Companion (2025) review

     Companion (2025) was a film I was back and forth reviewing due to being a science fiction black comedy. If I had to define its genre, I’d say it’s cyberpunk lite. A story that could basically be summarized as “What if Blade Runner starred the machines and had really stupid people after them?” Despite the comedic elements or perhaps because of them, Companion deals with a lot of incredibly dark subject matter and touches on numerous themes of both technology as well as socialization.

    It’s sort of an interesting comparison to Ex Machina, which had the idea of our machines as wholly inhuman but mankind confuses them for people. This is instead the story of us making our machines human enough that we just use it as an excuse to treat them as how we already treat ourselves (which is like shit). There’s a strong feminist theme to the movie that underscores the comedy and slasher movie vibe as our heroine struggles to understand what her “boyfriend” now wants to murder her.

    The marketing spoiled a lot of this movie in a manner like Captain American: Brave New World as one of the biggest twists comes around the fifteen minute mark but is spoiled by the poster. Indeed, I wasn’t even aware it was meant to be a surprise until I watched this movie with my nieces. They had no familiarity with the movie and thus were completely taken off guard when it happened. If you can watch the movie unspoiled or with people who don’t know anything other than the title, then I recommend it. Otherwise, note, that the rest of the review will treat this initial reveal as a given.

    The premise for Companion is that Irish (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) are a sickeningly happy couple that are visiting their Russian friend’s house for the weekend. It is an incredibly luxurious house in the middle of nowhere and they’ll be joined by several friends. It is in the near future with self-driving cars and a variety of other luxury items that seem to be available only to the super rich, though Jack isn’t one of them. One of the guests, Kat (Megan Suri), is initially very hostile to Iris and she doesn’t know why. Sergey (Rupert Friend) gets aggressive with Iris and events spiral out of control when he’s killed.

    Which turns out to have been the plan all along as Iris discovers that’s what she was programmed to do all along. Iris, much to her shock and horror, is a companion robot for Josh. A sort of sexy Tamagotchi that was given a set of fake memories and a willingness to please that overrides all other considerations. Rather than the superhumans of Blade Runner, companions are deliberately made to be no smarter or stronger than “regular” humans with the ability of their owners to make them even dumber or weaker. Josh is fond of his companion robot but no more so than a pet and arguably even less than that as he’s willing to sacrifice her as part of his plan to murder Sergey then rob him. Unfortunately, he’s careless with his master control and he’s turned up Iris’ survival instincts.

    Much of Companion is, essentially, not so veiled commentary on “nice guy” misogyny. Josh is good looking and willing to put on a pleasant enough face around his girlfriend but only when she’s subservient to him. Ultimately, she’s a convenience and someone that he gets increasingly violent toward as he finds his plans thwarted. We also discover just how fragile Josh’s self-esteem is. The fact Jack Quaid is the kind of actor that would be the dorky but handsome lead in a romantic comedy, makes his transformation even more shocking. Like a slowly boiling kettle, we also see how the escalation grows from dismissiveness to furious rage.

    Companion’s humor comes from the same source as the movie’s terror. The murderers are not particularly competent at their crimes but that doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. All of them, even the more sympathetic ones, think of Iris as an appliance that needs to be destroyed. The absolute lack of sympathy from everyone around here is surprisingly well realized. Sophie Thatcher beautifully embodies both the idealized retro-girlfriend with her 1950s-esque inspired look as well as the increasingly capable Iris as she realizes her only way out may be blocked by what she was made to be. I had a lot of fun with this movie.

8/10

Shadowrun: Never Deal with a Dragon by Robert N. Charrette review

    NEVER DEAL WITH A DRAGON by Robert N. Charrette is the first Shadowrun novel and the first volume of the Secrets of Power trilogy. It is our first introduction to Shadowrun from the literary side of things and if you’ve never played the game, Shadowrun is a cyberpunk fantasy where magic returned to the Earth in 2012. Huge chunks of humanity were mutated into races like elves, dwarves, orcs, and trolls. If that sounds silly, it is. If that sounds awesome, it is. If you’re a person who loves “pure” cyberpunk and hate the sound of that, well, this isn’t the book for you.

    The premise is that Sam Verner is a white male human heterosexual religious protagonist, which is not a criticism but just a note that it’s somewhat noticeable in Shadowrun (as well as cyberpunk in general), that works as a programmer for the Japanese Renraku megacorp. His life is reasonably okay until his sister is transformed into an Ork and he immediately finds himself shunned by polite society. His wee gets worse as he’s sent to Seattle and the plane is hijacked by a group of Shadowrunners that he ends up accidentally befriending.

    I like the book’s mixture of magic and cyberpunk elements by never winking at the reader or commenting on how strange it is. By playing it straight, the book’s weirder elements have a chance to shine. Sam Verner is a guy who was raised by a fundamentalist who refused to acknowledge magic and tried to shield his children as much as possible from it. However, magic (and chaos) proceeds to find Sam even when he’s trying to live as lawful and orderly a world as possible.

    The depiction of Shadowrunners in the book is also interesting as we get to see them do some pretty awful things but show each other loyalty that you wouldn’t expect from hardened criminals. It felt very much like a tabletop RPG in that once you were accepted as a member of the “player characters” that they would go to elaborate lengths for one another.

    I like how the various plots and counter-plots in the book build up like a game of Vampire: The Masquerade. There’s several separate corporate conspiracies going on simultaneously with Sam Verner suspected to be at the bottom of them, ironically, because everyone believes no one can be as squeaky clean as him. This includes a plot by Mr. Drake who, shock of shocks, is actually a dragon. If I had any complaints, I would say that I didn’t like the handling of Sam Verner’s girlfriend who seems to exist solely to give him someone to avenge.

    This is a pretty entertaining book from beginning to end as I came to like all of the characters with Sally Tsung, Dodger, Ghost, and Ms. Crenshaw that are a great deal more interesting than the somewhat naive Sam Verner. There’s a lot of use of the signature characters from the 1st Edition Shadowrun sourcebook and I like when tabletop games take that attitude. The cross-pollination of tabletop games with the fiction is well done throughout the book.

Available here

Two new series on Kindle Unlimited

Hey folks,

I'm pleased to announce that there's now two more series of mine available in Kindle Unlimited. The first of these is LORDS OF DRAGON KEEP, which is my new fantasy parody series. It is to the fantasy genre what the Supervillainy Saga is to superheroes. The second is FUTUREPUNK, which is the collected volumes of AGENT G, THE CYBER DRAGONS TRILOGY, and MOON COPS ON THE MOON.

LORDS OF DRAGON KEEP

"Give me the incredibly short summary of what the hell is going on, please. The kind you could fit into a movie trailer."

“You’re trapped in a video game world based on a hack dark fantasy author’s rip-off of better books.”*

“Uh huh. Maybe you could be a bit more detailed.”

Aragorn "Aaron" Bartkowski was a programmer working at Epic DungeoneeringTM, the world's largest fantasy video game company. Much to his surprise, he was selected to pick up the latest manuscript from reclusive author Larry C.C. Weis. Weis had been working on his newest book for over a decade and the good folk at Aaron's company had dibs on adapting it. Unfortunately, Weis was also a wizard and sent Aaron to the world that inspired his books.

Aaron proceeded to find himself in a Slavic mythology themed world where he's believed to be Weis' main character, Garland of Nowhere. Equipped with the powers of a RPG protagonist, Aaron must accumulate experience and equipment while navigating a setting that seems worse off than Game of Thrones and Dark Souls put together.

