re:mote voices

Title: Nylon Angel
Author: Marianne De Pierres
Publisher: Orbit

Parrish Plessis is an unusually tall woman who fled from the strangle hold off the city to the rough and ready waste land/ghetto that surrounds the city. Once there she became a bodyguard, and things were going ok, until she fell prey to one of the various gang lords - gang raped and under his "protection", she would do anything to get her independance back. Which is why, when she is offered a chance by a rival gang boss to get back at her boss, she jumps at the chance. Without giving the consequences a lot of thought. Which is how she gets into the midst of a situation that is rapidly spiralling out of control - wanted for a murder she didn't commit, hailed as a voodoo goddess, and in the middle of a turf war.

Nylon Angel is the first Parrish Plessis novel by Australian writer Marianne De Pierres. The three novels to date being printed in the UK in quick succession in the last year or two, presumably because they had already been out in Australia for some time. In the UK, these novels are published by Orbit, one of our biggest SF/Fantasy publishers. From a basic summary of plot, one might see comparisons between something like Nylon Angel and Tricia Sullivan's Maul, also published by Orbit. But the comparison is a very vague one, Sullivan's writing being more mature and SF.

Instead Nylon Angel is what you would get if Laurel K. Hamilton started writing cyberpunk instead of vampires. The parallels are uncanny, as though both are coming from a very similar formula. Where Anita Blake is short and carries a big gun, Parrish Plessis is tall and carries a big gun. Both have the man formation of some kind of love triangle going on. Both have some strange stuff going on inside which makes them more powerful than a straight human, and getting more powerful all the time.

This is a pulp kind of writing, violence and swagger, with the setting being a background rather than especially relevant. There are aspects of Parrish's transformation that are interesting, though i suspect they will kind of cop out with development. As much spirits, voodoo and possession as cyberpunk hacking and hardware. Easily read and reluctantly I admit it is kind of enjoyable, even if it is a guilty kind of pleasure.