The New Prometheus (The Promethean Files, #1) by Andrew Dobell
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Good
In a world ruled by faceless, uncaring mega corporations, Frankie, a young woman who has rejected being cyberized, just wants to make a difference by helping the victims of the cybernetic revolution to fix their ailing prosthetics in the slums of neo-London.
But when a genius cybernetics Doctor who’s on the run from a powerful corporation finds Frankie bleeding to death in the aftermath of a “Jacker Gang” attack, he sees an opportunity to finish his latest cybernetic masterpiece and transplants Frankie’s brain into a powerful prosthetic body.
Frankie has barely woken up when the corporations forces attack and kidnap the genius Doctor forcing Frankie to go on the run in her new cybernetic body. Pursued by corporation Special Forces, cybernetic Agents and hulking Mechs, Frankie must fight to survive and choose what to do with her new body and its incredible abilities.
Frankie must get over the hatred she has for her new body if she is to save the doctor’s life and strike her first real blow against the tyrannical corporations.
The New Prometheus is an okay read. Nothing to write home about but a decent piece of futuristic action story. The core setting is perhaps a bit overused nowadays. Evil mega corporations are more or less controlling society and the governments are little more than puppets in the hands of the corporations. Not that original. There are a few twists that makes the story a bit more interesting though.
The corporations in question deal in cybernetics and they do not only control by means of political power but they literally control people by means of cybernetic implants. Apparently few people have avoided getting these implants even though they are not really forced upon them. The main character, Frankie, is one of those people that has managed to avoid implants … until now.
The rest of the book is a fairly action filled roller coaster ride with a log of world building, rescue operations, disposing of corporation agents in various more or less messy ways and in particular setting up our heroin and what I assume will be her team of good guys. The corporations have absolute zero respect for anything resembling law and order, of course, and pretty much fields there own armed forces who do not hesitate to start firefights (with heavy weapons) in the middle of a city. Can you say collateral damage?
I think it is a decent enough book. Not fantastic but good enough for me to be interested in the next one. The book does not really have that much of a conclusion other that it is start to hit back at the corporations. There is an interesting little twist happening on the last page though.
PG's Ramblings 