Glow

An intricate puzzle of identity collapses under its own weight in Jordan’s body horror–laced cyberpunk debut. Fourteen years after a nuclear apocalypse, South American Coriolis City is rife with murderous automatons, drug-crazed cyborgs, and the deadly machine-drug Glow. After Glow addict Rex wakes up tied to a corpse, his head full of someone else’s memories, he stumbles into a web of conspiracy involving the only remaining founder of a pharmaceutical megacorporation, a nunnery devoted to creating their own god, and an artificial humanoid on a last-ditch mission to find a stolen digital oracle. The identity of the corpse Rex wakes with connects them all. Running beneath the violent tangle of identity and memory is a fascinating exploration of how people cope—or fail to—with adversity, but the convoluted plot is smothered in ungainly, jargon-heavy prose. Technological exposition frequently substitutes for story, and archetypical characters never satisfyingly develop. A fumbling plot and relentless nihilism make this one to skip. [em]Agent: Sam Morgan, the Lotts Agency. (Feb.) [/em]