LORDS OF DRAGON KEEP is a LitRPG progression fantasy isekai that takes the grim out of grimdark with biting humor as well as intelligent exploitation of the rules. It has excellent world-building, a great supporting cast, a bit of romance, and lots of laughs. Oh and there's a talking raven.

I'm pleased to share my latest book with y'all and thought you'd enjoy that, for the price of a cup of coffee, you can continue an author ruthlessly mocking dark fantasy. So toss a coin to your Witcher and pick up a copy.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Dragon-Keep-Dark-Undermaster-ebook/dp/B0DF38YSTD/

FUTUREPUNK

"The world is a neon-ridden hellhole, how did we get there?"
-Anonymous cyberpunk

A high-class corporate assassin. An ex-Yakuza smuggler. A detective with a robot dog. Three generations of individuals struggling against the rain-soaked technology dominated world of Futurepunk. A place where there are no heroes but only winners and losers. 

I wrote this nine-book series as an indie author who was absolutely in love with cyberpunk since the day he first booted up the original Deus Ex game in 2000. It found a decent-sized fanbase and the series remains one of my favorite works. I am now going to be sharing its characters and their journey across a shared world that spans a century of time. They're available on Kindle, paperback, and audiobook form.

I hope you enjoy.

Books 1 -3: The Agent G Saga

Books 4-6: The Cyber Dragons Saga

Books 7-9: Moon Cops

"The Gernsback Continuum" by William Gibson review

 

    “The Gernsback Continuum” is William Gibson of 1981, looking back forty years to the the Golden Age of Science Fiction from the 1920s to the 1930s. While not quite as long from the Nineteen Eighties to the Twenty-Twenties, it’s pretty close and interesting to note that the same wistful nostalgia filter we have regarding cyberpunk as envisioned by Gibson and his contemporaries is the same that he was undoubtedly feeling when he wrote this story.

    The premise is pretty simple, a photographer is sent to take photos of art deco architecture of a futuristic kind. Said photographer starts hallucinating an alternate 1980s with flying cars, massive highways, and people dressed like they’re from the planet Krypton. Anyone who has played Fallout has an idea of what this looks like as there’s the Red Rocket stations and Robbie the Robot-esque machines. His agent is surprisingly sympathetic to his losing his mind and says to basically “cool down” by watching a lot of porn and bad TV to shock his system back to normal.

    The actual meaning of the story is debatable and has, indeed, been debated for decades. For most people, it’s a straight up ode to the classic science fiction world as envisioned by the early Pulp writers that never came to exist. There’s no Jetsons, Flash Gordon, or Buck Rogers-esque future. Life became far more mundane and there’s a wistful nostalgia for a world where UFOs and crystal spires might have replaced skyscrapers or planes.

    I maintain that Gibson was far more critical in his short story of the world as it might have been and recognized the darker undercurrent that was lurking beneath the mind of many Pulp writers. People who were as often as not reactionary as progressive. For modern day fans, we can look back to Deep Space Nine’s “Far Beyond the Stars” to see how Pulp writers of the time period were really with all of the racism and sexism (arguably pretty toned down). Every HP Lovecraft fan certainly has to deal with the fact their author probably would have found some reason to hate them.

    “The Gernsback Continuum” has a particularly haunting scene where the protagonist comes across a couple of Aryan superman looking folk staring at one of their cities. White, CIS, het, and vaguely fascist in a way the Pulps envisioned because they didn’t see anyone outside of those norms having a place in the future. It becomes interesting to contrast cyberpunk, so-called dystopian fiction, as very much having a place for queer or people of color among it. William Gibson’s writing alone for example.

    Indeed, “The Gernsback Continuum” is a story that unwittingly sets itself up as the perfect metaphor for the current ongoing culture war between the Golden Age of Science Fiction and cyberpunk that it is a gateway story. The internet is absolutely filled with so-called speculative fiction fans that are furious at the inclusion of “woke” elements that represent the kind of reactionary future that cyberpunk challenged the assumptions of. To believe in a utopia in the 1930s was far easier for people who saw it as an extension of imperialist dreams and the status quo versus a dystopia that, ironically, promised an overthrow of the present order in the 1980s.

    I’ve unironically had conversations with people who state that dystopian and post-apocalypse fiction was anti-progressive. The Disney movie Tomorrowland is based around the idea that refusing to believe things are getting better was somehow antithetical to it happening. That always brings me back to this short story and what I think the real message of cyberpunk is: recognizing the systemic flaws so that they can be corrected.

    Writing my own cyberpunk, I think of it as a wistful nostalgia-filled dream of motorcycles, cybernetics, and katana. It is stuff from my childhood when I watched Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Bubblegum Crisis. Sadly, the modern day is a place where we’ve got micro-computers, the internet, megacorps, computer criminals, and the massive wealth disparity but very few of the people rising up to cast down the man. I wonder what the next age looking back on us will be.

 Available here

Space Punks II: Nightingale's Song by Anna Mocikat review

    SPACE PUNKS II: NIGHTINGALE' SONG is the sequel to SPACE PUNKS, which is at least a very accurate title to the story. I'm a huge fan of Anna Mocikat's BEHIND BLUE EYES series and really enjoyed the first of this series.  If I had to describe it, I'd say it's close to COWBOY BEBOP except hewing closer to cyberpunk motifs instead of Western. A bunch of sexy cybernetically augmented mercenaries live on the starship Nephilim, doing odd jobs for their mysterious boss, while being involved in both organized crime as well as politics. Most of humanity was exterminated when Earth was destroyed in the wars against the machines but the survivors live in comparative high tech luxury.

    In the previous book, we had the discovery that newcomer David was actually an android that had been sent to infiltrate the crew. We also had Nightingale being horribly injured This book picks up with giving us David's origins as well as a follow-up on Nightingale's condition. Well, it's not good. If he doesn't receive a super rare part then he'll be dead in a week. He also can't have sex with his girlfriend, Aztec, that he has just proposed marriage to in a time when that institute is considered to be obsolete.

    Much of the book is divided between the protagonists showing their complicated and fascinating relationships, world-building so we understand how this new society works, and the "big heist" where they attempt to hit a military depot in order to get the rare part that Nightingale needs to survive. Say what you will about the Nightingale crew but they are willing to do whatever they have to in order to protect one another.

    The best part of the Space Punks series is definitely the cast and all of the characters are interesting with a variety of dark and troubled pasts. They're a rare sight in science fiction in that most are in committed relationships and deeply devoted to one another while still being no less "cool" and edgy for it. As stated, the crew is intensely loyal to one another and seeing how they can rely on one another makes them easy to root for despite they're a bunch of dedicated ruthless cyborg mercenaries.

    We get a good look at Mars this book and find out how he's gone from being first of Earth's colonies to the center of human civilization in the setting. Despite being a space based series, it is very cyberpunk and the Pentad substitutes for the evil megacorporations of most fiction. They are a ruthless oligarchy with control over all of humanity's vital supplies as well as militaries, so they can do more or less whatever they want without fear from the public. We also get regular tidbits from an in-universe encyclopedia that help fill in the blanks on how the universe functions.

    I'm especially fond of Lucien, the villain, who fills all the depraved psychopath folders that make for a good cyberpunk villain. It may be cheating that one of the heads of the cyborg armed forces is also a serial killer but it certainly makes for a delightfully hateable villain. His scenes have genuine menace and you are worried about the protagonists when they are up against him.

