Dubi reviewed Company Town by Madeline Ashby
Review of 'Company Town' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A clarification first - I'm not much of a cyberpunk reader, so I'm probably not the best one to tell you how innovative this story is. But I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and found it imaginative and gripping. I have some issues with the last section of the book - for a story that was very paced for a very long time, it started moving awkwardly fast towards the end of the book, and I felt some things just got glossed over. But this book is worth it if only for the world-building in it.
On an island-rig off the coast of Newfoundland exists a small factory town, but after the rig explodes in an accident, the local economy begins to collapse and the last business still running is the Canadian Sex Workers Union local. Hwa is a bodyguard working for the union protecting its employees during their …
A clarification first - I'm not much of a cyberpunk reader, so I'm probably not the best one to tell you how innovative this story is. But I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and found it imaginative and gripping. I have some issues with the last section of the book - for a story that was very paced for a very long time, it started moving awkwardly fast towards the end of the book, and I felt some things just got glossed over. But this book is worth it if only for the world-building in it.
On an island-rig off the coast of Newfoundland exists a small factory town, but after the rig explodes in an accident, the local economy begins to collapse and the last business still running is the Canadian Sex Workers Union local. Hwa is a bodyguard working for the union protecting its employees during their appointments. In a society where everyone is augmented with bionics, Hwa is an organic, though not by choice. Her mother was too poor to pay for them, and probably wouldn't have anyway, seeing as Hwa suffers from a rare disorder that makes her so unsightly that most augmented humans can hardly even see her at all.
The town is bought by the Lynch corporation, who intend to build an experimental reactor beneath it, and Hwa ends up hired by this new company as the personal bodyguard of Joel, the youngest scion of the Lynch family, who is the designated inheritor of the family business.
Only then things start going south - a serious of horrific murders rock the Union, and Hwa tries to track down the murderer to protect her former friends as well as Joel, and herself.
The story has some extreme emotional high points that I'll avoid spoilering for you, although some bits that may have been intended as such high points were really not (particularly towards the end). There is one sentence in the story that was like a punch to the gut - it was perfect. The story built up to it, yet it was completely unexpected when it came. That one sentence alone made the whole thing worth it even if the rest wasn't any good (and it is good).
On the other hand, some sentences didn't seem very thought out. My personal favourite is this, again, towards the end of the book:
"The minisub burbled up to the surface like a bout of bad tacos".
This thing came out of NOWHERE. It was so strange. It was funny, and I guess it was meant to be funny, but it just felt so out of place. I don't know.
Anyway, a recommended read, though, of course, not flawless.