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A review by frasersimons
Necrotech by K.C. Alexander
4.0
This book gives you exactly what you'd expect from the back of the book. It's a cyberpunk action thriller. The protagonist, Riko, wakes up with time missing and has to unravel the mystery of what's happened to her.
It's gritty, it's vulgar all the time. And it's extremely fun. Riko is fleshed out very well. She's a walking, talking mess of contradictions and her humanity shines through brilliantly in a world filled with high-tech cybernetics, nano machines, and augmented reality. She gets beat down, she reacts believably, sometimes shedding her rough exterior when warranted and her internal monologue always satisfied me and never de-protagonized her.
There's some very human moments that come to mind easily, while always maintaining that she's come from the streets and worked her way up for her street cred. The fiction has great pacing and shifts between these moments and some great action sequences seamlessly and leaves some questions open for the next book. This felt like a great blend of 80s cyberpunk made relevant again with both updated tech but also a female protagonist. It could easily make a great action movie (with Angelina kicking ass).
I need to reiterate it's pretty great having a believable, conflicted bad ass woman that's depicted really well in cyberpunk fiction. It's sometimes hard to come by and It's a small thing that makes a lot of impact on the fiction.
I also loved that she was bi-sexual, but in the way that clearly wasn't there just because men find it hot. There's no obligatory woman on woman action that comes with the tag sometimes, and her thoughts about what she likes in people always originate outward from physical appearance. It really does make a huge difference for the story for me.
It's gritty, it's vulgar all the time. And it's extremely fun. Riko is fleshed out very well. She's a walking, talking mess of contradictions and her humanity shines through brilliantly in a world filled with high-tech cybernetics, nano machines, and augmented reality. She gets beat down, she reacts believably, sometimes shedding her rough exterior when warranted and her internal monologue always satisfied me and never de-protagonized her.
There's some very human moments that come to mind easily, while always maintaining that she's come from the streets and worked her way up for her street cred. The fiction has great pacing and shifts between these moments and some great action sequences seamlessly and leaves some questions open for the next book. This felt like a great blend of 80s cyberpunk made relevant again with both updated tech but also a female protagonist. It could easily make a great action movie (with Angelina kicking ass).
I need to reiterate it's pretty great having a believable, conflicted bad ass woman that's depicted really well in cyberpunk fiction. It's sometimes hard to come by and It's a small thing that makes a lot of impact on the fiction.
I also loved that she was bi-sexual, but in the way that clearly wasn't there just because men find it hot. There's no obligatory woman on woman action that comes with the tag sometimes, and her thoughts about what she likes in people always originate outward from physical appearance. It really does make a huge difference for the story for me.