the cover is what drew me in and I really enjoyed going through this book. It was so much fun and was a really well done novel. I look forward to reading more from the author.

Busted Synapses is described as ‘ruralpunk’ which is pretty much perfect. This is more lo-fi cyberpunk set in a not too distant future. Set in a decaying town, largely forgotten by the corporate overlords who rule the midwest and the east (or what remains of it) after a catastrophic disaster, the story follows Jess and Dale, two people on the edge of what remains of society, as their lives become interwoven with a New Woman, a corporate android. The novella, short it may be, has an interesting setting and worldbuilding.

Satifka is darkly biting with her characters, building up a story that depicts a world that could be a hop-step away from our own. Jess, overwhelmed by student loan debt after striving for a better life, lives with her absent addict mother and disillusioned much younger sister who is obsessed with the music of Johnny Eternal. Jess works a dead-end job - overqualified for the few jobs available in her satellite town due to her degree. Dale makes ends meet by flipping burgers, small-time drug dealing and gaming, always listening to the music of Johnny Eternal. Enter the New Woman, the corporate creation who calls herself Alicia, starts to disrupt Dale and Jess’ lives - and the conspiracy that will go far to keep certain truths hidden.

The vibe, to quote the youth, reminds me of Margaret Killjoy’s Danielle Cain series and the early scenes of KM Szpara’s Docile. The music of Johnny Eternal that starts to beat slowly through the story starts to build momentum, reminding me in echoes of We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix.

The plot is more meandering. Though very much focus on the working class inhabitants and their lives. They are largely, but not exclusively, inferred to be white. I note that because a black character is noted as ‘black’ which seems more exceptional than it should be for the setting, but perhaps that is part of the dystopian elements. Like many novellas, there seems to be various plot points and themes that are not fully explored due to the lack of space. While a mystery is alluded to, the new true mystery remains the New Woman, not quite human, but perhaps too human for her reality.

There’s a moment when Jess encounters someone further on the edge of society and thinks, “you don’t fit the aesthetic,” which is such a line that resonates with the social media image obsessed present. Eventually the story builds to a scene where Dale is hosting another ill-fated games night, hosted by the New Woman herself, but the story steps into a more surreal landscape before cutting away to Jess. And Jess, always at the edge of the story while occupying the centre, ultimately reconciles her choices. A sharply disorienting story with a compelling protagonists and absorbing worldbuilding.

A solid cyberpunk novella with good pacing and a clever idea behind it. I enjoyed the world and the characters, but at the time I felt it oversimplified the conflict (human workers vs artificial workers vs powerful corporations).. I'm interested in following the author and I liked Busted Synapses despite shortcuts it took.

Erica L. Satifka's Busted Synapses's is a near-future slice-of-life cyberpunk novella that takes a lot of present-day concerns and naturally inflates them to their logical dystopian end-points: the crush burden of student loans and medical debt, job insecurity, bigotry, and the fracturing of America after a massive climate change-induced cataclysm.

Our main viewpoints into this all-too recognizable world are Jess and Dale. The former is a recent college grad stuck in a dead-end job to pay off the sizeable debt her education has left her with before it destroys her family. The latter is a fast-food worker unknowingly facing his last days flipping burgers as his corporate masters seek to automate the business with cybernetic workers.

Satifka employs a lot of pointed commentary about the future state of this world, one that is very clearly built on the problems of present-day America and will be easily recognizable to a broad segment of readers (especially those who, like me, are struggling to pay off student loans to fund that increasingly murky promise of a mythical "better future" that higher education was supposed to offer). It's difficult to call Satifka's work prescient, though, as so much of it hinges on our own present-day corporate and economic dystopians, even if she does exacerbate these issues to a somewhat higher level and gussies it up conceptually with the advancement of robotic laborers pushing human workers out of a job.

Busted Synapses is more about the characters and the world they inhabit, so the plot isn't particularly heavy. Mostly it's about the search for, and reclamation of, a better life in a ruined world overtaken by an evil corporation. It's deliberately paced, but never ploddingly so, although it did take a while for me to warm to the story, such as it is, and these characters and their plights.

This was a nice shorter story that reminds me of the idea in Avatar (the blue people). Definitely worth the read as it's only 100 pages.