Chris reviewed Remix by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
None
4 stars
This is the third volume in a series, the first two being NeoAddix and Lucifer’s Dragon, which mixes a spacefaring civilisation of cyberpunkoid tech-altered humans with an Earth where the Napoleonic Empire never fell, and so Europe’s capital is Paris and the last Bonaparte sleeps near death in an orbiting capsule. It has the classic high-tech/low-life one-two of cyberpunk. It is also very violent, with almost every page having some act of violence either enacted or imagined on it when it is not descriptions of (often sadomasochistic) sex instead.
In its favour, it is also quite big on the black humour and either mockery or recycling of old cyperbunk cliches, for example the evangelist in his orbiting ship could be L Bob Rife in Snowcrash, or the Capellan brotherhood in Colin Greenland’s Plenty series, and the ratboy living in the tunnels with an artificial lung to allow him …
This is the third volume in a series, the first two being NeoAddix and Lucifer’s Dragon, which mixes a spacefaring civilisation of cyberpunkoid tech-altered humans with an Earth where the Napoleonic Empire never fell, and so Europe’s capital is Paris and the last Bonaparte sleeps near death in an orbiting capsule. It has the classic high-tech/low-life one-two of cyberpunk. It is also very violent, with almost every page having some act of violence either enacted or imagined on it when it is not descriptions of (often sadomasochistic) sex instead.
In its favour, it is also quite big on the black humour and either mockery or recycling of old cyperbunk cliches, for example the evangelist in his orbiting ship could be L Bob Rife in Snowcrash, or the Capellan brotherhood in Colin Greenland’s Plenty series, and the ratboy living in the tunnels with an artificial lung to allow him to breathe in airless ducts has his origins in a Bruce Sterling story somewhere, though Chairman Bruce’s version probably doesn’t go off to herd goats on an orbital at the end. On the very stylish purple and green cover it says ‘william gibson meets quentin tarantino’, which is probably quite a good description.