The Bloodstained Man by Christopher Rowley (Netherworld 2) [Review]

In the last book Pleasure Model Detective Rook Venner barely escaped with his life and now he and his beautiful companions Pleasur, a chipped-up pleasure model now intelligent killing machine and the human dominatrix Julia are on the run. This is my take on part two.

Title: The Bloodstained Man
Series: Netherworld 2
Author: Christopher Rowley
Cover art: Gregory Manchess
Interior art: Justin Norman
Genre: Cyber Punk | Heavy Metal | Noir
Paperback:
Publisher: Tor books
Copy: Bought it myself
Order from: Tor | Amazon US | UK | B&N

My Review of Earlier Books: Pleasure Model
Next Book: Money Shot (November 9 2010)

Reviewer: Ove Jansson

Following the explosive events of book one, Pleasure Model, Detective Rook Venner, Mistress Julia, and Plesur are on the run from the government troops trying to kill them and from a shadowy group that wants to capture Plesur alive for its own purposes. What secrets have been implanted in Plesur’s head—and why are they worth killing for?

Caught between these two powerful rivals, the trio hides out in the lawless New Jersey territory. Betrayed by gang members looking to collect the bounty on Plesur’s head, the three are separated, and Rook and Mistress Julia find themselves in mortal danger. Julia, given as a prize to a gang member, finds herself in chains, but not without her own means of fighting back. Rook, forced to fight for his life in the gang’s bloodthirsty gladiatorial games, must stay alive long enough to rescue Plesur, but time is running out.

The Bloodstained Man is a fast-paced, adrenaline-filled ride through a future where pleasure has a price, and Plesur holds the key to a secret that could rock the country to its very core.

Information

The Bloodstained Man is a mix of cyberpunk heavy metal novel and gritty noir comic art.

Justin Norman [his deviantart page] made the inside illustrations, they add another dimension to the text, especially in the action sequences they seems to speed up the action. I enjoyed the illustrations a lot; though there were a few more places in this book where they were out of sync with the story. They add a movie feel to reading the book.

World Building

America is some kind of police state with general elections. The citizens don't have much rights though and they are heavy segregated, the uninsured are left outside society to fetch for themselves in huge ghetto like areas ruled by gangs. Some of it you get in the dialog and descriptions but there is not much of it, it is not that kind of story.

They run into colonies of runaway/free pleasure mods living in their own societies among the uninsured and there is a message there about how we treat humans in that story, it also comes across in Rook's friendship with a fighter mod while he is captured by the gang.

Plot

The protagonist Rook is on the run from at least two groups and they are both after Pleasur the fabricated human pleasure model Rook found in a murdered generals home. One group is probably the power behind the current government and they want her dead and the secrets she has eradicated. The other group is more mysterious and secretive and they want to use Pleusure and her information in some unknown way.

As in the last book there is more or less nonstop action, first they crash a party and get chased away by cool motorcycles and missile firing war drones. Out of the frying pan into the fire they run to the uninsured area and are captured by a gang whose main activity seems to be gladiator games and feeding the losers to the alligators. Rooke is forced to fight in the bloody games and Julia is given to one of the gang members as his personal slave and Pleasur is striped of her fighting and intelligence mods and locked up in wait for the bosses to come and get her.

I am not sure this book would go down well with most female readers, but the females in this story do take charge of their own destiny especially Julia.

The ending is a cliffhanger after a horrid moment that makes me want to have the concluding book now not in November.

Characterization

This is pulp fiction and you what you see is what you get. There is more to the characters than archetype though. There is nothing wrong with a few small randy and explicit scenes to spiff it up, it's done all the time in chick-lit. But here there is something more fundamentally about being human going on inside and with the characters.

My View

The Bloodstained Man is a action-packed hardboiled detective story in a rundown world of pleasure models, government conspiracies and general lawlessness. It is a fast read I enjoyed very much. Both books in the Netherworld Trilogy are good summer reading. I can't wait for the next book Money Shot.

Extras

Rowley’s homepage www.christopherrowley.net contains a Netherworld Web Project with 28 slightly different chapters from the first book (the first book had 21). The texts are without the delightfully noir illustrations. There is also world building notes in the ‘Need to Know‘ section

Rating: 8/10

[Review] "Moxyland" by Lauren Beukes

It is Angry Robot Marathon here on Temple Library Reviews, so I am bringing you the whole coverage from A to Z. This is why I am bringing back a review from the past: 'Moxyland' by Lauren Beukes, which remains a recommended and quite captivating read.