    In conclusion, Space Punks II: Nightingale's Song is an excellent dark and edgy piece of science fiction that would make a good television show with a sufficiently pretty cast. Anne Mocikat is one of my favorite indie writers right now and if you want dark, forboding, and yet fun adventure fiction then this is definitely for you.

Available here

Moon Cops on the Moon is now available on Kindle

 Hey folks, 

I have fantastic news! MOON COPS ON THE MOON is now available on Kindle and has already hit number 1# in Humorous Science Fiction! I'm so pleased by this and hope you guys will do me a solid and pick up a copy, only for 99c this month only! 

 
FROM THE BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF THE SUPERVILLAINY SAGA:

"Welcome to the moon!"

Neal Gordon screwed up his assignment on Mars and they reassigned him to Antarctica. Now he's being reassigned some place even worse: Luna City. A crime ridden hellhole with a super-rich ruling class, he almost immediately finds himself targeted by bounty hunters and cyborg terrorists. Thankfully, Neal has an unusual set of partners in robot dog, Barksley, and the snarky but badass Lucy Westenra. Yes, make all the vampire jokes you want.

It's tough being a corporate cop on humanity's foremost colony and before this adventure is over, he's going to have to deal with deranged influencers, mysterious female secret agents, and a 1970s themed flying car called the Purple Rain. Can he survive to get reassigned? Who knows.

MOON COPS ON THE MOON is set in the Futurepunk setting of Agent G, the Cyber Dragons Trilogy, and Space Academy novels but functions as a standalone series. It is a humorous action-filled romp that fans of The Expanse, Robocop, Demolition Man, and Blade Runner will enjoy.

Available here 

Robocop: Rogue City review

    ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY is a first-person shooter developed by Teyon and published by Nacon. It also stars Peter Weller, the original Robocop, as the titular character. As the resident cyberpunk junkie of the site as well as a longtime fan of the franchise, this was obviously going to be a day one purchase for me. However, it came with the sweeping sense of dread that can only come from the fact that Robocop has a history of truly awful sequels and bad adaptations. 

    There's just not that many people able to soak up the original's anti-capitalist mixture of comedy as well as brutal violence. The fact the game takes place between Robocop 2 and 3 (or outright takes place in an alternate continuity) is the biggest argument for the developer's receiving a chance from me. Robocop 2 wasn't nearly as good a movie as the first and took a ridiculous stance on the War on Drugs but was still the last genuinely good product from the franchise unless you count the Frank Miller comic book version.

    Anyway, the premise for Rogue City is that there's a mysterious new player in Detroit's underworld called "The New Guy." I admit, not the best start for establishing a villain and the game does kind of suck at naming it villains as well find with murderous gang called the Torch Heads. The Torch Heads have seized a TV station as part of their attempt to reach out to this new crime boss and Robocop must do what Robocop does best: kill a bunch of baddies before unraveling a mystery that undoubtedly somehow ties to OCP.

    Generally, the gameplay is "fine", which is not really ringing endorsement but not a condemnation either. You walk slowly through the game killing people with your pistol and other guns. If you get close to them, you can lethally throw them around. It feels very much like a rail shooter with slightly more freedom of movement. Robocop is slow and even moving quickly is more like, "normal walk" instead of "slow serial killer walk." This is true to the Eighties Robocop but not necessarily the best gameplay.

    The storytelling is better than I was expecting even if it doesn't reinvent the wheel. In addition to the slaughter of criminals, Robocop can and should do investigations into various crimes around the city. This ranges from the usual, "There's been a hooker murdered by one of her Johns" to "busting up a ring of car thieves." You can also ticket drunks, graffiti artists, and guys who have leaking oil from their car. If you enforce the law vigorously, you get "Uphold the Law" points and if you enforce the law mercifully, you guy "Serve the Public Trust" points.

    Really, the best part of the game is when they stop to do some actual character development of Alex J. Murphy. Murphy is suffering a horrific fate as an enslaved super-soldier with very little of his body left, driven only by his desire to help others while OCP wants to use him as a weapon. Too many installments of the franchise act like being Robocop is just a kind of superpowered upgrade versus a dreadful curse. 

    I give massive points to the game for including Lewis when so many other adaptations consider her optional or use a Lewis substitute. I've always felt Nancy Allen's Lewis was a vital part of what made the first two movies work (and why I hate the third). She provides a lot of emotional support that allows Murphy to survive from night to night. 

    Still, this game suffers from the fact that it feels like it is a generation or so behind the current generation if not two generations. The graphics aren't great, the gameplay is fine, and the storytelling is okay. Still, I'm going to say this is probably a 3.5/5 rather than a 4/5 let alone a 5 out of 5. If you're a big Robocop fan, this is a great buy but it's absolutely not a must buy. Nine to twelve hours of gameplay is probably best waiting for a sale or a trade-in.

Available here

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty review

    There’s also some “radiant quests” that pop up in the game as well with the option of stealing cars for El Capitain as well as raiding supply drops for the Barghests. These are the kind of quests you have in Grand Theft Auto and The Division but add a lot of fun. Certainly, stealing cars and being chased by enemies makes it so the addition of vehicular combat rules in Update 2.0 isn’t completely worthwhile. There’s also the addition of the “Relic” perk tree that gives you a large number of new cybernetic abilities.

     CYBERPUNK 2077: PHANTOM LIBERTY is the only expansion that CD Projejkt Red is producing for the controversial but well-loved Cyberpunk 2077. Many fans were hoping it would be akin to The Witcher 3′s Blood and Wine with the size of a whole new game added. Others believed it would be closer to Heart of Stone, which was a single campaign that was entertaining but not exactly groundbreaking. The truth is that Phantom Liberty is somewhere in the middle and an excellent addition to the game but also something that doesn’t feel like so much an entirely new game but filling out some of the failures of the base game.

    The plot is the President of the New United States (NUSA), Rosalind Myers (Kay Bess), has been hacked out of the sky and forced into the Combat Zone of Pacifica. A Combat Zone is a territory where there are no police, and the criminals directly rule. Called “Dogtown”, this new area of the map fills in a very empty region of Night City with new quests, buildings, NPCs, and activities to broaden the enjoyment factor of the game. It mostly succeeds and combined with Update 2.0, is now an almost entirely different feeling game.

    The main questline is an excellent one with strong character-driven storytelling supplemented by the characters of Songbird (Minji Chang), Solomon Reed (Idris Elba), and President Myers. All three of them join the ranks of Johnny Silverhand, Panam, and Judy for characters that are incredibly memorable with their acting doing the heavy lifting to get us to care for them during the story. The story would not work if you didn’t come to like and sympathize with all three before being forced to make some troubling choices. The Cinematic Trailer for Phantom Liberty depicts Songbird burning Reed as a spy and sets the stage to know someone is betraying someone else when you see all of these individuals “allied.”

    The villain of the game, Kurt Hansen, isn’t really much to write home about. A local petty warlord, he is the ruler of Dogtown and has a private army under his command, but this doesn’t really add much to the story. He’s a bad guy, he’s got trained soldiers, and you must carve or shoot your way through them until you face him down. His one-dimensionality doesn’t particularly hurt the story, though, because he’s a well-executed example of the character type. You understand why he’s top dog in Dogtown (no pun intended) due to his speeches on the sound system that promise security for Eddies. Even so, I feel they could have done more with him.

    The main quest and side content equal about thirty hours’ worth of content or not quite long enough. Frankly, I feel like the inclusion of Phantom Liberty lengthens the “main quest” of Cyberpunk 2077 to about where it should have been originally if you consider it the “Militech” story arc. Even so, it does have a very different feel from the other storylines because V is no longer working as a street merc but as a government agent for the merged FBI/CIA equivalent. It even has an extended homage to Casino Royale.

