NEO HYPER Book Club #9 (24th June - 8th July)

[Ezrihel]

Ooooh my gooood Straz this is just an amazing read.

Characterization:

I wasn't super familiar with these NPCs when I first started the thread, but you developed them (all of them) so well through your writing. For me this area is just off the charts.

I started off just thinking that Charles was just going to be the stereotypical big dumb brute, especially when he came in guns blazing, but I really felt like I was proven wrong by the end of the thread. I like how you draw attention to the fact that he's always smoking cigars, only bolding the point that he's sorta-a-lowlife when he blows smoke in someone else's face. I was unbelievably ready to roll my eyes and scoff in disdain towards him when he hijacked Mal's card and forced them to place a bet; even when it paid off I was waiting for something risky to happen. And it did in the form of three little shits haha!

I love how you used Mal as the main tool for us readers to 'relate' or reference to. This sort of dips into the rather neat effect of having an 'unreliable' narrator, you just stop a bit short on the concept. Mal is, from you we're shown, less shady than say, Charles. He talks about having morals and having more than his partner in that regard. It's a fun Good Cop Bad Cop duality you have going, but Mal is unreliable because we have to question that if he has so much more moral salt than his other half, why does he stick around? Maybe because Charles is a intimidating meadhead, or maybe there's something he sees in him that we don't, or maybe it's something he /can't/ change. Either way I find it neat.

Ameara:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[spoiler][/spoiler]

I fucking love her to no end, okay? She's a villain that feels good to read. You've painted this perfect aura of intimidating and admiration around her. I have a HUGE soft spot for Cyberpunk, especially the whole slumlord criminal kingpin vibe you went for. I adore her, no really, I honestly do. While I won't go into too much detail about the climax, to avoid spoiling it for others reading the thread still, I have to say that she's intense. She's got just the right amount of that haphazard feigned 'carefree' feel to her to make her scary, and how you build to the climax was just as thrilling. How you describe her has just stuck with me very well, seeing as I have a weakness to powerful women as well. How dare you know about all my soft spots and roll them into one character so well.

"She emanated an alien attractiveness, a sort of bizarre elegance befitting a monarch of rust. Half of her head was shaved and covered with cybernetic implants, while the other half was a long mane of bright red hair. Metal screws poked out from beneath her pale skin, implants long since obsolete. A chrome-plated revolver hung heavy in her limp-wristed hand. It stuck out as a glimmering status symbol in a wasteland of decaying industry."

This quote is just... Beautiful to me. It, along with the proceeding paragraph that sets the mood/stage, paints a perfect picture of the landscape in my mind's eye. When I think of Tier 6, it feel natural and makes sense for her to be there, and when I think of her, I get all the aesthetic of the wasteland. She feels as if you were using her as a personification of the setting. Wild, dangerous, unpredictable, hard to look away from. She represents the rotten nature of the setting. All this being said, I have a love/hate feeling with how she was handled. The climax was REALLY cool, but I wanted to see more of her. I want to read more of Ameara being the Queen Bitch of the Junkyard, cut throat and dazzling in the same breath. Maybe you could do some neato flashbacks that follow her building up to right before this thread starts? I'd read that shit in a heartbeat.

The Kids: Blech, I usually hate seeing kids in threads. People use them to soapbox or for wangst the world is so horrrriririririirble points way too often. I'm honestly kinda really hateful towards the whole "I was traumatized 122345530 times as a child so now I'm a psychopathic murder bitch LOLOLOLOLOLOL" angle that a lot of people just love to take when they use young characters. Good news though! You don't really do this! While I could potentially see some people griping about not seeing the kids enough, I think you used them just the right amount in that regard. They were a device to move the plot forward, but they didn't feel contrived. They didn't linger too long or have an inflated presence in the scenes with them.

I DO HAVE TWO MINOR GRIPES THOUGH. Sorry, I can't let you get off the hook too easily now, can I? Towards the end I got a bit confused. It's sorta implied by our duo that during the barfight, the kids betrayed them and grabbed Ms. BAMF. During the actual scene though, Ameara comes out and sees the kids BEHIND the duo, but then thanks them for "coming to get her"?? I don't know, the phrasing in reference to and in that scene is confusing for me, but it's more or less a minor issue when I think over everything else. It doesn't really detract from anything nor does it change the end too much for me either way.

Tiny nitpick: While I love how you describe Charles' voice, by the third time the whole "diesel engine" comparison was starting to get old, so I'm glad it didn't get used again.