Local Heavens
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
A corporate hacker. An elusive billionaire. A society trying to survive the American Nightmare.
New York City, 2075. Filipino American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he’s struck by the city’s contradictions—shining corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class.
When Nick meets alluring, new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby’s frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren’t all they seem—and as a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker, Nick knows that no secret can stay buried forever. He’s the reason they don’t. And his latest assignment? Investigate Gatsby himself.
As Nick becomes entangled in the dark affairs of the elite—and the devastating fallout of their actions on the city’s most vulnerable—he must reckon with the limits of compassion and accountability across class and status. What takes precedence: Love or truth? Heart or soul?
A brilliant reimagining of Fitzgerald’s classic tale of glamour, desire, and desperation, Local Heavens examines the guardrails of morality . . . and the price of desire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fajardo's impressive debut reimagines The Great Gatsby as a cyberpunk thriller. In 2075, Minnesota-raised Filipino Nick Caraway, a war veteran and "diver," someone trained to enter cyberspace to shore up security and patch breeches, takes a corporate espionage contract in New York. There, he meets up with his cousin, Daisy, once a star of immersive "Happy Sleep" films designed to lull audiences into dreamland, and her bigoted, abusive husband Tom Buchanan. They introduce him to heavily body modified athlete Jordan Baker, whom he crosses paths with again at a party hosted by his mysterious billionaire neighbor Jay Gatsby. Nick and Jordan later use a dangerous, improvised setup to delve into records of Gatsby's past, where they discover he was a poor paramour of Daisy's before her family forced her to marry into the wealthy Buchanan clan to save their flailing pharmaceutical company. As Nick gets drawn tighter into Gatsby orbit and fields mixed signals of desire from both Jordan and Gatsby, he contrives to reacquaint the star-crossed lovers. Their connection, however, has deadly consequences. While purists will balk, Fajardo expertly transfers the themes of exploitative capitalism, mysterious and possibly illegal wealth, and complicated desires haunted by loss and queerness to a dystopian setting. The result is an evocative and powerful reworking of an American classic.
