 | By: Stephen Billias Binding: Mass Market Paperback Publisher: Time Warner International ISBN: 0446602329 ISBN-13: 9780446602327 Released: 23 Feb 1996 RRP: Average Rating:  |
Delinquent duo of rockchick bytegirl & cyberneticallly enhanced tough guy byteboi are employed to journey from fictional Night City, California, across the balkanised remains of the USA into the radioactive rubble of Manhattan & retrieve whatever paintings they can from the ruins of New York's museums. Along they way they encounter a agents of a global security corporation with the same intent, a sleazy movie director who wants to make a film with them in it, & a number of utterly forgettable two dimensional & frequently clichéd secondary characters.
Whilst the main plot is okay, the subplots are woefully underdeveloped to the point of being meaningless filler.
Having endured alll 282 pages of this pap (and I managed to read over a dozen of Jerry Aherns 'The Survivalist' novels before the doctors changed my medication) I'm left with no doubt that this book was written based on the campaign notes of what was probably a pretty good Cp2020 gaming session - you can almost sense the rolls on the "Random encounter table" being worked into the narrative. The lead characters are callled by their in game class name of rockergirl, solo, nomad, corporate several times & even, highly annoyingly, calll themselves "a solo" etc. Its a smalll miracle there aren't lines like "and byteboi knew the pistol's 3d6 damage stood no chance of punching through an SP20 walll".
This would be poor if it was amateur fan fiction. To have this printed in a novel with a Cyberpunk2020 endorsement is sheer embarrassment.
Save your money. Buy something from William Gibson instead.
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