Neon Skyfall [A Dystopian Cyberpunk Project]

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The story follows Malory, a young orphan, as she navigates the cyberpunk dystopia that is New Detroit, ruled by corporate overlords and gangs that coalesce around the bottom of the drain. Faced without prospects for a sustainable future, she finds herself in the midst of an escalating war between ZenTech, the ruling corporation of the city, and the Black Hands, the cartel that recruits from the outskirts. What will she become? What will she have to give up? Can she even survive? And what of the dead moon scattered high above that she dreams of one day putting back together?

Following the initial mass release of a chapter every day for a month, regular releases will be on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2025
Author: anubis187

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.4/ 5.0
Followers: 513
Views: 66,411

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(5)

SaiffRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I’m giving 5 stars because this is free cyberpunk that is decently written. But my one critique is that the MCs fighting skills weren’t really established early on and her golden finger doesn’t feel powerful enough to explain how she can kill these trained corporate hit teams with combat implants. Either setup her fighting skills early on, increase the power of her golden finger, or make her conflicts more manageable at first imo.
WS WildcardRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Lots of set-up but that's good explanations now mean less later. It's been building up the pressure nicely. Lots of plot points spread out all over the place. It looks to me like the author might just be close to finishing placing the dominoes and ready to push them over.
chimaera187Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This is an excellent start. The author really sells the world from the very first lines.
Starting out in such a dark place like a crematorium evokes an air of desperation.
The story has a compelling setting that made me feel like I was really present in New Detroit, all the characters we meet feel three-dimensional, even if the ones that aren’t named, and the prose is very stylistic and well-written. I didn’t notice any grammatical errors, and I was left with a pretty good understanding of what the city is like, how life means little down in its bowels, the expendability of it all, and it's a promising story set-up overall.
I especially loved the small, intricate details like corporation names and implant lines, the fact that workers like Winston have to carve out their own funds to enjoy life by any means necessary, and how the prologue evoked a wider, lived-in world, even if I'd never want to live in such a place. I couldn’t imagine working such a shitty job and having to obliterate myself with questionable substances to cope with my lot in life.
What more can I ask for? I'm excited to meet Malory and how she handles such an abysmal place going forward.
I'll definitely be checking this one out!
curiousSpiders4954Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Love how this is starting off.
The contrast between the details of living in a cyberpunk corporatocratic hellscape and how the characters cope is strong and starts building the world nicely. I feel like I can put my finger of the value of a human life in this world right away and, while it's bleak, it feels grounded in reality and makes the story so far feel too close to the current day.
Really excited to read the next chapter! <3
drandreasRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
I liked what I read so far. First chapter was good but misleading from a plot perspective. It could be tied into the rest of the main characters better. Maybe that was where the gang got the eye from. Which would be cool but there isnt enough ties to that until much later in the story making the first chapter not flow very well into the rest. Not a huge fan of romance but it fits well enough. I hope you keep writing. You only get better with time.