You expect certain things in a cyberpunk novel or story. Lots of bio-tech, cybernetics, gun-play, dystopian futures, evil corporations, lots of poverty, and the too cool for the city protagonist. The Electric Church has pretty much the entire checklist of a cyberpunk novel. And Somers adds in a global religion made up of transplanted human brains into cyborg bodies run by a mysterious leader (Which could be a veiled metaphor for Scientology).
So going into this book don’t expect any new or interesting take on the cyberpunk genre cause you’re not going to get it. Then again I don’t think anyone going into any cyberpunk novel looks for new ideas, just comfortable themes coated with new paint. This book actually reminded me of a Shadowrun campaign (minus Trolls and Elves and Dragons) from college and easily reads like one.
The Electric Church isn’t a bad book. Somers tells a fast paced story that begs to be finished sooner rather than later and not savored. His writing style tries to emulate any number of noir or crime writers mixed with the first generation of cyberpunk authors like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. But, more so than that, it seems as if Somers grew up on copious amounts of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020. We have a protagonist, Avery Cates, that relies on his wits and experience more so than augmentation, he constantly makes it known that augmentation ends up killing you more that not, and that even with augmentation you can still be a splat on the street if you dont’ have the skills. He drinks too much (I never understood that, if you are a Gunner, and wanted by a Police Force that is homicidal more so than law enforcers, and you need to be frosty 24/7 why do these guys drink so much?), complains that he’s old too much (at 26), and makes sure we know that he doesn’t care about anyone but himself, except for the few friends he has, but he will not care if they get killed, but he isnt’ a heartless bastard.
What makes this a Shadowrun campaign, or at least feel like one, is that we have Avery Cates stumble upon a grand conspiracy involving the Electric Church, a global religion made up of cyborgs with human brains, and he is hired by a top level Internal Affairs cop to take down the head of this church, cause, you know, he is bound by the laws and such that off-the-grid Gunners like Avery ignore.
So Avery puts together a team of Riggers, Deckers, and another Street Samurai, oh sorry, a team of people who look like Riggers, Deckers, and Street Samurai, but aren’t. All funded by a Mr. Johnson, oh wait, someone that is like a Mr. Johnson that has the money and will pay a Godly sum of it to Cates when the job is finished. I was waiting for the Mr. Johnson character to give Cates the old street wisdom of “Watch your back, shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never, ever cut a deal with a Dragon.”
Am I sure that Nyx Smith didn’t write this book? Nope, it’s by Jeff Somers, just double checking.
Anyway, the book reads fast and fun and it is pretty much what I was expecting. Though I wasn’t expecting to be reminded almost every other page that the cops were brutal and tough and you don’t mess with them, that Monks (those religious cyborgs) had disconcerting faces, that illegal bars were put together and stayed around for about 3 weeks until they moved on to the next location and that they survived by bribing the lower end cops on the street, etc. Somers either doesn’t trust his reader to remember these intricate parts of his universe or he was stuck with something to say in order to add word count to his manuscript. I suspect mostly the former since he could keep reminding his readers that what Cates was doing by going up against the Big Bad Cops was really, really dangerous.
If you like a cyberpunk equivalent of a Sci-Fi, sorry, SyFy Channel movie this is the book for you. If you like Shadowrun and they don’t bring out books fast enough and need a fix this is the book for you.
This isn’t to say that I didn’t like the book. I enjoyed the hell out of it.
