Synopsis:
There’s a thief on the loose. The Tigres excel at tipping the scales in their favor, be it through bribes, politics, or blood. They unofficially run Viterbo, Italy—and somebody stole from them.
Private investigators David and Mafalda De Campo have been hired to help find the thief. They’re in it for the money, but the Tigres just want to make a statement.
Meanwhile, the Heredes have returned: ruthless idealists and revolutionaries. It’s not clear what they’re up to, but they keep getting in the way.
The De Campos will need to decide how far they’re willing to go for this job and the Tigres. Viterbo may soon become a battlefield, and one wrong move could set it aflame.
Review:
Animus Paradox is a noir cyberpunk story to a T. You’ve got your former military private investigators doing a job well above their pay grade, modded body parts galore, bodies aplenty, warring gangs, computer hacking viruses by someone called the Spider (in Italian no less). You want robotics and blood, you got it!
This is a fun little story Bassett has cooked up. A near future Italy where body mods are normal and blood let in the streets is commonplace. David and Maf[alda] De Campo (aka the private eyes) team up with a pair of Tigres gang members, Gennoveffa and Jun’ichi, as they search for a missing surgeon. Lies and twists pit them against another gang (The Heredes) led by the fully-modded out Ayane. Bullets and katanas everywhere. Deaths, the whole shebang.
From what I understand, since I’m awful at life and didn’t read the first Digital Extremities series of stories, this novella is a pseudo-sequel to one of those. Mainly a follow-up of David De Campo. Again, can’t speak to that story, but here, David is your quintessential jaded law-abiding private citizen who happens to be completely modded out due to his past in the military. Sure the vast majority of his mods are dormant due to playing nice with the rules, but they exist, and that makes David quite a compelling POV. Throughout this story, he straddles the line of playing by the rules and overstepping them. And when he finally teeters to one way, it goes balls to the wall. His wife, Maf, isn’t a POV, but I do wish she was. She was probably my fave character of the story, even though we spend very little time with her. I don’t know, she just struck me as that can-do, take no chances/prisoners vibe. She was just awesome, especially in the climax. Of the two Tigres we spend time with, Jun’ichi is our secondary POV, and he’s the quiet assassin type big bruiser. Hyper focused, his goal is singular throughout the story, especially after things occur with his partner, Gennoveffa. Ayane was a really neat antagonist, and her being completely modded out, yeah, wouldn’t want to mess with her.
The biggest draw of this world is the world. So, I’m Italian (northeastern up by old Bavaria) but I also took multiple semesters of Italian in college and my degree is in Classical Archaeology, mainly focused on Ancient Rome, so needless to say, I love me some Italy. This story taking place in neo-Italy is a boon for a reader like me. But then throw in the cyberpunk aspect, the noir aspect, and then top it off with the Mafia-esque gang (I cannot confirm, nor deny that my family is connected…), I’m hooked. This world is just simply cool as shit (forgive the language). The sci-fi aspects are not too far forward that they don’t make sense, but still future enough that it’s cool. Like who wouldn’t want some body mods to make us badass? You got your R2D2-esque earbuds that can plug into things, your entire torso made of stupid strong material, your computer hacking skills to kill, you know, all the good stuff.
The prose is very solid and so is the pace. Sure there are moments where the ‘action’ is downplayed, but this is a noir/procedural type story, so our heroes need to spend some time watching stuff in the hopes that something occurs (at least our cast takes some showers, too, not just stinky noir people). Jun’ichi helps offset this because of his impatience. The action is super strong, especially when shit hits the collective fan. If I did have any moments of ‘this is neat but not necessary’, it was when David gets his mods turned back on and he and Jun’ichi have a masculinity test with a sword fight. It was well done and showed off David’s skill, but not needed in my unasked for opinion as it was placed between a very tense moment of Maf/Gennoveffa and the climax.
Animus Paradox is my first taste of Bassett’s writing and it won’t be the last! Certainly enjoyed this story and I hope we get more De Campo cases! Will definitely be reading the Digital Extremities shorts soon.
*I received an ARC of this story I’m exchange for an honest review.
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