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
My Review of Earlier Books: Pleasure Model
Next Book: Money Shot (November 9 2010)
The world Paolo Bacigalupi paints is a gritty post-gasoline world where cheap energy is a thing of the past. World trade have more or less ceased, most things are done local due to the prohibiting costs of travel. The most important thing in the world is Calories. Calories have replaced money. Most of the food outside Thailand is produced and sold by ruthless international Calorie Companies with their own patented genetically altered brands. These companies helped world recession by releasing plagues that killed off competing brands and natural food stocks. Access to original genetic material is becoming more and more important as mutated viruses attacks plants, animals and humans. Thailand is rumored to have a cache of genetic material that helped the country survive.
Protecting ones borders against plagues and diseases have become of critical importance, outbreaks are ruthlessly fought down, villages and ship are burnt on a mere suspicion. The Environment Ministery is in charge of protecting Thailand. Their troops are called ‘White Coats’. The White Coats are involved in a power struggle with the Trade Ministery who wants to open trade with the rest of the world.
Bangkok is a city about to explode.
The story let us follow a handful of characters at the backdrop of a dystrophy cityscape who’s inhabitants does anything to survive.
Jaidee is a charistmatic, driven but not very bright ‘White Coat’. He is the hero of the people, the Tiger of Bangkok. He is a hothead and one day he will go to far. I rather liked his character, it has Elan.
Anderson (I know, agent Anderson from Matrix comes to mind) the Calorie man is in Bangkok on a secret mission involving the genetic material and an escaped geneticist named Gibbon (from the ape?) the Thai’s are supposed to hide. He is not a very nice guy.
Hock Seng is a Yellow card working as a manager for Anderson. He has his own agenda that involves him getting his fortune back by stealing blueprints from Mr Anderson’s Safe. His situation is that of refugees barely tolerated by the Thai’s. His people where run out of China by a revolution of some kind and now they exist here on a pittance.
The protagonist is Emiko and she is an artificial person, a windup as the Thais call New People. Originally created as a secretary, translator and sex toy for a japanese business man who dumped her in Bangkok after a visit. Taken in by a brothel owner she is in constant fear for her life from ‘white coats’, who would end her if they could. She lives a life of constant abasement and abuse. Until one day she meets a foreigner (Anderson) that tells her about villages up north where New People live free.
Everything is colored in shades of grey. Bangkok is a city of corruption and bribery where everyone looks out for themselves. None of the characters are especially likable. I do like Emiko even though she is inhumane at times, but she grows through the story, learns more about herself and the world and change. She goes through more than survival. She is the hope of the book.
Every chapter has a character telling their point of view. It worked well for me as they have very distinct voices that makes it easy to identify them.
There is a lot of complicated politics involved in the plot and I had to put the book down a few times to sort it all out. The one problem I had with the book is that it takes a while until you get to when the action starts. I put the book away for a day or two in the beginning because of that.
The Windup girl reminds me a lot of Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash in the beginning with the slow winding up of the story until it releases into frenetic action. It is a beautifully written gritty dystrophic bio-punk I would recommend to all readers of science fiction.
It starts out as one of those super action packed first scenes in a Hollywood Block Buster but here it feels like it never stops. Put a handful major characters, one mega conspiracy or two and the intrigue and mysteries of a Le Carré cold war spy thriller into the mix and splatter it out on a canvas of world-wide insurrection, high technology and dystopian cityscapes and you have a feeling what this book is.
In the 22nd century, the first wonder of a brave new world is the Phoenix Space Elevator, designed to give mankind greater access to the frontier beyond Earth. Cooperatively built by the United States and the Eurasian Coalition, the Elevator is also a grand symbol of superpower alliance following a second cold war. And it’s just been destroyed.
With suspicions rampant, armies and espionage teams are mobilized across the globe and beyond. Enter Claire Haskell and Jason Marlowe, U.S. counterintelligence agents and former lovers—though their memories may only be constructs implanted by their spymaster. Now their agenda is to trust no one. For as the crisis mounts, the lives of all involved will converge in one explosive finale—and a startling aftermath that will rewrite everything they’ve ever known—about their mission, their world, and themselves.
The terrorist organisation Autumn Rain it trying to destroy the world as we know it, by blowing things up and launching attacks on the super powers that are running the show. Our protagonists are out to stop them. As is to be expected in a spy thriller the plot is not as it appears and the ending is surprising.
The story keep switching between the different characters point of view. At times it can be confusing and a bit frustrating when something is about to happen in one timeline and it switches over to another, fortunatley the chapters are short.
Claire Haskel and Jason Marlowe are two of the protagonists. They are teamed up with Jason as the Mech, a heavily armed stealthed battle armor equipped action part of the team, and with Claire as the Razor, an electronic countermeasure offensive, stealth enhancing and information gathering part, that seems to be the standard operative setup. A hacker named Haskel is a nice touch (Haskel is a programming language).
