Pink Carbide (E.S. Wynn)

Cyberpunk has traveled a long beautiful road, but most people who have ridden it are too plugged in to even notice the scenery. Normally, when the layman is looking out the window, the cyberpunk enthusiast is either jacked into a device or dreaming of jacking into a device…. of which both perspectives sound very? perverted.
Informatics has made great leaps, especially in the area of machine/human interaction. Gone are the days of simple calculation enhancement via abacus. The overly complex arithometer is a thing of the past. Our Bandai Tomagotchi digital pets have all died, been buried, and are taking a thousand hours to decompose in the landfill. The Texas Instruments Graphing Calculator that my high school friends most commonly reprogrammed to use as a TV remote has been replaced with complex cellphone Apps.. Skipping ahead to later next generations.
Pink Carbide, E.S. Winn’s opening novel to his self titled trilogy, takes place in the twenty-second century (the 2160′s to be more precise). Cylea launches the novel in a dance club, her technologically enhanced flesh is pulsating to the beat the electronic music, tunes that our time is not yet media saturated enough to appreciate. A man walks into the bar, his liver filtration enhancements not functioning properly, as he gets drugged from the chemical enhanced air. He locates Cylea and approaches her. Dancing around him, she interfaces directly with the port on the man’s head, and prepares to transfer the goods. Then she learns he is FBI, and bolts for the door, heading for a safe house.
What follows is a strange amalgam of action and sci-fi. The Protagonist, Cylea is caught in a web of situations which cause her to question who and WHAT she actually is. By the end of the novel, you are amped and curious as to what will occur next. Cylea, is overflowing with Badassitude in one moment, a sniveling broken woman the next. To her credit, I would be far worse off if i were physically beat-down as badly as she is throughout.
Fans of Cyberpunk fiction will have a high probability of enjoyment here. It is well worth the time invested in reading. Look into adding this to your “Should be read” piles.
Currently, Pink Carbide is available as a physical book as well as ebook format. If you are interested in previewing it, go download the first half of the book via http://pinkcarbide.com… There is also some cool (and lame) fan art to check out.
I actually read this book for free, finding it on Feedbooks, mistakenly made available in it’s complete form (this has since been corrected), instead of only a portion. Though it cost me nothing to read, I plan to buy and read the two follow up sequels in this series. This was just too damn entertaining. It seems as if the author is mainly sticking to print and PDF format. E-reader fans may be better served waiting until the novel is put back onto Feedbooks (should be soon) so that they can choose the format you would prefer to read it in.

Comments

  1. E.S. WynnMarch 15, 2011 at 10:38 AM

    Thanks for the read (and the review!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. erisianMarch 17, 2011 at 3:27 AM

    Thanks for writing it!
    I look forward to book 2, 3 (and the soon to be released 4,5,and 6)

    Edit1: except now i cant see where i read that there were more being released in the near future.. i swear i read that some place... curse my bad memory and in ability to keep accurate bookmarks!

    did i imagine that?

    EDIT2: YES! i did imagine it. that was a completely different series i was thinking of. Pink Carbide is a Trilogy only.
    i cant believe i spent so much time tracking down what the fucking moldy brain in my head was lying to me about :)

    ReplyDelete

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