    Interestingly, Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves) has as large a role in this DLC as Idris Elba and it expands on the character a reat deal. Arguably, it does a much better job of making you sympathize with his anarchist philosophy than the main game where he seemed like a poseur. Phantom Liberty explores Johnny’s past as a veteran of Militech’s foreign wars and how it left him suffering PTSD as well as surrounded by dead friends while being told it was all for a greater good. I know many people in RL who came out every bit as cynical as Johnny following their service and he works very well as a contrast to Solomon Reed who needs to believe it’s all worth it somehow.

    The storytelling for the Side Gigs is also a lot deeper as well with most of them being for Mr. Hands, who only had a single Pacifica Gig in the main game but gets an entire questline now. The game also relates a lot more to your in-game activities so that if you’ve completed certain quests, you’ll get different ways of resolving them. For example, I could use River’s help to steal some generators to replace a private’s stolen ones or I could get Panam’s help to smuggle the guy out of Dogtown with his girlfriend.

    Fans of big epic set pieces will enjoy the game because a lot of attention went into making action scenes that are far and removed from most of the game. V will have to do a lot of first person scaling of Dogtown’s many towers and buildings. There are also some fantastic boss fights like V battling against a spider tank straight out of Ghost in the Shell. I felt very satisfied being able to finally use my V’s weapons and cyberware to their full extent.

    Perhaps the biggest change to the game is that it adds an entirely new ending to the game. For many people, this ending will be unsatisfactory compared to the other endings. It is not a, “V lives happily ever after and you should always choose this over the other ones.” However, it is bittersweet and will offer an alternative to the darker endings that I think will be satisfying for fans dissatisfied with the others. Certainly, it’s worth experiencing and happier than “The Devil” ending that was so infamous.

    In conclusion, I think this is an incredibly strong addition to Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a good thing that Update 2.0 exists as a lot of the story would not be nearly so enjoyable without the level scaling, new perks, and vehicle updates. The storytelling, characterization, and acting is extremely well done. Dogtown is a place that I think probably should have existed in the main game but the polish that went into its release here is very good.

Moon Cops on the Moon is now available for preorder (99c!)

Hey folks,

I'm pleased to announce we have an upcoming release that will be on sale from the very beginning. MOON COPS ON THE MOON is my next humorous sci-fi series to go alongside SPACE ACADEMY DROPOUTS and THE SUPERVILLAINY SAGA. I think it may be my funniest story yet. It's also 99c! Woot!

"Welcome to the moon!"

Neal Gordon screwed up his assignment on Mars and they reassigned him to Antarctica. Now he's being reassigned some place even worse: Luna City. A crime ridden hellhole with a super-rich ruling class, he almost immediately finds himself targeted by bounty hunters and cyborg terrorists. Thankfully, Neal has an unusual set of partners in robot dog, Barksley, and the snarky but badass Lucy Westenra. Yes, make all the vampire jokes you want.

It's tough being a corporate cop on humanity's foremost colony and before this adventure is over, he's going to have to deal with deranged influencers, mysterious female secret agents, and a 1970s themed flying car called the Purple Rain. Can he survive to get reassigned? Who knows.

MOON COPS ON THE MOON is set in the Futurepunk setting of Agent G, the Cyber Dragons Trilogy, and Space Academy novels but functions as a standalone series. It is a humorous action-filled romp that fans of The Expanse, Robocop, Demolition Man, and Blade Runner will enjoy.

Coming out November 13th!

Available here 

Cyberpunk 2077: Update 2.0 review

 

     CYBERPUNK 2077 has been a rocky-rocky road since its release in December 2020. While it’s not exactly been three years, as of September 21st, 2023, it has recently received its largest update yet with the release of its DLC expansion, PHANTOM LIBERTY, coming in just a week afterward. I’ll be doing a separate review for Phantom Liberty but it’s important to talk about the changes for the 2.0 update that changes the entire way the game is played.

    The game released in an incredibly broken state with far less than what was implied or promised by the initial advertising. The police system was incredibly underwhelming, there was no vehicular combat, no dynamic chase scenes, and the crowd AI was extremely silly with the cars as well as populace of Night City being dumb as bricks. This is in addition to all of the bugs and glitches that rivaled Bethesda’s Skyrim at launch.

    Over the past three years, CDPR has done a decent job of doing an immense number of fixes to the game that moved it from a broken buggy mess to something distinctly playable. Indeed, it was something I recommended at the start purely on the basis of its story and visuals. Plus, the fact I was a die-hard cyberpunk fanboy who was already familiar with Mike Pondsmith’s tabletop RPG setting. Still, the game steadily improved and it became increasingly clear that it should have never been released on last generation consoles when the true experience was meant for the Playstation 5 and Xbox X or S.

    The 2.0 update is a wholesale remaking of the game in many respects with something for everyone who has already left the game behind. The changes range from the huge to the small and I think it’s wortwhile for people who enjoyed their first time around to return for a second (or third) run. After having played through the game for a day, I’m comfortable sharing my opinions of what is better as well as worse.

The Good

•  Cybernetics are greatly expanded: The number of cybernetics you can outfit your V with is signficantly upgraded. You can also enhance your cybernetics to higher tiers. Notably, V is limited to being able to use cybernetics to the limit of their Body score but the Edgerunner perk let’s you exceed it at the cost of brief cyberpsychosis.
• Crafting is no longer tied to Technical: Crafting was originally tied to the Technical skill. Now, everyone can craft anything they want if they have the components as well as blueprints. This means a lot for those who were previously stuck doing crafting builds to get the best equipment. There’s also a lot less requirements for components due to the changes to armor.
• Clothes are no longer armor: One of the more immersion breaking elements of the game was wearing a construction hat, biker shorts, a leather jacket, and dress shirt to get the maximum amount of damage resistance possible. This is hardy unique to Cyberpunk 2077 and was alleviated with the transmog system that allowed you to make your character look like anything but still was an annoyance. The new system removes all armor benefits of clothing and now the only damage resistance is from cybernetic enhancements.
• The Perk System is completely overhauled: All of the characters’ perks are refunded at the start of the update and now are part of an entirely new skill tree. The abilities are lot more dynamic than before with things like air dash, hacking vehicles, and adrenaline rushes as well as cyberpsychosis berserk mode. A lot of these abilities are familiar from other games but that’s hardly a bad thing. Perks can also be refunded at will and shifted around to experiment with multiple builds.
• Improved AI: The various criminals and opponents in Night City are no longer nearly as stupid as they used to be. This, again, helps with the challenge and makes encounters things that players are going to want to take slowly.
• The Night City Police are now terrifying: One of the biggest complaints of the game is the fact the Night City police appeared out of nowhere and attacked then gave up if you moved out of a tiny area. For those used to Grand Theft Auto’s intense police combat, this is a massive improvement. We also get Max-Tac at last, guys who can tear through the strongest of V’s and are bosses in mook’s clothing.
• Netrunning has been nerfed: As a legendary Netrunner, my V basically was a psychic wizard who wandered through Night City causing gangs to instantly fall over without ever finding me. Now, it’s much-much harder and easier for enemies to detect you. You can’t use Breach Protocols on enemies anymore either.
• Vehicular combat and car chases: Perhaps one of the biggest changes is that you can now engage in vehicle combat with things like car chases, shooting out tires, and shooting at each other. It’s something that was strongly needed in the game and makes the massive number of vehicles actually useful now.
• You can now change your V’s appearance: This is something that should have been included at the start of the game as cyberpunk is so focused on transhumanism.

