Mr. Muller, let me show you and endless trail of sunsets. Let me save you.
Excerpt from The Electric Church
The bases if The Electric Church takes place in a post-unification, 1984-esque world where the entire earth is ruled by a corrupt bureaucracy, and there is a clear separation between the upper class and the rest of the world. It’s a grungy Cyberpunk story where no one in the slums should live past the age of 22, everyone drinks tub gin, and bullets are as common as smells.
Our anti-hero, Avery Cates, is a gunner: a gun for higher, assassin, hit man, or all-around kill-for-cash sort of dude. He’s 27 and doesn’t know how he got as far as he did. He’s hired by the corrupt upper-class to stop an up and coming religion: The Electric Church. Rumors have been spreading that the EC has been forcibly gaining converts, but due to regulations the SSF (The System Pigs, as they are lovingly referred to) can’t legally do anything about it. They call in Cates to try and assassinate the head of the EC.
I found it really difficult to get past some of the dialog in this book. There was simply that much swearing throughout it that I found it hard at times to actually get into specific scenes. I can understand having some, or even moderate amounts of swearing, but when you have at least one a sentence for an entire page, it gets a little old.
Another problem I had was how shallow much of the book really was. There was a lot of depth put into how crummy the world has become, but very little is put into those who exist in it. The population of the slums is described – repeatedly – as “The Gray Masses.” I could deal with that, but even the main characters lacked the depth I usually expect from them. You had a dude with mental powers, a super tech, the anti-hero, the smooth criminal, and the git’r dun twins. Honestly they couldn’t have been much more cookie cutter if they tried. Even the antagonists were straight-forward. Evil bribed cop, sketchy church, The Fuzz, The Sociopath, the list goes on. Everyone was so… typical, that it really got to me. The only character development happened near the end of the book, and it was too little too late for me.
My complaints aside, it was an entertaining read. The internal banter of Averys’ mind put a smirk on my face more often than not. The repeated idea of “of course this is happening, because my day hasn’t hit rock bottom quite yet” is completely at one in The Electric Church. I enjoyed the fact that even as one action scene is toning down, another one is coming around the corner to kick the bejesus out of Avery.
It’s also interesting to read the subtle transformation that Cates has throughout the book, and though I say I saw it coming, it was still well done. I also appreciated that by the end of the book, the only thing driving Cates was spite. It’s not often you read about how the main character is going to finish what they started “just be-fucking-cause.”
If you’re a fan of the Cyberpunk genré and don’t want anything too dark and depressing, this is a pretty good option. It’s not the best example I can think of for Cyberpunk, but it was an enjoyable read. I don’t know if I could do it again simply because of the curse-dense dialog and shallow development of the characters.
6/10
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