Oh, She's Bookish: Cyberpunk 2077 NO_COINCIDENCE

This may be the worst book I have ever read.

Sure, there are likely books poorly written that I dropped, but I read all 400+ pages of this trash fire. I surmise there are two reasons why I stuck it out and turned this into a proper hate read. First, I love Cyberpunk, as a genre and the world of Mike Pond. The anime genuinely affected me and Neuromancer was one of the first sci-fi novels I read. I can’t describe how painful it is to see a genre you love - which, let’s be honest, is so rarely done justice as a genre - be so thoroughly trashed. And trashed in earnest! Second, I can’t believe this novel has gone through five printings. It is such a failure of not only the writer, but more so (imo) the publisher and editing team. I would be embarrassed as a publisher to release this to market. The lack of craft, the haphazard writing style, and borderline knock-off plot should be seen as a liability to the publisher’s brand. In an age where becoming a writer has never been more difficult, it deeply pisses me off to see such a poorly written novel reach the shelves when novice writers with passion for this world could easily have superseded what I purchased at full price. I understand that we must use superlatives on the backs of our novels because everyone is doing it, and subsequently is a NYT best-selling author, but how hard they hype up Kosik feels like a rogue marketing department. How painfully poor this text is makes the whole back-flap feel like satire. Truly, the greatest irony of this text is that it acts as an analogue to a shitty capitalistic system that will sell you crap in a nice coat of pain - this is truly the only Cyberpunk think about this novel.

Okay, onto the actual critiques I have.

First, I didn’t realize until halfway through the book, but the author (Rafik Kasik) was a screenwriter on Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the American anime adaptation of the TTRPG. This should instill an incredible amount of confidence. I adore Edgerunners and have re-watched it a few times. Even solo, I expected at least a coherent and entertaining narrative. Not anything close to Edgerunners in terms of emotional impact, but give me more of that world with a similar tone. However, what we have is a painful knock-off. A derivative, bland, and vanilla heist plot. All of the characters feel like MMORPG NPCs compared to any given character in Edgerunners. Yet, he still tried to recreate the same wonder-kid, special I-don’t-get-cyberpsychosis main character who ends up being a corpo experiment bag. I was pissed with every poorly paced and tonally erratic chapter thinking to myself just how cheap it is to rip off and do zero justice to Edgerunners setup - or, if you don’t buy that, then literally any heist film every created - until, until I read the (abrupt ending). No, this isn’t only the worst heist plot I’ve ever experienced (in any medium), but it’s also a shit-tier knock-off of the Bourne Identity! Christ, how many franchises are you going to butcher in one book? My first critique is that the plot, the story it’s all derivative and does nothing to subvert expectations or do justice to these storied plot lines and tropes.

Second, these characters mean nothing. One of the most confusing aspects of this book is that most of the character exposition and backstory is saved for the end of the novel. In the just over 400 pages, you spend the entire novel not knowing who the fuck these people are. You have no emotional investment and, by the end of the book, when the stakes are being heightened, their backstories mean nothing. It only serves to add confusion and anger that it’s all coming out now while the helicopter is crashing. Zor, the main character, is the Bourne Identity knock-off, but there is so painfully little about him that the small snippets of confusing flashbacks - which, on their own, is a fine plot device - just serve to confuse the reader further. I get what the author was intending, a big multi-stakeholder conspiracy where Zor is the AI hybrid that will breach the Data Wall, but every signal was so vague and unsubstantiated - his whole family backstory felt like filler and the delivery took all the emotional investment out of it - that you just feel confused as the conspiracy pours out. It’s supposed to be this major reveal where the reason why everyone has this feeling that they know each other is finally revealed, but nothing about the initial heist set-up gives any investment to them having known each other. Warden has nothing to say. His boos says nothing. Stanley just shows up as if we are supposed to know or care. The most perplexing part of hiding backstory and the core motivations of each of the heist members is that when they are eventually revealed (usually right before death), you don’t care. You don’t buy it. It has no impact, and the death of a character you spent hours reading about feels no different at page 1 and it does at page 400. I would say of all the characters, Albert and maybe Ron were the best of the bunch. Albert had a genuinely compelling storyline - though the writing still left much to be desired - but he all but disappears in the latter quarter of the book and meets an unceremonious end by a side-character of a side-character for little reason. Ron, and his relationship with Milena, had potential, but they both end up dying is meaningless ways. Borg had such a large role and then became the biggest whiff and nothing ball. I may have mis-remembered the names of main characters in this review (of which I am writing minutes after finishing) which just goes to show how little of an impact they make. ALSO, what the fuck was up with Liam being in this book at all?! What purpose did he serve at all?? By the end, he has his tail between his legs with a send-off that comes out of nowhere and does nothing for the story. I literally almost forgot about him. He is also so emblematic of the failed detective noir vibe the author tried to make.

