Genre:
Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Cyber Punk
Description:
“ThreadBare
is a debugger. He’s property, one of the Imam’s vast pool of
implanted servants. He lives in a smelly, greasy garage on the
boundary of the battlefield known as Delusion. All he wants is to
complete his tasks, exceed his rival BullHammer, and stay alive.
Possibly get a promotion.
When an atypical chore brings Thread into contact with Sandfly and HardCandy, things get complicated. Day by day and task by task he struggles with the life he’s always known. Ideas plague him, brutality vexes him, and women distract him.
Then there’s the list of offline debuggers, those who’ve quietly disappeared. Through datamixes — dreamlike records of their lives — Thread tries to uncover the truth. Where did they go? What does it all mean? And what can one forgotten debugger do about it anyway?”
When an atypical chore brings Thread into contact with Sandfly and HardCandy, things get complicated. Day by day and task by task he struggles with the life he’s always known. Ideas plague him, brutality vexes him, and women distract him.
Then there’s the list of offline debuggers, those who’ve quietly disappeared. Through datamixes — dreamlike records of their lives — Thread tries to uncover the truth. Where did they go? What does it all mean? And what can one forgotten debugger do about it anyway?”
Author:
“Kerry Nietz is a
refugee of the software industry. He spent more than a decade of his
life flipping bits, first as one of the principal developers of the
database product FoxPro for the now mythical Fox Software, and then
as one of Bill Gates's minions at Microsoft. He is a husband, a
father, a technophile and a movie buff. He is the author of several
award-winning novels, including A
Star Curiously Singing,
Freeheads,
and Amish
Vampires in Space.”
Check out Mr.Nietz’s website or follow him on facebook.
Appraisal:
I read and
enjoyed Mr. Nietz’s A Star
Curiously Singing. If you
enjoy snappy cyberpunk writing, I definitely recommend that read.
Frayed
had a number of similarities in style and in the worldview, so I was
looking forward to another trip to the author’s extraordinary
hi-tech future world run by powerful Imams. I wasn’t disappointed.
Written in
the first person of a debugger, DR23, nicknamed Threadbare, much of
the story involves the internal struggles of this “implanted”
human when he is faced with the actions of a ruling class of
“freeheads” (humans without implants). They abuse their powerful
positions to run roughshod over not only Sharia Law, but also human
decency.
Exposed to
their moral corruption, Threadbare is under constant threat from the
internal “stops” programmed to prevent him (through pain) from
even thinking about disobeying Sharia Law. An attractive concubine
further tests his “stops,” and causes Threadbare to confront the
hypocrisy of a system that he is programmed to obey.
Frayed
is the first book in the DarkTrench
Shadow series. The series
premise of a secret project and a list of debuggers who have somehow
broken free of their internal programming is foreshadowed throughout.
My only complaint is the cliff-hanger ending that left me feeling
that this installment hadn’t been cleanly finished in its own
right.
Format/Typo
Issues:
Very few.
Rating:
***** Five Stars
Reviewed
by: Pete Barber
Approximate
word count: 80-85,000 Words
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