Gerald Brandt
DAW
Published March 1st
ISBN: 0756411394 (ISBN13: 9780756411398)
Kris is a motorcycle courier in a dystopian future of walled, multi-layered cities where fresh air and light come at a hefty premium. Corporations run everything, and they constantly send information from office to office via couriers when the information is too sensitive to trust to the electronic. They send the real packages amid hordes of fake ones to confuse any who might try to intercept them.
Kris gets called to a late night delivery, but when she gets to the drop off, the recipient is lying on the floor dead. The black ops assassin standing over him now wants Kris dead–for handling the package, for seeing the body, for even knowing a delivery was to be made.
An underground anti-corporation resistance group sends an operative to recruit her, and to get her out of the mess she’s in.
The world building in this book is great. I wanted to start off with that positive point.
Unfortunately, that’s the sum of it. The main character of this novel is a problem. She’s constantly in distress, has very little agency, and is constantly getting out of scrapes by sheer, dumb luck. The characterization gets a bit tired for a main character. There’s also quite a lot about her background of abuse, which can certainly shape a character, but after awhile begins to define her when a rather gratuitous assault flashback/dream gets thrown in late in the book. At this point, we’re well familiar with her history, and it really didn’t need a gross spelling out. I’ll be passing on reviewing the next one in this series. Four stars for the world building.
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.