Persephone Falling

The Persephone Saga, Book 1

By: Skyler Grant

Narrated by: Mare Trevathan

Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Corporations are culture.

Alena is corporate nobility, born on Olympus Station which orbits far above the Earth. The trappings of ancient Greece live on in Olympus Corporation. When tragedy strikes Alena finds herself crashing to Earth and having to find a new life amongst those who dwell below. The savagery of the surface is well known, where many do not even have a proper corporation to give their lives meaning and independent contractors keep the old corporate wars alive.

Taking on the identity of Persephone, a sponsored corporate hero in the virtual network, Alena learns of the horrors one corporation is inflicting on the population and she is forced to decide just what ideals are worth fighting for when losing means a fate far worse than death.

©2017 Skyler Grant (P)2017 Skyler Grant

A Strong Beginning

This is how the first novel of a series should be done. A complete story in itself yet with room for more.

The story does have one notable weakness, Persephone's fall from Olympus. Although how she survives it is theoretically possible with sufficiently advanced technology, and although it becomes a lost prototype the suit is sufficiently advanced, normally FTL travel is implied as having been discovered, or at least proven impossible. For the most part it does seem as if the setting should be on the verge of such technology, if it doesn't have it yet, but it is rather curiously glossed over. Now, the typical cyberpunk setting is still well before FTL becomes possible, however mostly self-sufficient space stations such as to imply the technological ability to create space colonies and possibly even STL generation ships for extra-solar exploration and expansion are also normally post-cyberpunk.

Despite all that I still say this novel does a great job with the cyberpunk theme, and I am a Shadowrun fan so I'm rather picky about what I consider acceptable cyberpunk. I think in the end though this book is better described as being a cyberpunk setting that is on the verge of transitioning into a sci-fi setting, assuming it can avoid becoming a post-apocolyptic setting. Who knows, maybe with the Queen of the Underworld screwing things up on the surface one or more corporations might just make that effort to leave Terra behind, assuming there aren't one or more groups who've already done that while everyone else was still focused on Terra...

Cyberpunk gold

I really enjoy the way Skyler writes his characters. Mare Trevathan did a great job of narration. I'm happy to know that Persephone's story will continue. Also I like how he found a way to make this GameLit or by another name LitRPG.