Repo Virtual

by Corey J. White

Overview

Corey J. White's debut novel Repo Virtual blurs the lines between the real and virtual in an action-packed cyberpunk heist story.

An Amazon and Kobo Best Book of April and winner of the Aurealis Award for best science fiction novel!

The city of Neo Songdo is a Russian doll of realities — augmented and virtual spaces anchored in the weight of the real. The smart city is designed to be read by machine vision while people see only the augmented facade of the corporate ideal. At night the stars are obscured by an intergalactic virtual war being waged by millions of players, while on the streets below people are forced to beg, steal, and hustle to survive.

Enter Julius Dax, online repoman and real-life thief. He's been hired for a special job: stealing an unknown object from a reclusive tech billionaire. But when he finds out he's stolen the first sentient AI, his payday gets a lot more complicated.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250218711
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/21/2020
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	969,898
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Corey J. White is the author of Repo Virtual and The VoidWitch Saga—Killing Gravity, Void Black Shadow, and Static Ruin—published by Tordotcom Publishing. They studied writing at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, and are now based in Melbourne, Australia.

Their novel, Repo Virtual, won the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Corey J. White is the author of Repo Virtual and The VoidWitch Saga—Killing Gravity, Void Black Shadow, and Static Ruin—published by Tordotcom Publishing. They studied writing at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, and are now based in Melbourne, Australia.Their novel, Repo Virtual, won the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Editorial Reviews

12/23/2019

White’s gritty but unexceptional debut takes a deep dive into a cyberpunk world. Life in the “smart city” of Neo Songdo isn’t easy: augmented reality mixes with actual reality, and corporations hold all the power. JD, a thief and digital repo man, hustles and schemes his way through life. But when a powerful woman named Kali hires him to steal a computer virus from reclusive billionaire Zero Lee, JD doesn’t realize that it’s really the world’s first sentient artificial intelligence, Mirae. As Mirae develops a sense of self, JD and his team are thrown into peril and they’ll have to pull off their most difficult hacking job ever to save their skins. Though White drives the narrative forward at a thrilling pace, genre readers will recognize familiar plot beats and tropes. White’s casual, slangy use of language distinguishes the story somewhat, but it also detracts from the severity of intense moments as characters punctuate their dialogue with the word bro. This quick, solidly constructed tale should satisfy cyberpunk fans who don’t mind revisiting genre staples. Agent: Nell Pierce, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Repo Virtual constructs a stunningly vivid cyberpunk world that blurs the line between illusion and reality, dripping with the neon panache of a technological juggernaut in an action packed heist that'll steal your heart with ideas that are as revealing as they are powerful." —Peter Tieryas

"Repo Virtual sets itself apart with its gleeful heart and underdog charm." —BookPage Starred Review

"A richly imagined, futuristic stand-alone with appeal to gamers, SF fans, and armchair futurists alike." —Kirkus Reviews

"Cyberpunk is not only back but may have come full circle." —The Toronto Star

"White twists the volume up, both dramatizing and warning against unchecked AI. What lingers is an important observation: no culture can retain its power and sanity when there are no noncynical eyes to see it. Cyberpunk and general sf readers will enjoy and even learn from this one." —Library Journal

From the Publisher

03/01/2020

Julius Dax, in-the-meat thief and online repo man, is tasked to steal an unknown object from the residence of tech billionaire Zero Lee. It turns out to be virtually magical, at once enthralling and disturbing. White's (Static Ruin) economy of language pulls readers through heists, shoot-outs, and car chases—the smart-city of Neo Songdo's skies haunted nightly by VOIDWAR, a game with millions of players. Aside from its augmented reality (only low-wage residents see the underlying grime and ruin), the world drawn here feels depressingly like now, its youths' craving for speed and authenticity rendered moot by predatory capitalism's eternal present moment. Akin to Philip K. Dick's iconic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,this title's philosophical base addresses the status of nonbiological presences and what that says about humanity. VERDICT White, known mostly for his "VoidWitch Saga," here twists the volume up, both dramatizing and warning against unchecked AI. What lingers is an important observation: no culture can retain its power and sanity when there are no noncynical eyes to see it. Cyberpunk and general sf readers will enjoy and even learn from this one.—William Grabowski, McMechen, WV

Library Journal

2020-01-27
A near-future hacker in a digitally enhanced city runs afoul of dangerous adversaries when he steals a unique prize.

The cyberpunk ethos has been endlessly consumed and reimagined by writers since dystopian domains like Blade Runner and writers like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling captured the popular imagination. While this techno-thriller suits that company, White (Static Ruin, 2018, etc.) has admirably built a self-contained world with hard rules and real-world analogues that fit comfortably alongside robot dogs, 3-D–printed guns, and an addictive online galactic battleground called Voidwar permanently displayed in the skies above. The setting is Neo Songdo, a virtual and augmented reality–studded metropolis somewhere in Korea. Our entry here is Julius “JD” Dax, an online repo man and adept real-world thief who toils as a mechanic to earn money to fix his blown-out knee. His plans go awry when Soo-Hyun, his cryptic stepsibling, asks him to steal a virus from the home of an isolated billionaire named Zero Lee on behalf of her creepy mentor, Kali Magdalene. So this three-act arc kicks off with a complicated heist, as JD and his crew bob and weave to steal the MacGuffin—during the World Cup final, no less. The second act extends a new player in Enda Hyldal, a brutal ex-soldier–turned–private eye, who is blackmailed by Lee’s company to retrieve JD’s ill-gotten prize. This is the chase, complete with Bourne-esque close combat, action-packed set pieces, and gun fights. The denouement arrives in the third act as JD finds that his loot is not a virus and we finally discover who’s been whispering to us during in-person interludes that foreshadow a radical new player in this dangerous game. White hasn’t reinvented the wheel, but it’s fun to read and more relevant to the present day than similar works in the canon, combining plausible technology with that age-old question of what it means to be human.

A richly imagined, futuristic stand-alone with appeal to gamers, SF fans, and armchair futurists alike.

Kirkus Reviews