Snipe
Self-Published
Community Rating
Description
Now availableon Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible!
When the world's no longer paying attention, an assassin's job becomes a hell of a lot easier.
In a Seattle dominated by corporations and gangs, Kara stalks the shadows. Equipped with a cybernetic eye and specialized weaponry, killing's a career, and she's a professional. Only one person in the city knows her real name: her older brother Darius, head of one of the most powerful gangs in the city. Between them, the district enjoys relative peace—until an unexpected message from a rival sends the whole city into chaos.
Lost in a web of revelations about her life, Kara is surrounded on all sides by potential enemies. As Seattle decays around them, Kara discovers Darius—the only person in the world she trusted—betrayed her, and shattered her world forever. In the rain-drenched streets, a new contract appears for her brother's head.
On the one-year anniversary ofEpilogue, Etzy's back <3
This story is a proto-cyberpunk thriller set in near-future Seattle. As with all my stories, the focus is on characters above everything. Thisisone of the more-action heavy stories I've written—but as always, expect a lot of dialogue, realistic characters, and complicated drama without easy answers. There's no gore and I don't describe violence in explicit detail, but my stories do tend toward the darker side of life, so please be aware as you dive in.
Chapters whenever I publish them, no specific schedule. I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think :)
Special thanks, as always, to my good friendsAce Arriande,Reaver,ThinkTwice, andFortySixtyFour, and to the patrons who have stuck with me through all my work. i love you <3
[Discord] - come hang out and chat!
[Patreon] - writing blog, epub copies, advance chapters and other goodies
[The Last Science] - when you're done here, come check out the main event :3
[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]
This story hasnotbeen posted or published anywhere else besides RoyalRoad.com, at this URL: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/28525/snipe
Information
- Status
- Ongoing
- Year
- 2019
- Author
- Etzoli
Royal Road Stats
- Rating
- 4.6/ 5.0
- Followers
- 317
- Views
- 20,839
Chapters(3 total)
Reviews
No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!
Community Reviews(10)
- Dantalion22Royal Road★★★★★ 5.0How? How are all these stories so good? Etzoli keeps writing, I keep reading, and she just doesn't stop.
Snipe is a fantastic, fun little adventure. The duo of Kara and Faith is one of the most fun pairings I've ever read. I wish there were more, but what's here is already incredible, and the ending was more than enough.
Thank you again for everything you write.
Spoiler: Spoiler
A happy ending from the butterfly? Impossibru! - DragrathRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0Etzoli shines again with a character driven adreniline rush with twists and turns this time on a futuristic vision of Seattle following Kara. The cast is as always full of complexity especally Faith who is just awsome. Seriously how can Faith do so much on so little sleep? :P This story is much shorter than Etzoli's main work but it is no less compelling and infact I'd even argue it might be more complelling as things come together nicely for an excellent conclusion.
Read it. - JeanDRaccRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0Etzoli's style already encompasses high writing levels of prose and grammar. Her list of characters and changes of PoVs also includes lots of consideration. Now about the story, the reason why you should read this... Well, let me tell you a bit and see if this is something you enjoy. (Expect lots of dialogue and drama).
Initially, we have Darius and Kara. Seemingly siblings. Kara being an 'assassin' that snipes her victims by his brother's orders.
Darius is part or leader apparently of an organization that erases people for the sake of certain ideals.
Kara finds that Darius deleted something precious to her. Or maybe he deleted a nightmare she experienced, a memory of an event or a full manipulative brainwash of whatever are kara's true origins.
....
In her difficulties, kara has to search for the answers, she meets another girl at the same time someone appears to impersonate her. This new girl has an incredible personality.
Now that's just the tip of the story. The cast grows by every chapter. The plot twists in unpredictable patterns. This is another story that people must read with a lot of popcorn by the side. An amount enough for you to not search for it twice.
Go blind and enjoy it. Although expect Etzoli's wings to vary from lighthearted to darkish or even abyssal in certain points.
I'll just say that I snipped my pizza with this. Thanks for the meal. I can't wait to see how it goes.
______________________________
ADV REV:
It's the same as above just with the specifics and a conclusion, to justify it.
Story: Very good, and the relationship between the characters has me hooked for the most. 5 stars.
Chars: I love kara, but fate shines in my eyes. Etzoli is a genius in dialogue so is her style. 5 stars.
Grammar: I can't do anything here, like I only found what I called 2 errors, which I asked in comments, and I was smacked by author-sama (obviously not like that, but they were things on purpose, like 'repeat clients' which I thought would be better like ' rep - MundaneRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0What would you do if you found your entire life, your very concept of who you are, was shown to be an artificial lie imposed on you by the one person you loved and unconditionally trusted in the world? Now imagine you are a trained killer with dozens of murders to your name with the skill and resources to take any action you wanted.
