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A review by whalleyrulz
Shadow of a Dead Star by Michael Shean
4.0
Somewhere between the horrible Citizens United court case and realizing Google not only powered my search engine but also built my phone and browser, I stopped reading cyberpunk. It seemed irrelevant, really, to pick up books that were "what if the past tried to describe today" because they'd all skew more violent than reality. Cyberpunk was a genre, and I say was, that existed to point out if we don't watch out, we'll all be owned by corporations and kept under heel by militarized, private-interest police forces.
We didn't watch out. Sorry, Gibson, Dick, and Stephenson. Our bad.
Michael Shean's Shadow of a Dead Star shows we've still got some watching out to do. It is a corporate dystopic book written post-Google; it latches onto science fiction harder than earlier cyberpunk stories would, but it kind of has to. Which, unfortunately, means there's a bit of a learning curve at the start; a bit more infodumps than you'd usually read, a bit more information you have to chew. It's worth the work; break through that and you'll read a rich, dark, solid, dark, realistic, dark, well-planned view of The World That Might Be. It's not just a good story, it's a warning. That's wha...
oh, what did I say dark a lot? This book's dark.
The root of decent cyberpunk stories almost has to be in noir. A detective, or cop, or hacker, or journalist, should be investigating a dark crime that an interconnected series of shitheads are all tied up together to hide. Shadow follows Thomas Walken, an agent of an information agency, as he investigates some Princess Dolls - children who have been mindwiped, technologically modified, and sold as sex toys. That kind of dark.
It has all the trappings of a first novel - a protagonist who is always right, an awkward learning curve, a rush to the ending - but Shadow of a Dead Star succeeds where others have failed in building a real world full of believable characters following realistic motivations. It's also full of that kind of specifically weird imagery that I just love. Michael Shean didn't write a perfect novel with this, but he wrote a damn sight better than a lot of other people's firsts, and I'm definitely starting the sequel this week.
Final note: if you want a standalone book, don't read this. Thomas Walken's story ends here, all wrapped up. Wonderland's doesn't. At all. I can't, in good faith, recommend this to people who don't want to get into a series.
We didn't watch out. Sorry, Gibson, Dick, and Stephenson. Our bad.
Michael Shean's Shadow of a Dead Star shows we've still got some watching out to do. It is a corporate dystopic book written post-Google; it latches onto science fiction harder than earlier cyberpunk stories would, but it kind of has to. Which, unfortunately, means there's a bit of a learning curve at the start; a bit more infodumps than you'd usually read, a bit more information you have to chew. It's worth the work; break through that and you'll read a rich, dark, solid, dark, realistic, dark, well-planned view of The World That Might Be. It's not just a good story, it's a warning. That's wha...
oh, what did I say dark a lot? This book's dark.
The root of decent cyberpunk stories almost has to be in noir. A detective, or cop, or hacker, or journalist, should be investigating a dark crime that an interconnected series of shitheads are all tied up together to hide. Shadow follows Thomas Walken, an agent of an information agency, as he investigates some Princess Dolls - children who have been mindwiped, technologically modified, and sold as sex toys. That kind of dark.
It has all the trappings of a first novel - a protagonist who is always right, an awkward learning curve, a rush to the ending - but Shadow of a Dead Star succeeds where others have failed in building a real world full of believable characters following realistic motivations. It's also full of that kind of specifically weird imagery that I just love. Michael Shean didn't write a perfect novel with this, but he wrote a damn sight better than a lot of other people's firsts, and I'm definitely starting the sequel this week.
Final note: if you want a standalone book, don't read this. Thomas Walken's story ends here, all wrapped up. Wonderland's doesn't. At all. I can't, in good faith, recommend this to people who don't want to get into a series.