Maxim #35:
That which does not kill you has made a tactical error. – Howard Tayler “The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries”
Cyberpunk! It’s my second favorite punk behind that of the Steam variety, and Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov have delivered some really fantastic steamy Cyberpunk in Break and Enter (Red Cell Book One), the story of a cybernetic Special Forces soldier-turned-mercenary who has been hired to locate and breach a corporation’s security protocols but winds up an unwitting pawn in a game of corruption.
Major Victor “Cyke” Kellermann is part man, part machine, and is wholly endangered by the Judas at SenTech who is bent upon embezzling from the company and making Cyke his scapegoat. Cyke is having a hell of a time accessing the information from the SenTech database that will clear his name, as he’s now been pegged as nothing more than the David who’s attempting to slay the corporate Giant; that label given to him by a law enforcement that may or may not be fully complicit in the SenTech CTO’s illegal activities.
Break and Enter is a page-turning, all-out suspense laden cat-and-mouse thriller between Cyke and the police, one that gets continually more dangerous for the man who is far more than human but certainly not infallible. It’s Cyke’s tenacity and dire need for physical proof of his innocence that unintentionally throws him onto the radar of an EMT known as Bear, the man who will find a way beneath, behind, and inside Cyke’s defenses—and not only those of a technical nature. Bear does some raiding of his own and along the way, steals Cyke’s heart.
This is a dark and atmospheric story; a slink in the shadows, back to the wall, how-will-Cyke-ever-get-out-of-this-one? nail-biter. I loved it and can’t wait for book two to see what these two skilled storytellers have hidden up their scheming sleeves for these two men.
Buy Break and Enter here: 