The Neutral

• NPCs now scale to Level: This is going to be a controversial change but it’s more true to the tabletop game. This dramatically increases the difficulty of the game but not in a way that’s bad. You’ll never be lacking for challenges when dealing with the many Assaults and Crimes in Progress across the map.
• All Ripperdocs now have all cybernetics: This is one I’m iffy on because I love having to visit all of the Ripperdocs in Night City to do bargain hunting. It immerses you in the setting to know that cybernetics vary between sources. However, there’s the benefit that there’s no downside to beating Fingers within an inch of his life now.
• Changes to the Cell Phone and Journal: Some minor tweeks have been made to make the journal and cell phone less cluttered. I wasn’t of the mind the previous journal was bad but the ability to be able to turn off
• New Radio Stations: There’s three new radio stations and I just don’t really feel like they made much of an improvement with the soundtrack. Basically, I really wish there was more variety in the music of Night City as there’s a lot of punk and techno but very little pop or rock-rock. So, it’s a matter of taste. Still, one of the station is purely original music by Cyberpunk 2077 fans, so there’s that. Also, Idris Elba is DJing one.

The Bad

• Vendors no longer having crafting components: The game’s longevity has been expanded by the fact that you can only get crafting components by disassembling weapons among other equipment. I really wish I’d bought a bunch of components before the updates.
• NPCs no longer drop clothing: Okay, maybe it was just me but I totally believe when my V killed someone he’d look at them and go, “Nice pants.” Then loot them. Now our V canonically is no longer the kind of crazy murder hobo with a wardrobe of the dead.
• Bugs: The amount of bugs introduced by the changes are small but still noticeable. When I was talking to Vic, I couldn’t exit out a conversation. There were also other small glitches like voices dropping during “I Fought the Law” except for my V. I have hopes these will be corrected in the future, though.

Conclusion

    I’m really impressed with what they’ve managed to achieve with this revision to the game and I believe it is finally living up to its full potential. The improvements to the police and enemy AI are enough to justify its existence. I also think the choice to change the clothing so its not an essential part of the loot cycle is a good one. There’s overall a lot less loot and less focus on picking up everything in sight. I think the game is just a lot more FUN to play. It was great because of its storytelling and design before but now it’s just better in every possible way. Those who like coasting through the game, though, will find it a lot tougher. It’s also a shame that this update is something that last generation console users will never get to experience.

    Personally, I think now’s the best time to pick up the game if you have a current generation console or computer capable of running it. The new game is better in virtually every possible way. I also think it’s probably best to start over your playthrough rather than continue from a previous save as you’ll get to experience everything from a fresh perspective.

Available here

Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence review

    CYBERPUNK 2077: NO COINCIDENCE is the first novel set in the world of Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk setting. As a huge fan of the tabletop game, I always dreamed of writing my own entry into the dystopian world of Night City and was disappointed there never seemed to be any urge to do as TSR did to create novels set in the world. This has finally changed with the entry by Rafal Kosik. But can anyone truly capture the garish colors of a hyper-stylized city that is otherwise painted in black as well as red? Well, yes, this book does.

    This is a heist book, first and foremost, with a focus on a crew rather than an individual protagonist like V in Cyberpunk 2077. This is probably the best way to experience Night City and one of the failures of the video game since, for the most part, you operate solo with the rare exception of the Relic heist in the first Act of the game. The characters are archetypal but not necessarily stereotypical and the way they bounce off one another reminds me of how quite a few of my Cyberpunk parties were not terribly social with one another. The best of Night City’s gangs are Chooms for life, but these are rare as an honest corpo.

    Basically, there’s a former member of the NUSAA (New United States Army), a stripper with a child needing a vital operation to cure her disability (which is not something that one can survive with in Night City), a middle-aged woman who has a lot of money but no thrills, a hacker (sorry, netrunner) who still lives with his mother, a borged out hedonist, and a ripper doc who just wants to upgrade his clientele to sleazy versus ultra sleazy.

    This book is a curious mixture of deep characterization and incredibly tense action that doesn’t always completely jive together. A lot of books which open with a huge epic gunfight set the readers to believing that this will be a fast-paced quick read. Instead, this is one of those books you should take the time to savor and soak in the atmosphere. A lot of attention is made to how soul-crushing Zor’s job at demolition is, how slimy Aya finds her job as a stripper (while noting other people don’t seem to mind it), and how even a talented lover is boring when Melina has no emotional connection to the guy whatsoever.

    There are some scenes that I felt were a little too stereotypical. Aya turning to stripping and crime because of her sick child before being rescued from an unruly customer by Zor is something that feels a bit too on the nose but doesn’t distract too much from the way Night City is portrayed. Rafal Kosik manages to get the hyper-stylized nature of cyberpunk. There are fantastic toys everywhere but everyone is as miserable as before because they’re only for those people who can afford them. Indeed, people are poorer than ever because the people who make said toys have continued to squeeze a populace that’s apathetic to their own misery.

    I also appreciate how unsympathetic our protagonists are while simultaneously being very relatable. Aya is aware that when she kills people on her Edgerunner missions, they’re effectively innocents and she’s doing it for money rather than any cause. There’s no Johnny Silverhand, “Fight the Power!” motivation. She and Zor are the least scummy of their group but they’re not blind to the fact being an Edgerunner means you’re a killer for hire. The only difference between them and the psychopathic heroes of Grand Theft Auto is the possibility of cybernetic upgrades.

    I’m a big fan of the Expanded Universe that CD_Projekt Red has been creating for some time now. I think this is the one with the most artistic merit (and a lot of them are fantastic). This is a hard-R grimdark sort of story and all the better for it. You just know things are going to go to hell before they get better (if they ever do). Still, don’t rush this read. You need to soak in the rainy alleys and smell of garbage before the guy next to you is gunned down in an explosion of blood under a neon sign. 

Available here

Tronick by Rosie Record review

    TRONICK by Rosie Record is a cyberpunk novel that attracted me by its cover. They say you can't judge a book by its cover but I feel like the Claire Redfield-esque biker girl picture is full of personality that drips out of the image. You can tell a lot about who Fiona Tronick is by this image and it inspired me to pick up the book. Was it worth it? Oh yes, definitely, though I would love to have a sequel in order to answer some of its mysteries.

    The premise is that California is isolated from the rest of the world by the massive wall that covers the entirety of the country. It apparently covers much of the ocean around it as well, calling into question whether or not this is a Matrix-like simulation or perhaps Dark City experiment. The people inside, generation PW 1.6 don't know and don't really care as they're too wrapped up in their own problems.

    Fiona exists in the border between the street as well as the rich and powerful. While she pretends to be a low-level drug dealer, she's actually an agent for the Agency. The Agency is a secret police that manages not only law enforcement in the California Annex but virtually everything else as well. Fiona thinks of herself as a rebel and one of the people but she's involved in numerous projects to keep the crooked system functioning.

    Ultimately, Tronick's fence-sitting is unsustainable. As much as she likes to think she can walk the line and just hang out with the underworld as her friends, the simple fact is she is part of the system. A system that considers her friends to be enemies of the state and is using Tronick to get to them. The fact Tronick is blind to this fact is a bit unbelievable but the book shows she suffers from serious self-denial.