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Title: "Moxyland"
Author: Lauren Beukes
Pages: 308
Genre: Cyberpunk
Standalone/Series: Standalone
Publisher: Angry Robot

What you can expect: A colorful glimpse in a future not too distant from our grasp and yet a bit unpleasant and perhaps even uncomfortable for our present notions how our society could evolve in the short span of ten years.

Pros: A social critique at today’s fascination and manic attachment to popular trends in not only technological products, but brands as a whole, which I think is refreshing to finally see expressed in a more updated version. I like the author’s style as it conveys a certain sugary high and fizzy quality that crackles and pops in your mind.

Cons: What bothered me a bit is the purposelessness the first half of the novel presented. Apart from minor interactions between just two characters in the beginning I had to guess how all the POV characters’ lives intertwined, which was revealed on a later stage. The feel of a bigger plot frame was missing and ‘Moxyland’ read as a slice-of-life, which is not a flaw on its own, just not what I expected.

Summary: What's really going on? Who's really in charge? You have NO. F***KING. IDEA. Moxyland kicks the door in on the techno-corporate conspiracy that's out to get us...and our freedom. In the near future, an art-school dropout, an AIDSbaby, a tech-activist and a RPG-obsessed blogger live in a world where your online identity is at least as important as your physical one. Getting disconnected is a punishment worse than imprisonment, but someone's got to stand up to government inc., whatever the cost.

Characters: As I have already hinted “Moxyland” is divided upon four characters, two men and two women, all in their twenties. From a more psychological approach I have spotted the four modern personality archetypes that these characters represent, which fits the sociological profile of the novel.

Toby is the amoral slacker, who practices a hedonistic approach towards life and as such has involved in a world of drugs and video game hacking. Responsibility is a foreign concept for him and the world is a joke. In brutal contrast, Tendeka has taken upon his shoulders the world’s weight and in his feverish attempts to reform society into a fairer mould risks his life as well as of those, whom he tries to aid.

Kendra is the misfit, art school dropout without an exact idea how lead her life. In that regard she goes with the flow and in order to achieve her artistic goals as a photographer becomes a living advertisement via nanotechnology. Lerato on the other hand has her life planned out and with her genius level programming skills has cemented her future. Highly sexual and predatory she enjoys shadow games and out of sheer boredom undermines the corporation that secures her financial stability.

As far as the characters go, although the general blueprint sounds exciting and promises a rollercoaster ride with the protagonists, I can’t help but feel that Beukes couldn’t exactly bring her characters to a finish. The individuality that each protagonist has to possess is missing and each voice overlaps the other. Mild nuances in behavior aside I struggled to keep up with POV changes. This in turn steals away from the overall effect of the story, which as a further result created this inability to establish a connection with the protagonists and care for their life.

The Story: I have to say that the future Lauren Beukes envisions excited me, the world bedazzled me and the cyberpunk vibes buzzed my brain like a sour cherry. Beukes’ style is electric and evocative, which instantly puts her on my watch list of authors. I realize that “Moxyland” is a debut and as such there are bound to be kinks and reading is not always a smooth experience, but there is a foreign and enticing quality to Lauren Beukes, which draws me in.

Her prose aside I enjoyed her world building decisions as well. Perhaps I am a bit archaic in my world view, but I don’t find it natural the way new gadgets that storm the market reach the status of essential necessities like nourishment and rest. People can’t cope without their cells, their iPhones or Blackberries. A day without Internet access seems ludicrous and as much as I resent dependency upon technology, I find myself in the same position. What Beukes does is simply take this new mentality and set of morals and expand upon them, creating a future where disconnection from the service makes you no better than a homeless person. As of right now I feel as if people put a lot more effort into their virtual persona [as in updating MySpace, Facebook profiles and blogging and posting on message boards], so it’s completely plausible to reach a stage, where one’s online identity tops in importance you physical one. In the same vein we already have living advertisements in the face of celebrities, who market designer clothes and jewelry. It only seems natural to progress upon that and infuse machine with a human host for a permanent finish.

The Verdict: In this light the ideas developed in “Moxyland” serve both as a critique of our tendency to lose our senses around the next best thing without much thought and as a warning where this addiction to technology might lead. The novel itself could have hit harder, since Beukes’ experience as a journalist shines through as well as her natural ability to bring cities to life, which is the case with Cape Town. However the strange pacing and the still not enough fleshed out characters dampen the impact upon the reader. Nevertheless, 'Moxyland' is a highly enjoyable read and is certainly worth devoting your time to.