Set in the world of R Talsorian Games "Cyberpunk 2020" role-playing system, this book fails spectacularly to do what the Shadowrun novels have done for FASA's Shadowrun role-playing game.Delinquent duo of rockchick bytegirl and cybernetically enhanced tough guy byteboi are employed to journey from fictional Night City, California, across the balkanised remains of the USA into the radioactive rubble of Manhattan and retrieve whatever paintings they can from the ruins of New York's museums. Along they way they encounter a agents of a global security corporation with the same intent, a sleazy movie director who wants to make a film with them in it, and a number of utterly forgettable two dimensional and frequently clichéd secondary characters.
Whilst the main plot is okay, the subplots are woefully underdeveloped to the point of being meaningless filler.
Having endured all 282 pages of this pap (and I managed to read over a dozen of Jerry Aherns 'The Survivalist' novels before the doctors changed my medication) I'm left with no doubt that this book was written based on the campaign notes of what was probably a pretty good Cp2020 gaming session - you can almost sense the rolls on the "Random encounter table" being worked into the narrative. The lead characters are called by their in game class name of rockergirl, solo, nomad, corporate several times and even, highly annoyingly, call themselves "a solo" etc. Its a small miracle there aren't lines like "and byteboi knew the pistol's 3d6 damage stood no chance of punching through an SP20 wall".
This would be poor if it was amateur fan fiction. To have this printed in a novel with a Cyberpunk2020 endorsement is sheer embarrassment.
Save your money. Buy something from William Gibson instead.
