Money Shot (Netherworld 3) by Christopher Rowley (Tor 2010)

Feb 102011

A man and his pleasure model takes down secret conspiracy with a little help from Dominatrix Julie

Money Shot concludes Christopher Rowley’s noir action tale Netherworld about Rook Venner a cop who brought the evidence home to protect her from rape. Said evidence being Pleasure, a Pleasure Model owned by the murdered victim general Sangacha. Pleasure carries secrets in her mind that the powers behind the government will do anything to get their hands on. So Rook, Pleasure and the other witness Angie a dominatrix that goes under the name Mistress Julie has been on the run since.

Justin Norman’s beautiful illustrations boost the noir feeling of the book as we dive into an explosion of action and combat machines. The pace is breathtaking as our heroes struggle to survive and uncover the secret before they are crushed under the avalanche assault of the Tactical Robotic Regiment. Deep underground an isolated mountain ridge lays the secret base that holds the chilling answers.

As before we get a bit of social commentary about artificially created humans and not only from Rooks feelings for Pleasure but from the colonies of liberated and free mods that they comes across. Police State America comes back to haunt us again too.

The characters are still a bit sketchy but totally pulp and Gung Ho basically what you can expect from this kind of story. If you take it for what it is they are perfectly all right. They continue to grow and come to realizations about their world that deeply affects them which is something I like in any story.

The conclusion does a good job of tying together the threads from the previous books and we meet many of the characters again.

I must say that I immediately fell in love with this series when the first book, Pleasure Model came out. The second book The Bloodstained Man ended in a cliffhanger so I eagerly awaited this conclusion.

Money Shot is the explosive conclusion to the Netherworld series a fine heavy metal take on crime noir about secret government conspiracies, robotic war machines, a man and his pleasure model with pictures. It might not be for everyone but take it for what it is and you will love it.

Information

Title: Money Shot
Series: Netherworld book 3
Author: Christopher Rowley
Genre: Heavy Metal
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Tor 2010
Copy: Bought by me
Order from: Amazon US | UK

Detective Rook Venner was a successful investigating officer for the Hudson Valley Police Department—until the General Sangacha murder case came across his desk and his world exploded.

Now after being dragged through hell and back, Rook is on the run with Plesur, a Pleasure Model who is the one eyewitness to the murder. Plesur carries a secret in her brain that terrifies the powers-that-be. A secret that they will do anything to destroy—even bring in a Tactical Robotic Regiment to track Rook and Plesur down and annihilate them.

The only choice the two have is to locate the coordinates that were planted in the pleasure mod’s head to the isolated mountain ridge where it all began. Deep underground, in a warren of machine halls and ice caves, something so horrific is happening that just knowing three code words is enough to get you killed: Operation Taste Imperative.

Rook and Plesur have no way back and no way out. If they want to survive and have any kind of life together, they must uncover the terrifying secret that lies deep inside the mountain.

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Yarn by Jon Armstrong [Book Review]

Books 1 Response »

Feb 072011

Armed with just his yarn pulls, scissors, Mini-Air-Juki handheld sewing machine , and his wits …

Yarn is and isn’t your ordinary cyberpunk story. Yarn is about Tane Cedar a master tailor and the story takes place in the world of fashion. My first thoughts were that this is outside my comfort reading zone but the stunning cover art and the blurb’s talk about fashionpunk, saleswarriors and a love story reeled me in and I am very happy it did.

Like in most good stories it involves a woman. In this case an ex-lover who is on the run from the authorities when she comes to Tane late one night. “Where have you been? What happened? What are you wearing?” are his first questions because that is the kind of man he is. She tells him she is dying and asks him of a favor. She wants him to make her a garment of the illegal psychedelic Xi yarn to ease her last hours. He accepts before she disappears again and the rest of the book tells the story of how he goes about tracking down and acquiring the yarn to fulfill her last wish. The author portions out key pieces of Tane’s past from his youth in the slums to yarn-thief to lover to fashion genius that ties in to and explains what is happening in the main story line. That worked very well for me here.

The story contains delightful black humor and Tane Cedar is an interesting character with an inner dignity to him throughout all his ordeals that makes him easy to love. The other characters are more superficial but there are some really interesting ones like Brunne the fashion dictator of Seattlehama, Vada his ex-lover revolutionary and a few more.

The world building is on par with the story and the characters. “Seattlehama: the volcano-powered sex and shopping capital of the world” is the name of a chapter and a good description of the setting. The slums or slubs where Tane grew up are hash places where lives are cheap and workers are recycled to nourish the plants. The fashion scene is as much a place of fighting and warriors as in any cyberpunk story but it also helps setting Tane apart in his focus on the yarn. Greater truths about the world are uncovered as the story progresses.