The false memory tread where Marlowe and Haskel discuss that they keep geting false memories downloaded was interesting but confusing. Can they be sure of anything? They used to be lovers, or did they? This is never followed through, or did I miss something?
The heavily modified (cyborg) agent called the Operative is running a deep undercover mission in parallel.
Carson is another agent that is flushed from cover and blackmailed into helping Linehan, an operative on the run from Autumn Rain.
This is a story with many protagonists, or maybe only two? The never ending action makes you not noticing the lack of character depth, much. The voice of the characters are also a bit similar, this can be intended as they all come from the same spy world.
The story begins in 2110. The world is dominated by the second cold war between the US and the Euroasian Coalition, they have divided the world in spheres of influence. Europa, India and Ociania are trying to stay neutral.
The world building is great. David paints a gritty cyberpunky dystopian world that leaps out of the pages and punch the air out of you. It is a complex world that some times takes significant infodumps to explain, but thats okay with me.
The timeline of the world at the end of the book is quite enlightening and I wish I read that before I started with the book. You can also learn more about the world on David’s website www.autumnrain2110.com
Mirrored Heavens is a strong first novel by David J. Williams. He presents a chilly future high-tech world of espionage and double crossing that is more than entertaining, the characters are not very deep and at times the plot might feel a bit over complex at times but so far I like it. I already have volume 2 Burning Skies here waiting. I can recommend it if you like fast paced cyber thrillers.
Rook Venner bring the evidence home, said evidence being Plesur, a pleasure model with long golden hair, deep blue eyes, a pert little nose and large mouth loaded with heavy lips that works like triggers on the heterosexual male mind all packed into a gorgeous young body, to protect her from rape. Only to wake up in the middle of the night by a phone call telling him to get out NOW!
Presenting Heavy Metal Pulp, a new line of novels combining noir fiction with fantastic art featuring the themes, story lines, and graphic styles of Heavy Metal magazine.
In Pleasure Model, the first book in the Netherworld trilogy, down-and out police detective Rook gets a big break when he’s assigned to a bizarre and vicious murder case. The clues are colder than the corpse and the case looks like it’ll remain unsolved—until an eyewitness is discovered. But the witness is a Pleasure Model, an illegal gene-grown human. Plesur’s only purpose is to provide satisfaction to her owner—in any way. When the murderer targets Plesur in order to eliminate the one witness, Rook takes her into hiding to protect her. Thus begins a descent into the dark world of exotic pleasure mods and their illicit buyers and manufacturers. Rook frantically looks for clues, struggling to stay one stop ahead of those looking to kill them both. But is Rook falling under Plesur’s spell….?
Christopher Rowley is a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy including the Compton Crook Award-winning “The War for Eternity”, “Starhammer”, “Bazil Broketail”, the Books of Arna trilogy, etc. He also co-wrote two television animated series by Robert Mandell, and is the author of the illustrated novel “Arkham Woods”. Rowley lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.
The story is fast paced with quite a few improbable but convinient twists in true style with pulp fiction. It starts out simple as a murder investigation but turns out as something much much bigger and more complex.
The plot starts with the vicious and mysterious murder of former military operative Sangacha while the dominatrix Mistress Julia/Angie hides under the sink in the bath room. She hears the killers, and think they finally caught up with her after 25 years on the run. Her boyfriend was killed 25 years ago before warning her to run, and she has been hiding ever since.
Sangacha was a man riddled with guilt, he had Julia there to whip him on a regular basis to atone for it. What kind of secrets does he hide? Why was he killed? And what was he doing with the pleasure model hiding in the closet? Where the men there for him, Julia or the pleasure model?
Rook Venner is the cop assigned to the case. He and his partner discover the pleasure model, she and a fuzzy photo of Julia/Angie as she flees the scene are the only clues they have. The Feds are also on the case, and Feds here are like nothing you have seen before, they even have a armored robot soldier accompanying them to the crime scene, and they are not the good guys. Rook sets out to solve the case any way he can, but its not easy being a knight in not so shiny armor with an oversexed not so bright pleasure model to protect while the other sides do their best to capture it and kill him and they have resources he couldn’t even dream of.
The book is a delightfull heavy metal mix of pulp fiction, noir crime, cyberpunk and erotica. The format is 240 pages divided in 21 chapters with fantastic illustrations by Justin Norman on about two thirds of the pages, see example below.
The story is told in 3rd person with either Rook or Angie as the voice.
I would guess there is quite a few people, a lot of them women who have a problem with this book which clearly caters to men with men being men, women being objects, at least on the surface. The story is a bit randy and explicit but not more than the usual romance novel. All of it is gritty enjoyable noir.
