Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained from the publisher in advance of the book's release on March 28, 2023 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
Hybrid Heart is the first novella from short fiction author Iori Kusano and is another one of the offerings from Queer Indy SF/F publisher Neon Hemlock. The story features a near future Japan from the perspective of Rei, an idol who used to be part of a two-girl idol group and now finds herself going it on her own after her partner Ririko fled from idol life and disappeared from Rei's life. But, as the story soon makes clear, Rei finds herself depressed and wishing almost that she was the one who had fled Idol life and the demands of her emotionally abusive manager and finds herself constantly looking up and dreaming of a digital idol who is able to perform and sing without having to show themselves or to bend themselves to the whims of such a producer.
The result is a story that deals heavily with the pitfalls and horrors of Japan's idol culture* - and to a similar but not quite the same extent, Western female pop star culture* - as Rei deals with emotional abuse, the memories of her past and the path she's taken and how she sees a new young teen idol following along that same path. It's a really effective and strong novel that, while avoiding going into the sexual and physical abusive elements of idol culture, really uses near future technology to showcase how bad it can be and how one might envision a better version....
There really isn't a Western equivalent to idol culture as it is in Japan - Western female teen/early 20s pop stars are probably the closest, but it's not quite the same. If you're unfamiliar with the idea of idols in Japan, this novella might be confusing to you, but it's beyond the scope of this review to explain it.
Plot Summary:
Rei spends hours watching the performances of LYRICO, a digital idol who doesn't exist in the flesh, and whose songs are just their own, without anyone out there to interfere with how they want to look or what they want to sing....whoever they are. Rei, an idol of the conventional sort, doesn't have that luxury. Her looks, appearances, and performances are all micromanaged by Kosaka, her depressed and drug using manager. And while the technology embedded into her skin allows her to play LYRICO's performances in her head, it also allows Kosaka and his team to micromanage every aspect of her life by allowing him to spy on what she watches, what she does with her free time, and even what she eats...just in case she might sneak an extra calorie.
It was a part of Idol life Rei was once totally onboard with living with, especially when she was, together with her best friend Ririko, part of a two person idol group Venus Versus. But since Ririko walked away and disappeared from her life, Kosaka has allowed Rei to go solo as an idol and even got her a gig as the singer for a popular anime show....but at the cost of being even more distrustful of Rei and micromanaging of her life and refusing Rei any chance of her own expression, leaving Rei to wonder....is it really worth putting up with it?
Thoughts: Hybrid Heart takes what could be a typical premise "Rei competes with a digital idol that is trying to replace her despite all of what she has to go through to be an idol" (possibly with some idea of the digital idol being secretly Rei's former partner Ririko) and well doesn't go that way at all - this is not a story of AI taking over human jobs, but rather a story of how horrible the human profession of being an idol actually is. And how horrible it could even get with greater technology which allows Rei to be spied on and monitored by her manager to an even greater and more horrifying degree than in our own world...although the same monitoring - of what idols eat and do and drink - is certainly happening even today.
Notably the abuse Rei takes is so brutal and emotional and manipulative that well, the story can be hard to read at times...especially because the manipulation is so overt that Rei even recognizes it for what it is...and yet she can't stop it from working on her anyway for most of the novella. And when a young teen idol comes onto the scene to learn from Rei and to follow in her footsteps and Rei sees how the process could repeat itself, well it's a pretty brutal thing to read. And well, that's the point here, to see how the idol system as we have it is broken and how even having nothing and trying to start from scratch for Rei as a digital idol behind a fake face is just so so much better than that. A really effective novella, one which carries its message even beyond the idol perspective for sure.
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