Friday, December 8, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Necrotech by K.C. Alexander





Necrotech is a SF book that tries to pull off one of the probably most difficult feats in fiction writing - writing a book with an asshole, even unlikable, protagonist hero.  It's a really difficult task, because it relies upon making both the plot and the other characters in the story interesting, when those elements are by definition going to get lesser screentime than the protagonist.  Necrotech doesn't quite pull it off - the plot is kind of interesting but not stellar, and the other characters are very underdeveloped.  There's clear promise in Necrotech, but it doesn't quite realize that potential.

One further note before the jump, as I'll make clear below, Necrotech is a book with a LOT of profanity - our main character, who narrates the story, swears profusely, often in some non-standard ways.  If that's a problem for you, you should skip this book.


----------------------------------------------------Short Review-----------------------------------------------------
In a probably not too distant future, most of humanity, to deal with the effects of the lack of an ozone layer, is implanted with healing nanites and chips that register their identity - the SIN chip.  Mega Corporations have great power in this world, including the use of military forces.  In this world, some individuals have their SIN chips removed (if they were ever implanted) and become SINless (or in slang, "Saints").  These individuals often further augment their body with greater nanites and implants - but the risks of doing so can be high - overuse of one's implants without recharge can result in a state of shock known as "Nanoshock" as the nanites start to consume the brain and cause corruption.  Further overuse of one's implants can result in the ultimate horrible fate: becoming "Necrotech," basically a zombie controlled by one's nanites/implants after they consume the entire brain, so there's nothing left of one's own individuality.

Riko is a Sinless woman with a mechanical arm who has a girlfriend and a team for whom she pulls off illegitimate jobs in order to get by and to establish valuable street cred.  Or well, she had all these things, for she begins this story waking up in confusion inside a mysterious corporate installation, and finding her girlfriend becoming consumed by her nanos and turning necro.  When she escapes, she finds out that she months which she doesn't remember has passed, that she had vanished without sight from the streets, and that her cred is in the total shitter.  Oh yeah, and everyone, including her former team leader and her girlfriend's brother, think that it was SHE who led her girlfriend to her horrible fate.

With seemingly nothing left to lose, Riko attempts to pick up the pieces to find out what happened during those three months and to find out if she is really responsible as others think she is.  But her own body is strangely malfunctioning, and everyone seems to want to kill her.  Can she manage to come through all this alive?  And does she even deserve to?
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You'll note that I basically didn't name any other character besides our main character, Riko, in that plot summary.  That's pretty much because she's the only character given much development at all in this book.  Riko is a badass - her default reaction to situations she doesn't like is with violence - and she's very good at inflicting pain on others despite being put into some truly bad situations.  She's also just an ass in general - she's prone to blunt statements over any subtlety, rarely taking into consideration others' feelings, and responding rashly to every possible situation possible.  Also again, her  dialogue - both internal and external is filled with constant swearing.

Despite being borderline unlikable though, she's a solid first person narrator of this story, telling the story in such a way that the pacing never feels like it gets too uneven, even when the plot requires some infodumping in order to explain what's going on in this world.  While this book is the start of a series - a sequel came out recently - and doesn't wrap up the entire plot in this book, the ending is relatively satisfying.

Unfortunately, while the plot is solid, it's nothing special, and the book really suffers for lacking any other characters of interest.  A few characters are sort of partially developed, only for them to then disappear from the plot (or die), and the only character who is ever really fleshed out is Riko, who isn't particularly likable.  The other character who gets serious screen time is Riko's former boss (and his girlfriend's brother) Digo (short for "Indigo"), but Riko's voice as a narrator is so overpowering regarding Digo that we never really get a feel for who Indigo is or why we should care about him.

Also, about that swearing - it's a bit much.  I have no problem with characters with filthy mouths (one of the protagonist's of John Scalzi's Collapsing Empire has such a mouth, and she's a pretty good character), but Riko uses profanity so much that it feels like self-parody.  Especially when she uses non-standard swears - "cunting" for example is used frequently in place of "fucking" as an adjective, which just felt like the author was trying way too hard. 

The end result is a book with a solid plot but lack of really any great characters, particularly apart from the main protagonist, which is sad because there's clearly some interesting ideas here in this setting.  I just wish I liked the end result better.
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