Take a shot each time Jian tells Vaughn to shut up

Surprised this hasn't got more love on Audible. It's a cyberpunk story written in 1990 by Scott and has touches of space opera around the fringes, and it's about a small crew of hacker/couriers as they navigate the class tensions of their one world and take on a retrieval of an AI system on another. I'd say the book is split into 4 acts, and there is a lot of world-building in act 1, which moves very slowly, at least 4 hours must have gone by where I was honestly wondering what the point of the story was and where it was going. But it does go somewhere, it becomes a kind of mystery with thriller aspects as they try to grapple with the AI system they've been sent to collect, who's in control of the AI system and who wants it on their side if indeed it is as revolutionary as everyone seems to think it is. This is one of those cases of stretching what might have been a short story into a full-length book and reminded me a lot of Martha Wells' Network Effect, where the decompression leaves you wondering what direction the story is pointing, but by the end you realise that the author has edited the story into a very smooth unbroken ride. The second half gets an upgrade from 3 stars out of 5 to 4, and if you like cyberpunk this is fine book on which to spend a credit. Nice queer representation, some suggestions of sex, although little romance. I wish they'd release the sequel, Dreaming Metal as I'd actually want to read it now. This book has an ending and wraps up but says at the end to be continued in the sequel, so really it would be nice to complete the overarching story. Get on it, producers! Lorence gives a good performance, her languid tone helps sell a lot of the tactile and sensory passages where Jian experiences the computer world as a sensual interaction.

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