Cyber Dreams

As of writing this, I’ve read the first book in the series.

Blurb

In the year 2107, the world has both made astounding leaps forward and reduced humanity to its most basic existence. While the megacorps and those who rule them enjoy lives of extraordinary comfort and ease, most people barely scrape by, doing whatever they can to keep going.

Juliet Bianchi is one of the latter. She works cutting metal in a scrapyard and doesn’t have much to show for it except for a small group of equally bereft, fiercely loyal friends. Still, she maintains a bright disposition, possessing more hope and optimism than anyone would expect her to—and she’s going to need it…

When Juliet stumbles upon what looks like a botched kidnapping, the victim dispatches his abductors and lives just long enough to give her a stolen AI chip. This gift soon transforms Juliet from a worker bee into a killer queen. Armed with far more power and skill than she can comprehend—let alone control—she finds herself drawn into a shadowy world where survival itself counts as victory.

Juliet has never been one to push people around. But when it comes to fighting the corrupt corporate overlords, she’s more than happy to push back.

Thoughts

I picked up Cyber Dreams after running out of Ghost in the City because I needed more of that cyberpunk fix. While there are some similarities to Ghost in the City, the stories are very different. While Ghost in the City is very much a power fantasy with rapid levelling and the MC quickly becoming overpowered, Cyber Dreams has a much slower and steadier pace.

After Juliet acquires Angel, obviously her position is not great. She’s got some very hot (stolen) PAI in her head, the corpos want it back, but how is she—a broke-ass welder—going to escape their clutches. Her PAI even recommends heading off world due to the amount of heat that his disappearance will bring. Instead (in what I personally think is an absolutely baffling move), Juliet just drives to a city two hours away. Not two countries, or two states. Tucson to Phoenix.

Apart from the threat of the corpos, the first book is mostly slice-of-life. Or as close as you can get to slice-of-life in a cyberpunk world, I guess. There’s making new friends, taking jobs from fixers, learning martial arts in a dojo, but the larger plot point of Angel and his origins is really only hinted at and teased in the epilogue.

In terms of supporting characters, there are quite a few, with Ghoul and Honey being the main two. Hot Mustard taking third place, of course. We can’t forget about Hot Mustard. The characters are distinct, but I wish we got to spend more time with them. That said, the reason we don’t is because most of the development is done between Juliet and Angel, and having them figure out their dynamic is fun to read.

The action sequences are fun, and Angel’s ability to improve Juliet’s learning rate is a very believable mechanism to allow Juliet to grow stronger faster than others and increase the pacing in future books. I think like many series, the first book here sets up future works, and from the feel of things, Plum Parrot is setting up a larger plot for the MC to slowly get entangled in.

Book two’s just been released, so I think I’ll have to pick it up, read it, and update this review. But I figured it’d be good to write something up before Christmas, just in case anyone else is looking for that cyberpunk fix as well.

Yeah, turns out Phantom Liberty and patch 2.1 just wasn’t enough for me!