    I really like the world-building of this book as we see the kind of hard scrabble existence that the California Annex's citizens suffer through. Many of them are seeking something higher, whether religious or philosophical, but this just leads them to become vulnerable to scammers. The fact the Agency actively puts out bad faith operators to avoid losing even the slightest bit of control is a neat little detail.

    Rosie Record's prose is raw, dark, and full of intense emotions that are often absent from modern day cyberpunk stories as well as supposedly harder edged sci-fi. You get to taste the environment and what sort of world that our protagonists inhabit. The Annex's inhabitants are surrounded by drugs, celebrity worship, crime, and an oppressive government. So, you know, nothing at all like modern day Los Angeles.

    I think if you like dystopian science fiction but have aged out of The Hunger Games and Divergent readership, then you will like this. It's definitely adult and mature but has a very likable protagonist even if she's got some serious issues. I also think this is something that would appeal to fans of classic and more recent cyberpunk fair too.

Available here

What is Moon Cops on the Moon?

    Jeffrey Kafer and I have been discussing that wrapping up some existing projects was a pretty good idea but I'd actually mostly succeeded. I have some plans for continuing a few of my series on individual levels but mostly I'd finished a pretty good number of my trilogies. That was when he said he'd like to see another sci-fi comedy series from me.

    "I can't just pop one out."

    "Why not?"

    That's when I remembered that it was pretty much David Niall Wilson asking me to write "something" that had me crank out Straight Outta Fangton in a single week (okay, 2 weeks) that was writing by the seat of my pants with the power of SPACE MADNESS. Either that or just a lot of coffee and going with inspiration as it hits you.

    MOON COPS ON THE MOON is a police procedural technically set in the same universe as Agent G, Cyber Dragons, Space Academy, and Lucifer's Star (My Starpunk universe--thanks for the suggested name, guys) but is meant to be a standalone with an entirely new cast.

    The premise is in 2203, humanity has made First Contact with aliens and after that went horribly wrong and a fascist government briefly took over Earth, mankind is slowly getting its shit back together.

    However, that is not happening everywhere at once and the moon is a spaceport delivering vast wealth between Earth and the rest of the galaxy that its people never sees the bedntif ot it. It is overcrowded, crime-ridden, and the last place run directly by feuding corporations.

    It's also where Neal has been assigned after kinda-maybe sleeping with his bosses' daughter.

    Neal Stephenson Gordon is a Refugee Kid adopted by the Gordon Foundation who served two tours in the Space Marines and got reassigned to corporate police after being set on fire. Only a semi-dirty cop, he's soon assigned to the Cyberlife Division that investigates all the crimes the other police don't want to solve (because they're dangerous and unprofitable).

    Cyberlife is populated by a weird collection of oddballs collected from the other divisions including his ex-teen vampire show star partner Lucy Westenra, Charles Barskley the uplifted corgi, and Armstrong the utterly insane AI with the voice of JK Simmons as well as the personality of a 1930s Pulp radio narrator.

    Cyberpunks, genetic slavers, communists, and rampaging robots await!

 

    But yes, I plan to do three books of 80K each (Moon Cops on the Moon, Moon Cops in Crater Town, and Moon Cops in Lunar City) with all three released at once. If it succeeds, it may well be my next ongoing.

Review - Cyberpunk 2077 - Two Years Later

    Cyberpunk 2077 remains one of the great controversial games of 2020. Also, 2021, and only started to lose that reputation around 2022. It was, to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi, supposed to be the Chosen One and ended up being Darth Vader instead. However, everyone loves a redemption story and if I were to give CD_Projekt Red any props then it will be for the fact that they spent the past couple of years trying to fix the game that shouldn’t have been released in the state that it was.

    So how is Cyberpunk 2077 in 2023? I’m going to answer that question with all the latest patches, up-to-date hardware (that was a perfect storm of bad timing since the majority of fans didn’t have access to due to microchip shortages), and an open mind. I’ve also played the game in its original broken state, on last generation hardware, and with all the disappointment that can only come from someone who is a mammoth cyberpunk fan as well as author.

     The premise, for newcomers, is that you are V, a street merc in Night City. Night City is the most violent city in a post-apocalypse America where technology is advanced but savagery is the order of the day. Superpowerful corporations rule the city’s skylines and bloodthirsty gangs rule the streets. V’s background is determined by your choices such as being a corpo (corporate), Nomad (wastelander), or Street Kid (what the title says) but all of them more or less end up in the same place.

    The majority of the game has your character fused with an AI reconstruction of a tabletop RPG character from the original Cyberpunk 2020 game: Johnny Silverhand. Johnny Silverhand is played by Keanu Reeves, in yet another iconic cyberpunk role, and is a burnt out anarchist terrorist that urges you to take anti-corporate but ultimately futile stances. Oh and your character is dying with only a few weeks left to live.

    The updates to the game haven’t really affected the main plot and there’s still plenty of issues to have with that. The game suffers ludo-narrative dissonance with the fact V is dying of an incurable (?) brain disease that implies you should rush through the main plot but Night City is an open world setting that is full of hundreds of adventures to do for in-universe money. This leads to the somewhat weird feeling that V can be as rich and glamorous as Tony Montana but doesn’t have any time to enjoy it. That may be deliberate as a storytelling choice but it’s not as fun as it could be.

    The big changes are the fact that the game has about 90% less bugs and broken quests, which still leaves some in the game. Unlike in writing books, however, you’re allowed a few when you’re making video games and there’s a “normal” level of these now. Compared to launch where I had to reload my crashing game near constantly, I had almost no issues whatsoever this time around and I could appreciate the game’s visuals much better. The occasional pop in and glitch seemed a small price to pay.

    Another large change is the driving mechanics have received an overhaul. Previously, the game’s cars and motorcycles drove like utter crap, which was a bad thing when much of the city is set up to accommodate cars. The revised system works much better but I still mostly walked around Night City and used its fast travel system. The much despised police system remains unchanged but since they will only go after you if you injure an innocent or approach them the wrong way (like real cops *rimshot*), there’s very little need to interact with PCs. Still no car chases or car customization with only a few racing missions.

    Some of the things added to the game really do increase its enjoyment factor, though. A group of additional apartments for V to purchase are excellent for giving you the sense he (or she) is actually moving up the Night City ranks. We also have a transmog system that allows you to dress your V however you want without losing any of the benefits of armor. There’s also additional activities to do at your apartments like drinking coffee and taking showers that provide bonuses. These little things add a lot to the immersion element of Night City that had previously been pretty absent.

    For fans of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, there’s also some additional nods toward the anime. There’s not many of them but as a fan of it, I really enjoyed it. However, it underscores the fact that really there needed to be more content for the game. I also appreciated the addition of text messages from your love interests that deepened the somewhat shallow relationships from the original game. Hopefully, we’ll get that when we get the DLC Phantom Liberty but Night City has gone from being “good” to “great” but could have been “greatest of all time.” Still, Night City is a monumental accomplishment and the characters are fantastic.

Available here

The fall of Predestiny and it's rebirth as Dark Destiny

Hey,

    A few years ago, I wrote a couple of books with Frank Martin called the Predestiny series. It was an attempt to do a Young Adult science series that would hopefully break into new markets. It was also a cyberpunk series and something that was inspired by events in recent decades about corporate overreach, activism, and other events which had informed my burgeoning political consciousness. It was also inspired by Terminator, Dune, Continuum, and a bunch of other time travel stories.

