The Data Disruption

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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It'll come to no surprise to any of my longer-term readers that I liked this – it's pretty established that I'm a Genrenauts fan. I dig the characters, the world(s), the type of stories Underwood's telling – the whole kit and caboodle. This story is no exception – I liked it. This takes place just before Leah is recruited, so the team is functioning very smoothly – no growing pains needed – just King, Shireen and Roman doing their thing like seasoned pros.

It's a pretty straight-forward, classic cyberpunk story (yeah, I'm old enough that cyberpunk can be called “classic”) – notorious hacker, D-Source, has gone missing. Which is causing all sorts of problems for the rest of his crew, and (by extension) all of Cyberpunk world as well as ours. So King and his team (minus Mallery, off in Western world) head out to save the day. They've worked with D-Source in the past and therefore have an easier time getting an “in” to the story in-progress. What results is a solid heist story with all the cyberpunk bells and whistles.

Underwood has been modeling this series after TV shows, and wrote this as a “lost pilot” to “serve as an introduction to the series, which I'll use to invite more people into the worlds of Genrenauts.” Here's my problem with that – no one watches a lost pilot until the show's been around for a while, and usually only fans see it. No one sits down to watch “The Cage” (or the two-part version, “The Menagerie”) as an introduction to Star Trek, and for good reason. Similarly, Leah Tang is our point-of-entry character, and to remove her from the equation takes something away from the overall story. Also, there's something that's slowly revealed over the course of the first few books that's just blatantly stated. I just think that works better the way that Underwood originally wrote it.

Still, Underwood knows what he's doing, and if he thinks this will work to bring in new readers, I hope he's right.

Putting that aside, I'm supposed to be talking about the story, not Underwood's plans. The story worked really well. It was a little too short for me – but it's supposed to be short, so I shouldn't complain. Besides, I almost always complain about short story length – even I'm tired of that. While the story was told in its fullness, I just would've liked to see everything fleshed out a little more – also, I wouldn't mind spending more time with my friends. Fast, fun, with good action – celebrating what makes a cyberpunk story work – and winking at the genre at the same time.

Still, any time with the ‘Nauts works for me. Good story, decent intro to this series that I can't stop recommending – and a great price (free). Still, reading this after the sixth book would be my recommendation after starting with The Shootout Solution.