Never Fade Away

Blurb

In a world in which capitalism has arrived at its hideous extreme – lives are cheap, time is money, and money is everything – Night City’s Home for Wayward Boys makes its income by lending out its children to the megacorporations for their under the table illegal human experimentation. L, our protagonist, could be considered an old man in a profession that most die young at the ripe age of fifteen, and he can feel that he doesn’t have much longer left. Worse, he knows that the next generation will undergo every painful and inhumane experiment that he went through.

Driven by need, L seeks to escape the orphanage and quickly discovers that while he left the pan, he landed in the fire. In his quest for vengeance, L finds himself taking on all of Night City and the world itself at times, but with a mysterious power that was likely the result of one too many brain surgeries, he finds that he has all the tools that he needs to win that fight.

Only to discover that the world is a lot bigger than Night City… and the galaxy is a lot bigger than Earth.

Thoughts

As of writing this review, I’ve read the entire series.

J.R. recommended this series when I asked him to help assist my cyberpunk binge, and I’m here to pass on this solid rec to others.

Alrighty, so the premise is covered mostly by the blurb. L escapes an experimentation site, and some of the experiments done on him have come together to grant him the power to innovate. In the most basic terms, L can expend a “charge” to gain knowledge and proficiency in both real world tech (like electrical engineering) but more often than not in world-breaking technology from popular video games, movies, comics, you name it. Gundam, Fallout, Mass Effect, Marvel, Pixar, there’s a lot of things to innovate.

Of course, power comes with its own downsides, but I can’t go into detail without spoiling things. The story is split roughly into two arcs: the one more to do with freeing the other orphams and adjusting to Night City, and then the whole “galazy is a lot bigger than Earth” thing. That’s meant to be the Mass Effect crossover, but I think realistically it doesn’t draw on the lore of that universe too much and you could effectively replace them with Generic Alien Race 1 and the story wouldn’t really change at all. I was hoping for a lot more on this side, but by the time the author got to that arc, some of L’s powers do make plotting difficult.

Oh, there’s a few chapters in the middle between the arcs that flesh out some side characters. For those that like single points of view, I’ll be clear here that once those chapters are done it’s back to L full time, so don’t be turned away.

I think the book shines in its first arc, even maybe the first half of the first arc, where you get to experience Night City for the first time through L’s eyes. He quickly becomes an OP MC, and its very fun to read about, but it definitely does decrease some of the tension.

Many of the side characters are taken from existing literature (the game and Edgerunners mostly), and they feel pretty on point, and I enjoyed the plot pathways of David and Lucy most of all. Becca is, of course, the best, I just wish we got more of her. L is very much a loner, but for those of you who do love the lone-wolf, solo-MC tropes, you’ll eat your heart out. That solo trait does touch on some of my more disliked tropes (ie “Oh no I won’t tell my closest friends about my problems because it’ll burden them too much…”) but sense gets slapped around by the end of the book. Which, btw, actually made me emotional, and I’m a cynical bastard so kudos for Making Me Care.

The current series is finished, but the author has said there will be sequel coming at some point. That was a few years ago and still no word, so I’m not holding my breath. That said, they’ve written tons of other stories, so if you give this one a shot and love it, there’s a significant backlog of other works to read on through.