Yarn is a delightful dark comedy about a dignified master tailor with some serious skills whose world is torn apart one day by an old lover. It lives up to its name; it is indeed a yarn of the best kind, one that captivates you from the first page to the last. This is the first I read by Jon Armstrong and I am mightily impressed. I am really interested to read Grey his debut now. This is a standalone prequel to Grey. Highly recommended.

Information

Title: Yarn
Author: Jon Armstrong
Cover art: Anthony Palumbo
Genre: Fashion Punk
Paperback: 309 pages
Publisher: Night Shade Books (2010)
Copy: Bought it from Amazon
Order from: Amazon US | UK

From the neo-feudalistic slubs, the corn-filled world of Tane’s youth, to his apprenticeship among the deadly saleswarriors of Seattlehama–the sex-and-shopping capital of the world–to the horrors of a polluted Antarctica, Yarn tells a stylish tale of love, deceit, and memory.

Tane Cedar is the master tailor, the supreme outfitter of the wealthy, the beautiful, and the powerful. When an ex-lover, on the run from the authorities, asks him to create a garment from the dangerous and illegal Xi yarn–a psychedelic opiate–to ease her final hours, Tane’s world is torn apart.

Armed with just his yarn pulls, scissors, Mini-Air-Juki handheld sewing machine, and his wits, Tane journeys through the shadowy underworld where he must untangle the deadly mysteries and machinations of decades of deceit.

Following up on his highly acclaimed and Philip K. Dick Award-nominated “fashionpunk” novel Grey, Jon Armstrong explodes back on the scene with Yarn.

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The Bloodstained Man (Netherworld 2) by Christopher Rowley [Book Review]

Books No Responses »

Aug 242010

In the last book Pleasure Model Detective Rook Venner barely escaped with his life and now he and his beautiful companions Pleasur, a chiped-up pleasure model now intelligent killing machine and the human dominatrix Julia are on the run. This is my take on part two.

Title: The Bloodstained Man
Series: Netherworld book 2
Author: Christopher Rowley
Genre: Cyber Punk | Heavy Metal | Noir
Cover art: Gregory Manchess
Interior art: Justin Norman
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Tor books, Sept 5 (UK)
Copy: Bought it myself

Order from: Tor | Amazon US | UK | B&N

My Review of earlier Books: Pleasure Model

Next Book: Money Shot (November 9 2010)

Following the explosive events of book one, Detective Rook Venner, Mistress Julia, and Plesur are on the run from the government troops trying to kill them and from a shadowy group that wants to capture Plesur alive for its own purposes. What secrets have been implanted in Plesur’s head—and why are they worth killing for?

Caught between these two powerful rivals, the trio hides out in the lawless New Jersey territory. Betrayed by gang members looking to collect the bounty on Plesur’s head, the three are separated, and Rook and Mistress Julia find themselves in mortal danger. Julia, given as a prize to a gang member, finds herself in chains, but not without her own means of fighting back. Rook, forced to fight for his life in the gang’s bloodthirsty gladiatorial games, must stay alive long enough to rescue Plesur, but time is running out.

The Bloodstained Man is a fast-paced, adrenaline-filled ride through a future where pleasure has a price, and Plesur holds the key to a secret that could rock the country to its very core.

Information

The Bloodstained Man is a mix of cyberpunk heavy metal novel and gritty noir comic art. I liked the first book very much so it was with some excitement I opened this one.

The inside illustrations made by Justin Norman (@deviantart page) add another dimension to the text, especially in the action sequences they seems to speed up the action. I enjoyed the illustrations a lot; though there were a few more places in this book where they were out of sync with the story than in the first book. They add a movie feel to reading the book.

World Building

America is some kind of police state with general elections. The citizens don’t have much rights though and they are heavy segregated, the uninsured are left outside society to fetch for themselves in huge ghetto like areas ruled by gangs. Some of it you get in the dialog and descriptions but there is not much of it, it is not that kind of story.

They run into groups of runaway/free pleasure mods living in their own societies among the uninsured and there is a message about how we treat humans in that story, it also comes across in Rook’s friendship with a fighter mod while he is captured by the gang.

Plot

The protagonist Rook is on the run from at least two groups and they are both after Pleasur the fabricated human pleasure model Rook found in a murdered generals home in book one. One group is the power behind the current government and they want her dead and the secrets she has. The other group is more mysterious and secretive and they want to use Pleusure and her information in some unknown way.

As in the last book there is more or less nonstop action, first they crash a party and get chased away by cool motorcycles and missile firing war drones. Out of the frying pan into the fire they run to the uninsured area and are captured by a gang whose main activity seems to be gladiator games and feeding the losers to the alligators. Rooke is forced to fight in the bloody games and Julia is given to one of the gang members as his personal slave and Pleasur is striped of her fighting and intelligence mods and locked up in wait for the bosses to come and get her.

I am not sure this book would go down well with most female readers, but the females in this story do take charge of their own destiny especially Julia.

The ending is a cliffhanger after a horrid moment that makes me want to have the concluding book now not in November.