The cover is made by Gregory Manchess. The cover perfectly recovers the look and feeling of pulp fiction while being relevant to the story. Please visit his website and have a look at his illustrations.
Justin Norman [his deviantart page]made the inside illustrations, they 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 was a few places they where out of sync with the story. They add a movie feel to reading the book.
There are a lot of recognition from noir crime novels in the character types the strong silent hero, the unreliable boss, villains, femme fatales etc
I like to have well thought out characters with interesting backgrounds, and characters that grows and are changed by events in the story. Here the characters have the look and feel of pulp fiction but they all have interesting backgrounds that makes you want to learn more. They also grows as the story progresses some more than others, a lot more. More character development is found outside the book, on Rowley’s homepage, the story there is sligtly different but more fleshed out.
What is not explained so well is Rooks motivation for being a good guy. Not that it hurt the story much but it would be nice to have more on his background to explain this. And again, there is more on the web, whole chunks of the story that never made it to the book.
The not explained major Emergency (luckily it is explained somewhat on his homepage) that seems to have formed the world is a frustrating lapse in an otherwise well built world. It feels belivable if twisted as New York 2060, with bio-engineered humans (pleasure models), robots, enhancement chips and an assortment of spiffy and useful gadgets. I especially like Ingrid, Rook’s Nookia Supa an AI with charming personality . It is immensely competent for a personal assistant slash telephone. Left to its own devices, at night, it read 19th century literature and fought bitter doctrinal battles on the Strindberg forum on Newsnet.
I never quite get their current social structure, they used to have some kind of military dictatorship, now they seems to live in something different, or not? After reading the web project Netherworld on Rowley’s homepage I realize most of the world building I lack used to be there but where designed out of the book. Pity, It would have made this book excellent if they left more of the world-building parts there in my opinion.
The book doesn’t end with a Cliff hanger but leaves enough unresolved that I long for the next volume. I enjoyed the fast paced illustrated action packed spicy Pleasure Model immensely. It is a good read. It lacks somewhat in depth that can be remedied by checking out Rowley’s homepage. I would recommend it to any adult science fiction fan. I myself can’t wait until I have read the next two Netherworld books. I wonder when they will be out?
Rowley’s homepage www.christopherrowley.net contains a Netherworld Web Project with 28 slightly different chapters (the book has 21). The texts are without the delightfully noir illustrations. There is also world building notes in the ‘Need to Know‘ section
It’s been said that John Brunner invented the term “worm” for a program that replicates itself on a network in this proto-cyberpunk novel from 1975.
Future Shock!
In the obsessively technological, paranoidally secretive and brutally competitive society depicted by John Brunner, even personal identities are under threat. But one man has made it his mission to liberate the mental prisoners. to restore their freedom in a world run mad.
Nickie Halflinger, the only person to escape from Tarnover- where they raise hyper-intelligent children to maintain the political dominance of the USA in the 21st century – is on the run, dodging from loophole to crevice to crack in the computerised data-net that binds the continent like chains. After years of flight and constant changes of identity, at the strange small town called Precipice he discovers he is not alone in his quest. But can his new allies save him when he falls again into the sinister grasp of Tarnover…?
The first half of the novel had me wondering if this was way to intelligent for me, then the fog lifted, the wow feelings started to hit me. This is a great novel! It involves the Brain Race, a development from the previous Arms Race. Every superpower collect their own brain resources and develop them at great cost in institutions like Tarnover to handle the out of control speed of change in society. The novel addresses many of the problems with the ever faster changing world that are still valid today. Especially in the area of mental health.
Paranoia is a sign of the times when this book was written and it shows. People are afraid everything they are could be taken from them by someone on the net, government or multinational companies that knows more about them than they do and have access to information on the net they don’t (We don’t think that today,do we?). Basically the society here is sick and this book is about the cure.
One might also say that this is an early case of “Information wants to be Free” argument.
The love story with Kate was an added spice.
The Shockwave Rider impressed me with its content and how the pieces fell into place in the story and it became great. It is a few years old but much of what it tells are still valid. Read it if you can get hold of it. I found mine in a Store on Charring Cross Road, London this summer. I think there was more than one there.
While I researched this I also found The Evolution of Cyberpunk by Nick Ravo & Eric Nash published in The New York Times 1993 that might be of interest
OBS! There is a message on the Riese site that they temporary have taken the videos offline for an eventual offer. February 10 2010
After a short recap Chapter 2 begins. Reise travels to Vidar in the hunt for the Sekt’s objectives and we get to know the Empress a bit more and boy does she have family issues.
This is starting to get interesting.
Next episode February 15.
Science Fiction Podcasts
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