My reactions upon reading this novel in 1992. Spoilers follow.

This was a disappointing novel.

It’s one of those crime story where the crime and apprehension of the criminal is almost irrelevant, certainly not the thrust of story and the cyborg Destroying Angel was not very interesting. Rather characters and the creation of a gritty, grimy world is the point of this book. Russo is pretty successful in creating that ambience with descriptions of heat, humidity, sweat, greasy coffee, futuristic slums. But it’s an empty accomplishment in service of a contrived future.

One senses another (fairly subtle) attack on conservative economics in the description of future street people which are there because of free market economics. Nothing explicit -- just a feeling.

This book belongs to the cyberpunk sub-genre with a heavy emphasis on the low-life and not the hi-tech. Unfortunately, it’s incorporated the worst cyberpunk cliches with the high orbital colony of New Hong Kong as the heavenly rich paradise of wealth and regenerated limbs and the hell of the futuristic San Francisco with the Core serving as a sort of Mircea Eliadean world center for this novel (there’s even a reworked quotation from Dante’s Inferno at one entrance of the Core.).

Our hero Louis Tanner constantly ruminates about how grim and awful the world is, and the novel’s main story is him gaining hope. Yet it’s a contrived, illogical, cliched grimness. Besides the schism between rich orbiters versus poor Earthers being reminiscent of Walter Jon Williams Hardwired (and, to a lesser extent, William Gibson’s Neuromancer), the sleazy, elaborately secure, secretive Tenderloin and Core reminded me of George Alec Effinger’s Budayeen as Skoozie reminded me of similar girlish skate punk character in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash -- though that and this novel were published virtually simultaneously. However, the Budayeen is just a bad part of town. The Tenderloin and Core is improbably out of the control of the police and improbably elaborate and secure. And why should an Earth with orbital colonies be polluted and impoverished? That assumption comes from the same mindset that doesn’t see the advantage to all of trade, and the same mindset that gives the utterly predictable, cliched Destroying Angel as a military project gone amok. The military coverup after his capture was also very predictable.

In short, this novel has only atmosphere to reccomend it, certainly not originality or thought. ( )

Ho hum. There's absolutely nothing special about this book, which bears some of the sadly typical flaws of much of the genre, including wooden characters and a plot that's going nowhere. A lot of the "action" revolves around the main character going out to eat, with poorly made coffee as an ongoing theme. If I had a dollar (quarters don't amount to much anymore) for each time one of the main characters utters the following lines--"I don't like it at all. But what the hell else are we going to do?"--I'd have enough to buy something more engaging. Also, while I realize this book was published in 1992, there's nothing to really warrant calling it a "cybershock thriller." It's not even thrilling. I apologize to all the Russo fans, but I can think of four books off the top of my head that I'd recommend instead: if you're into disaffected youth and futuristic urban decay try Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. If you're looking for an "exotic" futuristic thriller, try Greg Alec Effinger's Gravity's End or David Mack's Kabuki. And if you want to read a more original suspense thriller set in San Francisco's Tenderloin, try The Magician's Tale by David Hunt. ( )

A Blade Runner looking future San Francisco. The book is a visual romp through the city, which is sectioned off by the character of it's inhabitants. The ones who can't or won't function in what is normal live in the Tenderloin and the ones who can't function there are in The Core.
Serial killer on the loose. Police (Carlucci) and Tanner looking to stop him. Interesting plot developments along the way. The serial killer ends up being a mostly cyborg human who went AWOL from a secret government project is caught, then the police are forced to give him back to the government who created him. ( )

http://uvula-fr-b4.livejournal.com/49031.html#cutid1 ( )