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A review by richardrbecker
Terms of Service by Elliott Scott
3.0
Terms of Service by Elliott Scott is a mostly entertaining detective noir that plays out in the futuristic cyberpunk city of Neotopia, Nevada. It comes complete with a scrappy, exploited protagonist who idolizes and sometimes personifies a less serious, discount-version of Philip Marlowe.
Scott wins in his world-building — a futuristic city with levitating buildings that supposedly run on thought power— and, mostly, the voice of Felix Lasko, aka Aims aka Mook. He’s self-deprecating, affable, and better at his job than he admits. Instead, he tends to credit dumb luck or, more precisely, enough lousy luck to eke out a successful outcome.
The plotline is relatively sharp in that Lasko is hired (unnecessarily blackmailed) by a local celebrity to find out if her husband — a chief engineer and robotics builder in the vein of J.F. Sebastian from Blade Runner— has been murdered. Never mind that the man is still walking around and talking.
So, there is plenty to like, except there is often too much of it. Scott tends to allow his first-person protagonist to prattle on and digress too much. For example, on one occasion, Lasko is chasing someone and imagines himself in a movie, then decides to name the film, critiques the made-up name, then gives himself a nickname as the star, and then critiques that nickname, which he fears will stick to him (and it does, despite the fact he merely thought it). Then he wonders how Marlowe would handle the situation before bringing the reader back to the action, only to stray again with another quip about the lady in front of him.
The result is too many fast-paced moments are drawn out for wit until it drags the story out and down in the wrong places. When it drifts too far afield, it’s easy to lose sight of what is going on, a challenge compounded with other instances of undisciplined writing, like the occasional mixed metaphor or abundance of slang without a learning curve or the random poorly constructed sentence, e.g., “Looked like a corpse until I heard snoring.”
Overall, Terms of Services is a likable cyberpunk romp with the right mix of lowlife and high tech, even if some of that high tech is indistinguishable from magic. However, readers should expect to work through some of it — a significant effort at times that would have been easier had Scott written tight, killed his darlings, and made the story three-quarters or even half the length.
This is based on the ARC I received to voluntary review as a fun introduction to Lasko, whom we can all be sure will make additional appearances in the future.
Scott wins in his world-building — a futuristic city with levitating buildings that supposedly run on thought power— and, mostly, the voice of Felix Lasko, aka Aims aka Mook. He’s self-deprecating, affable, and better at his job than he admits. Instead, he tends to credit dumb luck or, more precisely, enough lousy luck to eke out a successful outcome.
The plotline is relatively sharp in that Lasko is hired (unnecessarily blackmailed) by a local celebrity to find out if her husband — a chief engineer and robotics builder in the vein of J.F. Sebastian from Blade Runner— has been murdered. Never mind that the man is still walking around and talking.
So, there is plenty to like, except there is often too much of it. Scott tends to allow his first-person protagonist to prattle on and digress too much. For example, on one occasion, Lasko is chasing someone and imagines himself in a movie, then decides to name the film, critiques the made-up name, then gives himself a nickname as the star, and then critiques that nickname, which he fears will stick to him (and it does, despite the fact he merely thought it). Then he wonders how Marlowe would handle the situation before bringing the reader back to the action, only to stray again with another quip about the lady in front of him.
The result is too many fast-paced moments are drawn out for wit until it drags the story out and down in the wrong places. When it drifts too far afield, it’s easy to lose sight of what is going on, a challenge compounded with other instances of undisciplined writing, like the occasional mixed metaphor or abundance of slang without a learning curve or the random poorly constructed sentence, e.g., “Looked like a corpse until I heard snoring.”
Overall, Terms of Services is a likable cyberpunk romp with the right mix of lowlife and high tech, even if some of that high tech is indistinguishable from magic. However, readers should expect to work through some of it — a significant effort at times that would have been easier had Scott written tight, killed his darlings, and made the story three-quarters or even half the length.
This is based on the ARC I received to voluntary review as a fun introduction to Lasko, whom we can all be sure will make additional appearances in the future.