Softbone: Down and Out in New Kowloon (Jake Long) (Unabridged‪)‬

The year is 2017, maybe 2045, but who is counting? Jake Long, a mild mannered husband to a ball busting wife and a soon to be father by an unknown gendered child, is held hostage by a world run by the feminist imperative. Life is an oppressive nanny state with SSRI's on tap. His only respite is New Kowloon, a hidden enclave of Caffeine and nicotine; where women look like women and men don't have osteoporosis from the overabundance of hormones.


And though a series of unfortunate events is forced to flee to the Ukraine and take part in a war that could end humanity as we know it via a weaponized vaccine taken to prevent a manufactured viral pandemic. He has to fight against drones infused with artificial intelligence that outdo humans in every way, in the most unique answer to techno camouflage ever seen.


It's Cyberpunk; high tech and low life. A warning about the present if trends continue. R A Stone ended up predicting current trends, as some things came true before the books release. It's not a pastiche of the tropes of the genre, but a whole new work. It's interesting, it's satire, and most importantly, it doesn't waste your time with exposition or worldbuilding.


It doesn't hold your hand.


It throws you into the deep end and you have to figure out how to swim from the first minute.


It's the book that will get you into fiction again.