36 Streets

Having read, and enjoyed, Napper's short story collection (Neon Leviathan) I was looking forward to reading his first novel. Could the promise of the shorts stories be carried over to a full length novel? The answer is a resounding “yes”. 36 Streets is one of the finest science fiction novels of the past decade.

Set in an alternate-future Chinese-occupied Viet Nam, where China has almost singled-handedly solved climate change, the Western economies have collapsed, and the Chinese Empire is expanding, this is a high-octane cyberpunk/gangster thriller from the outset.

Our protagonist is Lin Vu (The Silent One), a gangster in occupied Hà Nội in a gang led by the enigmatic Bao Nguyen, an outsider born in Viet Nam but raised in Australia. A trained fighter of lethal skills she becomes embroiled in an investigation into who killed the developers of an immersive video game, Fat Victory, where people can fight the Viet Nam war all over again. But the whole story is much bigger than Lin realises and she must deal with loss, her own insecurities and decide where her loyalties lie.

The action scenes are intense and bloody (and the flashbacks to Lin's training under a Japanese master brutal in their intensity and single-mindedness), but there is also emotional heft here. Lin's feelings of not belonging anywhere, alienated from her sister and adoptive mother, drug and drink addicted to numb the pain of isolation make her story arc compelling.

Napper has created a whole future world where people have exo memory pins, genetic enhancements - a high-tech world dominated by the Asian Pacific countries, especially China. Which is a refreshing change. Having lived in Viet Nam, Napper knows this world inside out and 36 Streets is testament to that.

If William Gibson invented cyberpunk (debatable), Napper has just kicked it into the 21st Century. Superb from start to finish I cannot recommend this highly enough.