SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Cyber Mage by Saad Z Hossain: https://t.co/pq3ZEBeIqZ
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 28, 2022
Short Review: 8 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): A combination of cyberpunk with Islamic myth features a young hacker in a future Dhaka, Bangladesh, a djinn enhanced warrior cutting off heads, and a strange impossible AI. Cringey at times early, but otherwise highly entertaining.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 28, 2022
2/3
Cyber Mage is a cyberpunk novel by Bangladeshi author Saad Z Hossain. The book features a combination of classic cyberpunk themes - a world where corporations have taken over, the poor are exploited for the sake of the rich shareholders and seemingly anything goes among the slums, hackers are a major big deal as are AIs and nanotech etc. - with Muslim/Bangladeshi myth, most notably that of Djinn. It's also a book, that uses its 2089 setting to make a ton of references, some of which will make you laugh or smile and others of which will make you groan.
Overall I liked Cyber Mage more than I expected from the start, as the book's narrative features as one of its protagonists the eponymous Cyber Mage, a teenage boy hacker named Murzak, whose initial plot of going to high school solely to woo a pretty girl and getting bullied as a result is cringey at best, and made me very much want to stop reading. But the rest of the book, featuring the unstoppable Djinn-armed and sword-wielding Djibrel (who has a tendency to cut off heads), massively powerful AI, and a massive conspiracy works really well and is highly entertaining, getting me really into seeing how it all finished. More specifics after the jump:
--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------------
Murzak is the Cyber Mage - the best hacker in the world, best player of the world's favorite game, Final Fantasy 9000, known throughout the virtuality for his stunts....like dropping a satellite on some rival's house from orbit. He's self-supporting, making plenty of money by employing his skills for a Russian crime syndicate, allowing him to do whatever he wants online with his hacker friends, like his best friend ReGi. high But Murzak is also a teenager - an emancipated one! - and he has two problems: first, there's a strange dark presence, possibly AI in origin, that is interfering with him, even when he sleeps. And second, well he's a teenager and he has a crush on a local girl, a crush that might make him do the stupidest thing he's ever done: voluntarily go to high school.
And then there's Djibrel, a man in the slums of what was Dhaka Bangladesh, who died and was put back together by the Djinn Bahamut...and given a fiery sword in the process. Djibrel is now well known for going around the slums cutting off heads with that sword, looking for answers as to the djinn and what happened to them. Even in a land filled with warriors, witches, and well paid mercenaries armed with nanotech, Djibrel is seemingly unstoppable. Until his search finds him against not mere mortals, but other Djinn themselves, who are on a whole other level....
Murzak and Djibrel's paths will lead them to a conspiracy of djinn, AIs, and other powerful people that have great plans for the worlds, plans that may be beyond the abilities of a 16 year old Cyber Mage to stop.....
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In some ways, Cyber Mage features a pretty classic cyberpunk setting. This 2089 world has featured a catastrophe which destroyed the old world order and replaced nation states with corporations, and created a world filled with nanotechnology that divides the haves - the shareholders - from the have nots - those without shares, whose nanotech is used to provide health and subsistence instead to the shareholders. Humans...and even AIs have lost their jobs due to automation and the like. One of your main characters is a hacker who from his computer and his bedroom - and his VR equipment - can influence world events by hacking into nearly everything, etc. etc. There's a conglomerate of hackers who hang out in a secured server thought lost ages ago, as well as a programming glitch only the protagonist knows about that he could use to handicap everything, well you get the picture.
But Cyber Mage throws things off from the usual in two ways. First there's a constant flood of references - maybe not to the Ready Player One level, but still a lot, towards geek culture and other things from our own world. Hossain manages to make most of these references work, resulting in a lot of laughs, although some of them will make you groan (there's one featuring a Sega device meant to help people investigate their own dreams and well.....*groan*). Secondly, the book integrates this cyberpunk setting with djinn and the supernatural, who were content to let humanity destroy themselves, but intend to take control of this world via their magical and technological might for their own purposes and politics.
This results in a fresher take on the genre than you'd think, and a plot that is generally fun and entertaining to read even as its setting deals with serious themes typical of the genre. Most of the characters are highly entertaining, whether they be AIs (a despondent school AI that used to be an airport AI is often hilarious, as is the childish innocence of the super AI Kali), the warrior Djibrel, or the slum-level hackers/engineers he teams up with. Hossain's dialogue for all of these characters, as well as his action scenes, are really well done, as is his imaginative world, even once you get past the references and classic setup.
The only time the book is a struggle is in its first act, where there's a subplot of Marzuk trying to go to high school to woo a girl he has a crush on and finds himself getting bullied by a privileged asshole athlete type that goes on for way too long - it's incredibly cringey, and just makes Marzuk feel whiny and annoying especially as it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the book. Thankfully it goes away after the book's first half, with just occasional callbacks for Marzuk to get the necessary bits of revenge to make you laugh. Really the book has no clue what to do with Marzuk's romantic feelings, as it also connects him to his hacker friend ReGi and the slum-based hacker Arna (who disappears in the finale for no reason) and none of it really makes too much sense.
But aside from that, Cyber Mage is highly entertaining as it mixes djinn in with cyberpunk, has humorous dialogue and situations, solid action, and an enjoyable world and plot. Certainly worth your time.
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