    The premise of Predestiny was Robbie Stone was a high schooler in a near-future dystopia where Butterly International has more or less bought America. A friend of mine described the company as "Applezon" and I'd say that's accurate, except it also owned Blackwater. Rob just wants to do the Occupy Wallstreet thing and is then almost killed. He only survives thanks to the timely intervention of a white haired girl named Jane (no, not Doe). Jane explains that Rob has a destiny! HE IS GOING TO DESTROY THE WORLD!

    Yes, Robbie Stone is the Hitler in the "would you go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby", except he's closer to Paul Atreides in that he led the revolution ended up destroying the megacorps after they take over the world but ended up killing billions in the process. Some cyborged up super soldiers have decided to avert that by killing him. Jane has decided, for her own reasons, to protect him but this obviously throws Rob's life for a complete loop. His only advantage is the people in the future don't know his exact identity.

    It was a complete disaster. 

    At least sales wise.

    The short version is that not everyone can write every genre and while there was a fantastic story there, it didn't really work out because I dialed back a lot on the implications of the book to stick to the Young Adult market. Frank did an amazing job with the material but I kept cutting myself off from going as hard in the material (that deserved to be R). I also didn't develop the characters quite as much as I should (or as in other books).

    Marketing-wise, I didn't know quite how to market the story and leaned rather hard into the YA element that I think pushed away readers who might have otherwise given the story a chance. The cover also had Jane on it rather than Robbie, which I think confused readers who bought it with the intention that they would have a female protagonist. I have a great fanbase but they're primarily adults and of a cynical edge that probably this was not for them. So, instead of attracting a new audience, I just alienated my preexisting one.

    The sequel, Lost Future, was released but it had an even more YA looking cover that was misleading and poorly chosen. It was, if you can believe, even more incorrect for the marketing because the story got darker and darker. It's 100% clear that this shouldn't have been a YA series as the world has become far too dark and gritty for the story. There's plenty of YA dystopias but I could have pressed the issue further if I wasn't trying to write with one hand tied behind my back. The fact I attempted to do the books around 60K also inhibited world building. This wasn't the series for it.

    The bad luck unfortunately continued with an initial bit of good luck with the audiobook release being done for free by my good friend, Thomas Manchin. He's a audiobook narrator of some great comedy books and quite a lot of fun. Mind you, Predestiny had the least amount of comedy in my books save, possibly, Lucifer's Star or Wraith Knight. I think what jokes in that version of the book were done by Frank rather than me. Another sign that I was writing outside of my comfort zone in the desire to expand without realizing if you're good at something, you should play to your strengths.

    So what happened there? Well, poor Thomas, ran into a spot of health trouble and couldn't do the sequel. It would be almost a year's delay before we discovered that he wouldn't be able to able to do it despite how much he wanted to. Whoops.

    Now, if any of you know me then you should know I never know when to leave well enough alone. Just about everyone who writes over one book in their career knows there's one or two that don't do well. You just accept it and move on. Except, well, I was not going to do that. I owed Frank and my readers better, especially as there was a fantastic book here but I just needed to rework it to be all that it could be. In the end, of course, it was Cyberpunk: Edgerunners that made me realize what I had been doing wrong. That story with its ultra-violent dark and fascinating tale of David Martinez was enough to make me realize what kind of story I wanted to write.

    Frank was a little nonplussed at my desire to rewrite the entirety of the book we'd already worked together on and add about 20K to 30K of new content. To move Rob to being slightly older, increasing the humor, increasing the sarcasm, and making it clear just how tragic as well as traumatizing the events are. I also increased the action as well as the world-building, getting very strongly into the 2060s and how they plausibly completely went to shit from "our" world. Frank gave me some great insights into the book as he had always wanted it to be and the results were a far superior work (at least in my opinion). Oh and we decided to replace the covers.

    Re-writing Dark Destiny obviously meant re-writing Lost Future. The changes were even more extensive as the fundamental story was Rob coping with the moral question of whether it was possible to destroy the megacorporations without violence. Also, whether using violence when he knew it might eventually destroy the world was justified. The setting had gotten considerably darker from the original manuscript. The humor was certainly larger as well but there was now a much darker cast to it as some of the funniest characters were also vicious psychopaths. It was fun-fun and I even commissioned a new cover for it from the same artist. I also decided to change the names of both when I released them because they really were completely different books.

    Did it work? Yes and no. I'm not sure that much of the existing market or fanbase is willing to give it a shot but it was certainly an artistic success. I felt much prouder of the books and feel like they've reached their full potential as both action stories as well as social satire. Plus, they more authentic. If you're going to write cyberpunk you should write cyberPUNK. That means when someone is shooting at you, you're going to drop some f-bombs and shits. I actually realized how much of a book it was to be proud of because not only did I get my co-author's praise but cyberpunk fans reading it gave me compliments on its edge (as well as never suspecting they were more Hunger Games once than Neuromancer).

    It was an experiment that required quite a bit of time, money, and effort but I'm glad I did it. It's not the first time I've rewritten an existing book (I added casts of characters, glossaries, and new chapters to both Cthulhu Armageddon as well as Wraith Knight) but it was definitely the most extensive. I also feel like this is something that more authors should be willing to do. Stephen King rewrote The Stand and Ed Greenwood rewrote the Spellfire trilogy. Sometimes you need the benefit of experience and polish to reach your top game. Other times you need to write a world of flying cars, guns, and punks on the street to critique the man.

    Will these books get re-releaded on audiobook? Eventually, but first I have to see about getting it the audience it deserves.

Purchase Dark Destiny

Purchase Destiny's Paradox

The United Federation of Charles Indie (And Traditional) Book Awards of 2022

Sculpture of HP Lovecraft by Bryan Moore/copyright 2009.

2022 was a pretty good year for me, reading wise. I managed to hit my desired goal of reading over three hundred books. I admit, I cheated with this quite badly by reading a huge ton of comics on Kindle Unlimited and Comixology

Honestly, outside of Roy Thomas, I may now be the world's greatest expert on Red Sonja. However, I still managed to read a lot of books that I had on my reading list before today. Unfortunately, I'm absolutely terrible at narrowing down my lists so I've ended up with no less than four categories of top five books I've read this year. I hope you'll take a moment to read my comments on the ones I've enjoyed the most.

You'll note it's a mix of classics, oldies, indies, and new releases.

Best Detective/Thriller

5. I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane

Mickey Spillane remains one of the controversial big names in Detective fiction. Mostly because he does the hard boiled thing of Chandler and Hammett then amps up the sex as well as violence to the 11. He's more the Punisher than Magnum PI. I, The Jury is the best of his novels and the most entertaining of his cases with Mike still being probably the worst PI ever. Don't worry, he eventually figures out who did it after the rest of the cast is dead.

4. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

James Ellroy is the master of recreating 1940s LA in a hyper-stylized ugly but entrancing image. It is a racist, misogynist, classicist corrupt city that is, nevertheless, full of beautiful women as well as manly men (as well as how those categories limit people). Centered around the real-life murder of Elizabeth Short, it is actually the story of two cops with one significantly more corrupt than the later. It's a shame the movie version cut out so much of the book because it's a really fascinating tale from beginning to end.

3. The Law by Jim Butcher

I know, it's actually urban fantasy but I have to say The Law is probably my favorite Dresden Files book in years despite its short length. While a lot of fans were happy when Jim Butcher tried to move away from noir detective fiction to high stakes urban fantasy. Here, it's trying to help an ex-prostitute turned school teacher and all the better for it. I wish Jim Butcher would do more stuff like this. It's why I love his anthology books.

2. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The classic book that helped start it all, The Big Sleep is the best of Raymond Chandler's work. If you've seen the Humphrey Bogart adaptation, you've seen a 75% faithful reproduction but I think the book works better. Well, ignoring there's a lot less sexual chemistry in the book. Phillip Marlowe is almost celibate in the books, disgusted by all the sleazy goings on around him. He's a much nicer private detective in this book than the others in my list and, ironically, more so than in his later novels.

Winner

1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

The actual detective novel that started the hardboiled genre, I'm a much bigger fan of Sam Spade than I am of Phillip Marlowe. Part of it is the fact that Sam is significantly more mercenary than Phillip. He's certainly after justice for his dead partner but he also wants to make a profit from it as well. I'd say the movie version is actually 99% accurate and the few changes are almost incidental versus The Big Sleep.

Space Opera/Military Sci-Fi

5. Interstellar Gunrunner by James Wolanyk

I really love anti-heroes, I know, how could anyone tell? However, I think Bodhi may be the worst of them all. An arms dealer who liberally sells to both sides during the various civil wars populating the galaxy, he's also someone who tampers with forces beyond human comprehension with the casualness of a used car salesmen hocking lemons. I just found this book and its sequels consistently entertaining. It's also a series with a definitive end.

4.Against All Odds by Jeffrey H. Haskell

I love big heroic space opera stories about guys (or gals) who are on the political outs but rally their crew to pull off some miracle that gets them restored. In this respect, the Grimm's War series is similar to Honor Harrington by David Weber's On Basilisk Station. Jacob Grimm tried to heroically save the day during a mission and a bunch of children were killed as a result (what they were doing there in the first place never answered). However, he's moved to a problem area with slavers and a corrupt local government that is just in need of his touch.

3. Columbus Day by Craig Alanson

The Expeditionary Force series is a drug that I just can't quit. It's the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of wise-cracking protagonists making constant pop culture references while coming up with ridiculous but effective plans. It's a book series that I read pretty much straight through and with fifteen books as well as an audiobook drama, that's impressive.

2. The Last Hunter by JN Chaney and Terry Mixon

I really enjoyed this book because it was remarkably low-stakes compared to the normal space opera I read. That changes in subsequent volumes but I loved how the story is essentially about military embezzlement. Jack Romanoff has been assigned to the last Hunter dreadnought, ships in service a century ago, that receive massive budgets every year to maintain. Except, someone has been siphoning off this one for decades. Wouldn't you know that now would be a very good time to have a mile-long starship?

Winner

1. The Terran Privateer by Glynn Stewart

Glynn Stewart is another comfort food space opera for me. In this case, the Terran Privateer is about a young plucky heroine who is determined to liberate Earth from a conquering space empire. Except, well, the space empire isn't that bad and the alternatives were far worse. It's an interesting political thought experiment I very much enjoyed.

Fantasy

5. The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

I was a huge fan of The Goblin Emperor and very eager to see what else she might come up with in the same steampunk fantasy world. What I got was a fascinating noir detective story set in a fantasy world with a medium that just so happens to be gay. I really enjoyed the opera singer murders and all of the crooked blackmail as well as necromancy around it.

4. The Vilification of Aqua Marine by Megan Mackie

I read several great superhero novels this year but loved all of them. The Vilification of Aqua Marine is the story of a young woman who is the daughter of a Catwoman-esque villain who has a really, really crappy power of water manipulation (as in a cup's worth). After discovering that she can use it to kill people and nearly doing so, she decides to retire as she'd rather be nothing than a supervillain. Unfortunately, her dancing arch-nemesis who seems to want to date her and mother refuse to leave matters be. Lots and lots of fun.

3. Miskatonic Universe: Elder Gods 101 by Matt Davenport and Mike Davenport

I'm a huge fan of Matthew Davenport's cheeky fun Andrew Doran novels. Basically, Indiana Jones versus Cthulhu cultists teamed up with Nazis. However, I think I prefer this book tremendously more. A group of college students at Miskatonic University are gathered together to prevent the apocalypse through the power of their plucky heroism! It's a lot like Super Powereds by Drew Hayes but with a bunch of mythos jokes. Urban fantasy rather than horror and all the better for it.

2. The Cape is a Lie: The Ballad of Kevin by MK Gibson

MK Gibson is someone I'm terribly biased toward as a fellow indie author. Confession, I love his books and he loves mine to the point he gave me a cameo appearance in Agents of Mortal (before I was arrested for Cthulhu worship). However, I think The Cape is a Lie is a great superhero novel parody. A social media influencer figures out that a lot of superhero fights are faked and wants to know how deep it goes.

Winner

1. Azure Bonds by Kate Novac and Jeff Grubbs

The Forgotten Realms are not quite as famous as it's most famous resident in Drizzt Do'Urden but it has plenty of other heroes. My favorite of these is Alias, a beautiful redheaded swordswoman and her dinosaur man, companion, Dragonbait. It is a hilarious off-kilter fantasy story and I really enjoyed it from beginning to end.

Cyberpunk

5. Auxiliary: London 2039 by Jon Richter

A detective novel in the age of public surveillance and an AI that manages everything for the police. I really enjoyed this one because it got surprisingly dark and the author is primarily a detective novelist and thriller who just so happens to have written a cyberpunk novel. It's also interesting to see a Chandler-esque story from across the pond. The ending is easily the best part and genuinely shocking.

4. The Big Sheep by Robert Kroese

A delightful cyberpunk parody of detective fiction. In the future of LA where a good chunk of the city has been walled off and left to its own devices, two private detectives are hired by a genetics corporation to recover a missing genetically engineered sheep. They're also hired to protect the star of a popular TV show who thinks she's going crazy with missing time as well as people spotting her in multiple places. Yes, the foreshadowing is thick here but that doesn't mean that it isn't a fantastic ride. I loved the crypt-curency themed sequel, The Last Iota, too.

3. The Blueprint by Wesley Cross

What if Tom Clancy wrote cyberpunk? Combining a technothriller with a cyberpunk novel is an interesting premise as this shows the downfall of a modern democratic state into becoming a megacorp dominated cyberpunk one. It's interesting because our heroes really do want to save democracy, Jack Ryan, style but in the end only end up creating their own megacorp. That's not a spoiler but the premise. Some of it is silly but I really liked this one.

2. Tronic by Rosie Record

California is walled off from the rest of the country and while I question the logistics of that, I absolutely love Fiona Tronick as a character. A spy for the police while keeping all of the punk attitude in public, she is torn by her own hypocrisy and the fact she hates the system but is caught up in it. This is some gritty well-designed cyberpunk and I absolutely loved it.

Winner

1. Nephilim: A Behind Blue Eyes Origin Story by Anna Mocikat

I'm a huge fan of Anna Mocikat's indie cyberpunk series, Behind Blue Eyes, and was interested when she decided to start releasing novellas detailing elements of the series past. Having read the collected version all at once, I actually think it works really well as a horrifying dystopian novel. A young girl has her family killed and is forced into a training school for cyborgs ala Black Widow's Red Room. 

It deals with a lot of horrifying adult topics of violence, indoctrination, and burgeoning sexuality but in a mature well-written way. Definite content warnings, though. We follow her to adulthood, knowing she's going to become another cog in the fascist corporate machine.

Final Thoughts

I absolutely loved this year in reading and it certainly inspired me to do a lot of new writing for my own books. I always try and do a decent mix of the well-known with up and coming writers. Thanks to everyone who read my list, the authors who contributed, and the other readers making their own lists this year.