Black Fire [Sci-Fi Techno-Thriller]

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Manila, 2047. In a city gripped by corruption and controlled by powerful streaming empires, one young man rises through the criminal underworld, navigating a deadly game of power and survival.

In 2047 Manila, Philippines, capture drones observe real-life interactions to inspire television content, while the engineered psychedelic Black Fire emerges in the underground scene. Jayson Bernal Vargas, a disillusioned call center agent by day and a getaway driver by night, stumbles upon an opportunity that could lift him out of poverty. But to seize it, he must outrun Bryce Desmond, a security agent driven by a lucrative mission, setting the stage for a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game in a city where fiction and reality blur.

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Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2024
Author: DUDEMIKE

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.4/ 5.0
Followers: 25
Views: 21,541

Reviews

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Community Reviews(1)

JTNubsRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
This is a lovely read that grips you from the very beginning with incredible and vivid imagery. The story is somewhere between cyberpunk dystopia, scrappy resistance, and noire detective. The core premise of exploiting everyday lives of people for stories is novel, and is rooted and interwoven with a theme of colonial exploitation that I have seen very little of, especially regarding the subject of the Philippines.
The characters are superficially archetypical, but betray depth very early on, and as such their archetypical nature serves largely as an easy way for the audience to grasp the character initially, rather than a demerit against the story.
The core conflict of the story, a drug that transplants the user straight into a story, is completely unique and wholly underappreciated, and I look forward to seeing more of it.
Gun to my head, if I had to name anything wrong with the story, my one complaint would be that a number of characters are introduced early-on very quickly, and it takes time to get to learn all their names and connect them. But that is a problem only once and for only a few chapters, after which the characters flow smoothly.
The numerous protagonists allow readers to learn the story from multiple lenses, getting a quick and fulfilling look into all levels of the world built by the author. Additionally, should one character prove uninteresting, their story can be skipped until the writing inevitably pulls you back in towards enjoying all the characters.