Scion by James Islington

  

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Sci-fi, Cyberpunk
Content: Quite a lot of killing, Strong Language

 

My job, when you think about it, isn’t so different from a lot of people’s. I have to deal with a ton of boring planning. Inconvenient hours. Some pretty awkward face-to-face interactions. And like most of us, I’m really only clocking in to try and crawl out from beneath my debts.

The more old-fashioned crowd do still get hung up on the ‘killing people’ part, I guess, but that’s a them problem: it’s been perfectly legal to take out lifers for ages. Besides, once ultrawealthy morons realised they had a way to live forever—limited resources be damned—there was only ever going to be one genuinely practical deterrent. So someone’s got to do it.

And luckily, my genetic compatibilities make me really, really good at it.

Still. This next job… I don’t know. It’s something I haven’t had to deal with in years. Kind of the opposite of my regular duties. Strange, that it got thrown my way.

I’m sure it’ll all go totally fine though. 

 

I had sworn off reading cyberpunk but decided to give this one a try because I loved some of James Islington's other books. This was quite different from the other books I've read by this author, but I liked it despite that. I also liked it in spite of the main character being hard to like. He's a killer who assassinates people for a living, and has no remorse over that whatsoever. As I read on and discovered more about him I found him more likable because the reason behind what he was doing made more sense, though overall I liked the woman he's hired to protect more than I liked him. Both characters had their flaws but I liked her personality better.

This is an action packed book, and I generally like more character development, but there was just enough of that here for me that I could still enjoy it. There were some revelations that I didn't see coming and some that I did. I do think that I would have liked it to have ended a little bit differently. Overall, this ended up being a fun read. I had both an ARC in ebook form and the hardcover version, but I ended up listening to the audio version instead and I enjoyed it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Saga Press for providing me with an ARC of this book.