In honour of this now being on NetGalley and me not being able to get enough I want to remind everyone that this awesome cyberpunk book is on the way and no-one does body mod and body horror like trans folx!

I received an ARC from the author's website for an honest review.

This was so much!

Absolute cyberpunk body horror (and euphoria) carnage!

A chance meet up with an old friend in peril for a down on their like odd jobber sends them on a helter skelter oddysey across and over a sprawling cyberpunk future that makes Fury Road look like a jog around the block with more action and nightmares than the sum of all the numbers in titles that feature the word Cyberpunk.

The story plays out across one colossal run with the protagonist's memories almost serving as side/ backstories that further flesh out the world and relationships, including an incredibly fun heist gone tits up.

It's been a long time since I read something cyberpunk that actually felt punk and wasn't just doing orientalist supercapitalism futurism, but this has it in spades!

I thoroughly enjoyed the world-building, which felt fleshed out and gritty without reading like a setting source book, which I am increasingly finding some sci-fi books tend towards. From the various vat-grown indentured designed for specific purposes and the grubby umderhive setting the book introduces, through the mercs, body mods, and sadistic body harvesters, to the jobs, roles, relationships, and monsters, the world feels so vibrantly alive and filled with potential for more adventures that I absolutely need more of!

Brand does a cracking job of presenting an instantly recognisable cyberpunk setting, but takes inspiration from the most interesting things already and creates many of her own intriguing and nightmarish elements to make a world that makes sense to the reader, but still shocks and freaks them out from time to time.

Look, I think it's been firmly established at this point that no-one does body horror like us trans folx, but Brand takes it to a new level with some of the gnarliest and wild creatures, growths, and environments that would give Cronenberg, Carpenter, and Miazaki pause. I don't know how to describe it beyond imagine if all the demons from Doom were smushed together and then threw up Caria Manor and Nurgle's Garden.

The characters feel fleshed out and I felt like I was really following the protagonist's journey, which particularly hit different because of something I won't spoil.

The action is wild and the injuries and violence are fucking brutally visceral and uncomfortable without ever feeling like lurching into Hostel territory.

This was the first full novel ebook I've read in a really long time because I struggle with reading a lot of prose on screens, but I just had to consume this book. I am praying this gets and audiobook and will be first in line to go around again and for more stories in this fucked up world.

Absolutely cracking stuff!