Third, this book constantly contradicts itself. Whether it is the characters themselves or fairly static facets of the world, I am flabbergasted by how literally within three paragraphs this book can setup an expectation or fact (e.g. the computing power of a tier-three net setup) and then contradict it immediately after, and then again another hundred pages on. At first, tier-three netrunning gear is insanely OP, something akin to a full AI, then it can’t complete a seemingly simple task in their next heist plot, and then it can clone Albert’s intelligence by the end of the book. What. the. fuck. is. that. about. This happens frequently with core aspects of the world - the power of a weapon, the reputation of one of the corporations, the quality or competency of a character. I think of all the characters, Aya’s seems the most inconsistent. At first she’s a badass stripper who takes care of her adopted kid, and then a damsel in distress, and then a badass capable of storming Maelstrom and rescuing Milena and her kid. Her writing goes between a bare-footed housewife incapable of anything to a crippled, but willful fighter, and also some over-apologetic do nothing by the end of the book. AND THERE IS NO REASON FOR THIS. At no point, when the author bounces around the fundamental parts of these characters does the plot give a reason for their changes. You can never immerse yourself in this world if the terms of engagement are constantly changing. You can’t take an expectation and just roll with it if it keeps on changing. If nothing is true, then you will always sit on the surface of the text. This is why I say the book feels like a first draft, unedited with no continuity checks. I don’t understand how this made it past any editing revisions. Especially. ESPECIALLY WHEN THIS IS AN ESTABLISHED FUCKING FRANCHISE. Things like the power of weapons and the capabilities of cyberware ARE ALREADY DECIDED. THERE IS A FUCKING TTRPG, BOOKS WRITTEN BY MIKE PONDSMITH, AND THE FUCKING TV SHOW YOU HELPED WRITE. Unacceptable.

Fourth, the tone and pacing are constantly shifting. I’m honestly so tired and so pissed I’m not even going to talk about this, but suffice it to say that given everything else I have said, it shouldn’t be surprising this too was crap.

However, the most egregious part of this book is that I have never seen such a striking example of “tell, don’t show.” For any creative, the advice is constantly “show, don’t tell.” Create the motivations, the backdrop, and the moments that reveal - through action - the content and core of your characters. This is how the reader’s brain gets activated as they paint a picture of your world and the characters within it. It’s how you become attached and emotionally invested in the stakes and outcomes. No one likes being told directly the content of the characters. If we did, we would simply be reading DnD skill-sheets for fun - though, that isn’t a bad time, they shouldn’t be 400 pages. Every time I let my mind wander and fill in the blanks of the world, the characters, and the story, the author would stop me in my tracks by explicitly stating the quiet part out loud or actively contradicting what I had previously read. I wasn’t able to immerse myself in this world because I was constantly being told what was interesting or dangerous or sexy or whatever. Then, I was told that wasn’t true, and then everyone died for an empty box.

This book reads as if it was a first draft written in one go. It was translated by AI from Polish and then the publisher put all their money into marketing and an editor saw nary a single page.