, that called on my memories, that knew I'd pulled a plant like this before, that had moved this hand to do it, was fifteen years old and innocent of evil or good. Neutral. From here forward, I was blank tape; what would be recorded there, and when, and why, was up to me.”

A major component to the fantasy elements in Bone Dance is Voodoo. The perception of nature parallels the discovery Sparrow goes through as they have to confront their past and rely on others for help in a way they’ve never allowed themselves to do before. Humanity’s view on supernatural forces, specifically in terms of Tarot and its subjectivity, is similarly paralleled. The major chapters are even introduced with tarot cards. But those answers rely on an interpretation which is flawed for the reader (at least, in my own experience) because of the power dynamics we’ve created with capitalism; so this information often acts as misinformation.

“From the lip of the Ravine, I could see the Deeps on the other side, hard gray and brown brick on wood on the nearest structures, shading further in to rose, bronze, black pearl, and verdigris in spires of stone, metals, and brilliant glass. The empress of it all, rising from the center, was Ego, the tallest building in the City, whose reflective flanks had no color of their own, but worse the sky instead--relentless, cloudless blue today. The towers of the Deeps, rising in angles or curves, were made more poignant by the occasional shattered forms of their ruined kin.”

Bone Dance is also filled with some of the best prose I’ve read. A character that is unique and intersectional. One in which feels like the handling around gender identity is done well, though I can’t speak to that much. I’m not one for fantasy usually, but this, as with other genre mashups I’ve read lately, has some of the very best work in cyberpunk I’ve consumed. Published in 1991, it’s interesting that there is another example of intersectional cyberpunk that is more progressive than most of what was coming out in that space at that time (and discards some of the problems in the first wave) and was released 2 years before it was declared dead with Snow Crash, no less.

While Sparrow discovers themself, they also have to confront their place in the world via these themes around nature because their body doesn’t fit the societal norms. This is tethered to the notion around popular spirituality being polluted by the environment we’ve created. How can we really have a grip on a truth that might be held in spirituality and spiritualism when our reality is rooted in capitalistic notions that conflict with and destroy nature. It’s also about trauma and how Sparrow chooses to process theirs. And the marks it leaves under the skin, forever.

"I don't trust memory, anyway. Why should I? Memories, however undependable, ought to be the stuff on the sand when the tides of experience recedes. As long as they're part of that process, there's something valid about them, something that ties them to real life."

Pretty incredible. I found each inventive and full of something being communicated to the reader beyond a good story. A view of the world more horrific than events in the story sometimes, and a vulnerability that clarifies the themes.