This is the story of Snipe.
Characters
There is a firm and primary focus on Kara a.k.a. Snipe in the story. This is interspersed with interludes from other character’s perspectives.
Unlike many other stories on Royal Road Snipe is primarily a story of character development. Not the artificial and superficial “growth” you can find in many other stories full of stat boxes and numbers getting bigger like a video game but in the true sense of expanding interests, motivations, connections, and complexity. In order to facilitate this growth our protagonist starts at a very reduced state.
Initially Kara is almost robotic in her thoughts and goals. She focuses on her job and almost nothing else. At the start of the story she is driven into a deep existential crisis of identity. During the story, while she works to uncover the truth of her existence and find meaning, she begins to grow as a character. She meets Faith who she finds herself forming an instant bond with and it is the start of her deepening complexity.
Faith requires special mention as while she is not the main protagonist, I feel she is almost as central to the story as Kara. Faith is crippled, grew up homeless on the streets, and by almost any measure is completely powerless and weak. At the same time by pure force of personality and perseverance she has carved her own path and set up her own version of power equal to those who had far more given to them in life. Her dialogue is an absolute treasure and she dominates every scene she is a part of.
World Building
Snipe is set in the Pacific Northwest of the USA in the near future. Specifically, it is set in a place called “Cascadia” - MystraManRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0Snipe, as befits all Etzoli works, is a character driven dive into psychology, drama, relationships, and great storytelling. This was more of an action thriller than the usual fare, but with the many stories under her belt, she's shown she can switch genres without losing her skills. I eagerly look forward to the next story from this masterful author.
- Nadia SarekhanRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0My Etzoli shelf is growing. She's written another one I must have for my library. I came for a thriller on the streets of Seattle, stayed for the strong character dyamics and character building. Kara's story of self-discovery, growth and independence struck very close to home for me, and without getting too personal I felt like Etzoli had written something I've actually been through. It touched me, and I'm glad I read this story. Thank you.
- NataliesBiggestFanRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0it's a really fun adventure so far and i really like the whole cyberpunk thing. kara's memory stuff is kinda weird but i'm still super interested. her brother's horrible though. she needs a better family. maybe faith can be her family? that sounds good.
- NorthernWardenRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0Well worth reading for a fun time with great characters and excellent pacing. This story really captures the wondrous curiosity of a new world. All the characters feel very real and all the motivations and actions make sense. It really balances having fun exciting moments without needing anyone to hold the idiot ball.
- SirealismRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0I love stories with interesting and deep characters, this story definitely provides that in spades. The technologies are well thought out and definitely believable, providing just enough of a peak into a possible future to be exciting.
Clearly the author knows quite a bit about how tech really works (sysadmin in the bio, so it checks out) though I find the lack of dns problems in this story disturbing :D. One of the most honest representations of hacking I've seen, though obviously not totally honest because that would be boring and the characters would have to spend way too much time on it.
The style flows really well, a great balance of purple and biege prose. I really enjoyed the way different characters perspectives were interlaced, it's not easy to do that without it being jarring for the reader.
Grammar was overall quite good, there were a few errors here and there though. Some spelling errors, a few too many "ands" in some sentences, and a couple of awkward to read ones. Overall though very solid, a single pass by an editor would likely reslove most of these.
Story was very well paced and planned out. It's really nice to find something on Royal Road that actually has an ending. There were some cool little plot twists that kept me engaged. The ratio of action to story was really well done and the action sequences always served to move the story along.
Characters were just brilliant, I really wanted to get to know them. They were very believable and brilliantly developed. Snipe is a journey of personal growth, for Kara primarily but for some of the other characters as well. In essence, it's the story of a teenage girl reaching adulthood and taking her first steps out from under the care of her older brother.
I'm not sure if this book is published but it should be. - aDragonRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0Uhg, this does not deserve to be on RR. I come here to find long 4000 page stories that read like a wow raid live stream that's been transcribed in excruciating detail. What do I get instead? A fast paced cyberpunk story that won't just end sometime after the character is half-way through defeating the fourth Big bad.
I mean, come on. If I wanted to read something exciting and engaging, I'd read an actual book. Who does this Etzoli think she is, trying to differentiate herself from the hordes of the grimdark isekai works with quality and nuance? Don't think I didn't notice the lack of misspellings and grammatical errors. It really throws you out of the story if you don't have to stop every other paragraph to figure out what "gashhjer" is supposed to mean. She also uses proper indentation like this is a Strunk/White fanfic!
Bottom line, if you come here to read stories that have just enough pull so that you can stave off thinking about the nightmarish hellscape your life has become for one more minute, only in the brief moments between screen and sleep thinking when the last time you talked to some one who cares about you was, but not so much that you'll be inspired to share and create something of your own like I do, then give this a pass.