Cyberpunk Book Review: Zero-Day Rising (BetterWorld trilogy #3)
Zero-Day Rising is book 3 of the BetterWorld Trilogy by T.C. Weber, which is available on Amazon now, as the third part of the three-book set called The War for Reality (check out our review of Book 1, Sleep State Interrupt, here). It continues the story of the Cyberpunk crew from book two but this time doesn’t introduce any new major players. Kiyoko is coming back to America with a vengeance to take on MediaCorp and free her sister Waylee, but with a more organized front this time. They will need all the help they can get, and all of her allies, to muster the right kind of action that she’ll need to fight back. Also, some spoilers ahead, as I’ll be mentioning some things that happened in book 1 and book 2.
A Return to Book 1’s settings, but with Book 2 Skills
While having a lot of action, Leviathan wakes didn’t seem to have as many Cyberpunk elements as we saw in Book 1 with the hacking and break-in elements. Book 3, I am happy to say, has everything you know and love and more. Kiyoko’s hardened into a bona-fide badass, taking the lessons she’s learned from book 2 and applying them to turn allies into soldiers, so to speak, in the war against Mediacorp. So we see a good amount of action and guns-blazing fighting too. Teaming up with Pel, and then later Shakti and Dingo from book 1, they work both separately and together to be able to first break Waylee out of prison much the same way they did with Charles, and then with figuring out how to destroy Mediacorp. Weber chose to do so in a very believable way, so believable in fact that maybe some community organizers or aspiring cyberpunk hackers could use the book as a way to effectively and pragmatically fight the system and rage against the machine.
Going from the Defensive back to the Offensive
Realizing that they wouldn’t be safe and couldn’t keep trying to hide in Brazil, Kiyoko decides to take the team back to the US and, with the help of Shakti and their other friends who had remained in Baltimore, start trying to fight back in more tangible ways. Like I mentioned previously, this proactive and pragmatic approach was a welcome element to the novel and made reading book 3 flow very smoothly. It was very fun seeing how the team moved from place to place to avoid getting caught, thrilling when they almost did, but interesting to see what they succeeded in hacking and what they didn’t. The CEO that they fought against made for a very compelling enemy, and while we saw a bit of his perspective in book 2, we see a lot more in book 3 and we can really understand his motivations–Weber writes him as a very believable, evil CEO. The shared time between characters and pacing was also very well done.
Final Verdict: 9/10
After 2 books with the same characters they really grow on you, in an authentic way that makes you appreciate their growth and how they’ve changed from book 1. Weber has an excellent command of writing a diverse, varied set of characters. Both Waylee and Kiyoko grow the most in the novel, along with Charles and Pel. Book 3 also has a lot of that journalistic espionage, along with a more national and widespread feel to it. I really enjoyed reading how Kiyoko and Waylee would find the weak points in their enemies politically, and ally with enemies of their enemies or get them to turn against each other in propaganda campaigns or simply clever leaking or embarrassment sting operations. Although this novel doesn’t have as much action as book 2 nor as many virtual battles as book 1, it’s still definitely Cyberpunk and a fitting finale to the Betterworld Saga. It also feels like a very clever novel in how the protagonists go about achieving their goals. So for this Cyberpunk Book Review I highly recommend it, and make sure you read this fun finale today!
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