When selecting the perfect violent, near future, cyberpunk adjacent, thrill ride, there’s just one question you should ask yourself: How much Sumerian myth is right for me?
This will be a triple review of:
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Vellum by Hal Duncan
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong
If you read Snow Crash and were one of the four people worldwide who came away thinking, “What I really want is more words devoted to Sumerian mythology in my cyber-thriller” then you are gonna LOVE Vellum. Not only does it not bring the plot to a complete halt to explain why ancient religion was like computer code or whatever Snow Crash was going on about, but it also mixes all manner of different mythologies together.
On the other hand, if your answer is zero, zero is the amount of mythology I want, well then Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits has you covered.
Don’t get me wrong, Snow Crash is a blast and part of the fun of reading Neal Stephenson is that when he geeks out, you’re in for the most interesting lecture you’ve ever attended, but it is still a lecture, which brings me to…
Pretension
It’s pretty hard to out-pretention Neal Stephenson, but Vellum manages. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s pretty cool to see these figures from the Bible and other religions being all neo noir like the Constantine movie. And you just know shit’s going to go down when somebody’s blood spills onto the pages of the grimoire in the secret sub basement of the ancient books library.
All these books are Cool with a capital C, but Vellum is going to exercise your noggin with time and space hopping, and trippy dimensions that blur the line between symbolic and actual, that are simultaneously map and landscape, exist outside of time, but without which time could not exist… or something. I don’t know.
Cyber
Snow Crash was Stephenson’s attempt to create the quintessential cyberpunk, to cyberpunk so hard and so thoroughly that in its wake there would be no cyber left unpunked. And he kinda did it.
Snow Crash is the techy one. Vellum is the one for religion majors. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits has a few holograms, few body modifications, but is otherwise light on the cyber aspect of cyber punk.
Female representation
All of these books were written by men, and, likely, with men as the target audience. That said, 2 out of 3 have, in my opinion, pretty well-rounded female characters.
Fight me in the comments, but Snow Crash is not one of those two. YT is a cool, empowered character, but she’s about as three dimensional as Trinity – I love The Matrix, but there are exactly one and one half interesting characters in that movie. (It’s Agent Smith and the Oracle.) I don’t expect every female character to be Ripley, but Vasquez is a baseline, a minimum, not what you aspire to.
Vellum reaches the baseline. It’s multiperspective and women are perspective characters with strengths and flaws and goals and obstacles, as it should be for every good character.
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits’s only perspective character is a woman, and though at first you might worry she’s little more than a damsel in distress with a point-of-view camera stuck to her face, that changes in surprising, yet believable ways, despite the fact that she’s constantly surrounded by overwhelming events and powerful men in the eponymous fancy suits.
She’s not ALWAYS capable nor always in control. She’s not a Mary Sue, but she’s also not always a panicky screaming mess the whole time. Whether that comes off as inconsistent or realistic is a matter of perspective. I thought it was believable and engaging.
However, a two-star review of Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits criticizes the author’s portrayal of women and points out that there are only three female characters and we’re told what all of their boobs look like, but that’s unfair. There’s four women and we’re told what all of their boobs look like.
Fun
All these books are an absolute blast.
If you’re into time and space hopping, angel versus demon cold war spy recruitment across the mortal realm and beyond, then Vellum is the book for you.
But if you’d prefer Katana-wielding pizza-delivery hacker trying to save the world from a computer-to-brain virus unleashed from an ancient Sumerian tablet, then Snow Crash has you covered.
For a thriller without prentention, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits delivers a self-deprecating trailer trash girl and her smelly cat pitched into a world of fancy suit power brokers and super-human body-modded assassins when her billionare bio daddy makes her the key to his fortune.
Whatever your taste in near-future, ultra-cool cyberpunk-adjacent violence, there’s a book for you, my friend. Do enjoy.
Haste Writing 