The Eternal Prison

I just finished Jeff Somers' The Eternal Prison. I'd read (for free, online) the previous book The Digital Plague and I must say, I was mighty impressed with Somers' writing to start with. The Eternal Prison is sort of like Philip K. Dick meets Gibson but with a strong story-sense. It's a mighty fine read. There is good use of cyberpunkity technology -- with a deft avoidance of that stuff which can just get silly and embarassing in a couple years (a terrabyte? Dude, I have a terrabyte on my phone!)

He builds some fun characters, almost all of them are nasty -- even the protagonist (who, by the way, "saves the cat" a number of times throughout.) And there's this brilliant bit which I won't give away where you get that Faulkner-like first-person you're not quite sure of.

One thing the author does not do is tell you things twice. This is a bit of a problem for me as I am one of those readers who tends to blow off names. You gotta be saying someone's name over and over for me to even have a chance at remembering it.

I remember reading The Digital Plague and thinking I just can't believe the quality of the writing in this "free" book (I don't think it's "free" anymore.) Maybe the editing is just that good. I'll have to read the first book in the series, The Electric Church.

I know what you're thinking. Would it make a good movie? Of course. Would it be difficult to shoot and have a limited cyberpunk-ish audience? Yep, that too.