She’s a policewoman with a past. In a future ruled by AI, one bad decision could get her killed… or worse. New York, 2055. Former UN Marine Alice Yu is a beat-down cop running from guilt in a bankrupt city. Brutally ambushed and left for dead, she’s powerless to prevent a ruthless crime boss from abducting the partner she idolizes. Though it will cost her job in a world with 99% unemployment, … 99% unemployment, she vows to bring him back from the lawless and forbidden Fourth Ward Territory.
Fighting through injuries and resurfacing trauma, Yu relentlessly tracks her mentor’s trail. But when her PTSD flares in the face of a cartel death squad, her bloody background could spell her demise. And if she doesn’t succeed, the entire city is doomed.
Can Yu save the man she failed, or will her quest for redemption become a suicide mission?
The Paradise Factory is the pulse-pounding first book in the Cortex cyberpunk science fiction series. If you like gritty heroines, loyal friends, and dystopian high-tech worlds, then you’ll love Jim Keen’s action-packed adventure.
Buy The Paradise Factory to fight for your future today!
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This is being marketed as cyberpunk, which I found very misleading, as there are no cyberpunk elements. It’s more a post-apocalyptic sci-fi. The apocalypse in this case is brought about by the invention of Mechanical Intelligence, a machine that has made human workforce obsolete. Hundreds of millions are without work and those lucky enough to be employed can lose their job on a whim, with no social security to fall back on. That the humanity is still alive and kicking is more because of stubbornness than for any discernible survival skills.
The story follows Alice Yu, a Brooklyn cop in her twenties –I think — whose partner is abducted right in front of her. Even though loyalty to one’s partner and initiative are discouraged by her bosses, Alice goes after him. Traces lead to Brooklyn Bridge, a lawless no-go-zone ruled by criminal empire. She knows she’ll lose her job if she goes there, but she goes anyway.
Another story-line follows Red, a young boy who needs to deliver a message over the Brooklyn Bridge, an errand that would pay well if the other kids weren’t trying to kill him for it. The paths of Alice and Red meet on the bridge and they team up.
The plot is straightforward: find the partner and save him. Obstacles come in form of bridge security trying to kill Alice for their boss, a crime lord who has a nefarious enterprise to conceal. The constant fights became boring pretty soon, but Alice is fighting PTSD from her time as a Marine in Mars, which gives some depth to her character. Because of what she considers a personal failure in Mars, she decides that saving Red is more important than finding her partner, a decision that Red disputes, forcing her to face her past.
After all the fighting, the main conflict is solved amazingly easily. If it hadn’t been for the chapter that followed, which showed the truth of what was on the other side of the bridge and gave both the world and the main characters some new depth, this would’ve been a solid three star book. The ending changed that.
I had some issues with the book. One of them was with the way the scenes were set. Namely that they weren’t. Every scene, especially in the beginning, started right with the action or even a beat after it. For example, the book starts a moment after Alice’s partner has been taken, when she is fighting her injuries. No context was offered to where she was, why she was there, and why her partner mattered so much to her. As it was, I had trouble understanding Alice’s need to go after him other than the general ‘of course she does’. Were they friends or was there a debt to pay? Was he a lover, a mentor? In a world where such decision means a pretty certain death, it needs to be a good reason. Causes were given later in the book, but it came too late as I’d already formed my opinion.
Incidentally, I’m not a fan of a narrative where character motivations, like the cause of Alice’s PTSD, are rationed and revealed after they have already influenced character’s actions. It made the narrative style was very claustrophobic with too little to work on. I had to put the book down fairly often just to clear my head. That fortunately changed towards the end of the book when all the players were familiar and the plot began to move forward.
I had issue with the world-building as well. If the world is that rigged against humanity, with no chances of survival, how come there are so many humans left? Especially since there’s a constant winter. Why are there no riots? The only one seems to be planned by the bad guys for their benefit. The idea of MI didn’t work well either. How could a machine replace the entire workforce? All it seemed to be able to do is print human body parts. They are so expensive that countries bankrupted themselves to get one, so they can’t be in every factory for example. And if they are supremely intellect, how come one of them could be fooled by a human? All the other technology seemed to be in the service of humanity, like the intelligent jacket Alice was wearing, so why was the humanity in such a bad state. Also, most of the technology appeared to be micro-chip based, whereas MI seems to be based on a Babbagean difference engine — a cool idea that would’ve changed the entire world-building if everything was based on that; a twenty-first century steampunk world powered by nuclear reactors.
All the issues aside, I liked the book enough to keep reading through the claustrophobic chapters. I liked Alice from the start and Red grew on me. Bad guys could have been more evil, but considering the ending, there’s maybe some use for them in subsequent books. I’m not entirely sure I’ll continue with the series, but I’m glad I read this one.
(I got the book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)
It’s been a while since I have read fiction. Since we are in the throes of the COVID19 pandemic, finding a world to escape to has been paramount. So why would I choose to read a book about an apocalyptic future…after all, most days it feels like we are already living there. But it was comforting to read this author’s take on how complicated things could get. Some reviewers have found the world-building lacking, but since most of the story takes place in a desperate attempt to cross a single bridge, I think the world-building was exactly what it should be: a small piece of a larger, more complex reality. There are allusions to a deeper truth: where the rich live in mile-high towers, where the poor fight for survival on the earth’s surface, and where there are small, dim pockets of love and compassion (e.g. Red’s uncle – you have to take what you can get). The characters Alice and Red are mysterious at first, but they reveal themselves through the pages, which makes their arc more interesting. In the end, enough is left unsaid that you know the subsequent books are going to be interesting, and there is a lot more world to explore.
I enjoyed this book. I am going to read the sequels. Even though I live in my own mid-pandemic apocalypse reality right now, it was good to escape into a different one with different problems.
THE PARADISE FACTORY by Jim Keen is the first book in the Cortex series and is a New York 2055 cyberpunk story. Alice Yu is a New York policewoman and a former United Nations marine. The book starts with her and her partner being ambushed. He is abducted and she is left on the street injured. With New York bankrupt and 99% unemployment, she elects to bring her partner back from the forbidden Fourth Ward Territory against orders and without backup. As she works to rescue her partner, a young boy, Red, is trying to deliver a letter to Manhattan. Their paths cross and they team up on the lawless Brooklyn Bridge that is ruled by a criminal empire.
The story line is interesting with a setting where sentient machines leading to a breakdown in the human social order and Alice and Red’s dual tasks. However, the writing style of flashbacks and switching points of view between Alice and Red broke up the rhythm and flow of the story for me. Both Alice and Red were characters that you could root for and both had clear goals. The world building needed some work to fully satisfy me. The plot twists were believable and several were unexpected. The ending was dramatic.
Overall, this was an entertaining and intense read. It includes several themes including PTSD, sentient machines, unemployment, greed, criminal empires, murder and much more. While my rating is three stars, I do plan to read the next book in the series. I recommend this to science fiction and cyberpunk fans.
Thanks to BooksGoSocial and Jim Keen for a complimentary ARC of this novel via NetGalley and the opportunity to provide an honest review. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way.