A review by zraitor
Shadow of the Day by Nick Younker

5.0

The author brings us to a dark future, where only the rich can afford healthcare, and the internet, although now free and super high speed, is used to invade everyone's lives, their thoughts, feelings, dreams, everything. Well, that's not too different from now though is it, minus the tech? Of course, that is the point. It is today's world taken to its worst endpoint, and a group of people fighting back at that play a huge part in this.

An investigation to figure out why a nine-year-old girl killed herself ends up leading the main character to a new technology that will change the health care industry forever. And of course, possibly have horrible implications. There are a lot of twists and turns and a slow revealing of information here, so it is best I leave that part at that.

I have to say I wasn't really that into the characters this time around, they had their moments but mostly just shouted at one another, especially later on when the big information reveal was happening, and that was just annoying. I found they mostly just served their purpose in the plot and were pretty average.

Of course, what is mostly on display here is the technology and terms the author has come up with, and he nearly goes all full information dump on the reader once more. It's all cool, and certainly fun to think about, but it just became a bit much for me. He does once more do some excellent world-building, and his social commentary was quite effective.

I did love the ending, it was brutal and uncomfortable, then takes us to a dark comedy section to end the story. This was definitely fun and had a lot of neat things in it, but dropped just a little too much tech talk and not enough story and characters.