Characterization

This is pulp fiction and you what you see is what you get. There is more to the characters than archetype though. There is nothing wrong with a few small randy and explicit scenes to spiff it up, it’s done all the time in chick-lit. But here there is something more fundamentally about being human going on inside and with the characters.

My View

The Bloodstained Man is a action-packed hardboiled detective story in a rundown world of pleasure models, government conspiracies and general lawlessness. It is a fast read I enjoyed very much. Both books in the Netherworld Trilogy are good summer reading. I can’t wait for the next book.

Extras

Rowley’s homepage www.christopherrowley.net contains a Netherworld Web Project with 28 slightly different chapters (the first book had 21). The texts are without the delightfully noir illustrations. There is also world building notes in the ‘Need to Know‘ section.

You can find the cover of Money Shot in my Coming SF Book Almanac (August 2010)

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Veteran by Gavin Smith (Gollancz)

Books 4 Responses »

Jul 212010

Title: Veteran
Author: Gavin Smith
Genre: Military Science Fiction
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Gollancz, June 2010

Order from: Amazon US | UK | sfbok

Three hundred years in our future, in a world of alien infiltrators, religious hackers, a vast convoying nation of Nomads, city sized orbital elevators, and a cyborg pirate king who believes himself to be a mythological demon Jakob is having a bad day: “Nothing gets in the way of a hangover like being reactivated by your old C.O and told to track down an alien killing machine. The same kind of killing machine that wiped out my entire squad. And now it’s in my hometown. My name is Jakob Douglas, ex-special forces. I fought Them. Just like we’ve all been doing for 60 bloody years. But I thought my part in that was done with. My boss has other ideas. If I didn’t find the infiltrator then he’d let the Grey Lady loose on me. And believe me; even They’ve got nothing on her. So I took the job. It went to shit even faster than normal. And now I’m on the run with this teenage hacker who’s had enough of prostitution. The only people I can rely on want to turn the internet into God. And now it turns out that They aren’t quite what we’d all thought. I’ve been to the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky and beyond trying to get to the truth. And I still can’t get far enough away from the Grey Lady. All things considered I’d rather be back at home deep in a whiskey bottle.”

Veteran is a fast paced, intricately plotted violent SF Thriller set in a dark future against the backdrop of a seemingly never ending war against an unknowable and implacable alien enemy.

Information

Veteran is Gavin Smith’s debut novel and it is dedicated to Ruth & James Nicoll. I believe that they are “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary” – James Nicoll and his wife. I found the quote online and I just had to include it here. English’s actions as described are appropriate to the novel.

The Author

Gavin Smith is new both to me and the world but he writes like a pro. I had to check inside if it was a pseudonym for an established author. Gavin Smith is 35. Born in Dundee he now lives in Leicester. He has a degree in Media Production (specializing in script writing) and a MA in Medieval history. He owns his own marketing company.

World building

Earth is a gritty place with social segregation after a long war with the alien Them and Gavin paints it well even though the story is written in first person. There are flashbacks to the time Jakob Douglas fought in the war that explains a great deal. There is also a lot of discussions that sometimes slows down this otherwise fast paced story but makes it clear to the reader what really is going on.

Plot

The plot is in short that Jakob Douglas is reactivated to hunt down one of Them. Then he discovers that there is more going on than meets the eye and become the hunted himself. He must fight back to stay alive. Which he eventually does after a number of adventures in some spectacular and intriguing places with names like Rigs, Crawling Town and Atlantis.

Characterization

The characters are what I really love with this story. They are gritty and twisted but in a good way. Jakob is no superman he has lots of luggage from the war to carry around but he grows as the story grows. But no one grows more than Morag, first the story play her as an almost insignificant figure which reflects the way Jakob and the others treat her. This is something she resents but it is also her driving force to grow later in the story where she becomes principal.

There are a great many other notable characters both friends and enemies that easily takes up life in the mind of the reader.

The banter and bickering is excellent and that is a huge plus for me.

My view

Veteran is an excellent read, I had trouble putting it down. This is one of the best books I read so far this year. It got mysterious aliens, conspiracies, realistic battle scenes, fast pace, lots of wow moments and wonderful characters. I would say this is a mixture of Heavy Metal, Cyber Punk and Classic SF. It is Military Science Fiction at its best and I would recommend it to a wider audience. I can’t wait for his next book.

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The Bloodstained Man by Christopher Rowley (Netherworld 2) – Guest Review on TLR

Books No Responses »

Jun 292010

New Review on Temple Library Review written by yours truly, read it here.

Title: The Bloodstained Man
Series: Netherworld 2
Author: Christopher Rowley
Cover art: Gregory Manchess
Interior art: Justin Norman
Genre: Cyber Punk | Heavy Metal | Noir
Paperback:
Publisher: Tor books
Copy: Bought it myself
Order from: Tor | Amazon US | UK | B&N