Book Review: 36 Streets by T.R. Napper (Cyberpunk/SciFi)
I stumbled across "36 Streets" by T.R. Napper last month, and was blown away when I sat down to read it. I grew up on cyberpunk fiction, but personally find a lot of modern attempts at cyberpunk to be a bit.. meh. Too many examples of authors falling in love with some perceived cyberpunk aesthetic and spending days describing things, but there's rarely an underlying theme or concept really worth exploring.
"36 Streets" is the opposite of that. It's nuanced, it's clever, it made me think. It still has me thinking about some things. Oh, also, it's pretty badass aesthetically, but that's not the point.
The basic setup
The novel is set in a Vietnam less than a hundred years in the future, but in a world where large-scale Chinese expansionism has returned Vietnam to (notional) Chinese control. The book plays a lot with exploring how the shared collective will of a populace comes to be.. and how it can be subverted. And the nature of direct and indirect resistance. There's a lot to love in this novel.
Generic back cover summary
Lin 'The Silent One' Vu is a gangster in Chinese-occupied Hanoi, living in the steaming, paranoid alleyways of the 36 Streets. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, everywhere she is an outsider.
Through grit and courage, Lin has carved a place for herself in the Hanoi underworld under the tutelage of Bao Nguyen, who is training her to fight and survive. Because on the streets there are no second chances.
Meanwhile the people of Hanoi are succumbing to Fat Victory, an addictive immersive simulation of the US-Vietnam war. When an Englishman – one of the game's developers – comes to Hanoi on the trail of his friend's murderer, Lin is drawn into the grand conspiracies of the neon the mega-corporations backed by powerful regimes that seek to control her city.
Lin must confront the immutable moral calculus of unjust wars. She must family, country, or gang. Blood, truth, or redemption. No choice is easy on the 36 Streets.
Final Thoughts
"36 Streets" is unique and thoughtful and brilliant..but even more importantly, it's a good story. By the time I was maybe twenty pages in, I was noticing that I was reacting much the same as I had when I first started reading Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon series a few decades ago: basically, I was thinking "holy crap, this is impressive"
It's a novel about gangs and crimelords, about large-scale manipulation of a populace, and has freakin swordfights. Come on. You know you want some.
inkhorn (2025-03-31)
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2025-03-30 Book Review of "Superbloom: How Connections of Technology Tear Us Apart" by Nicholas Carr
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