Gods Fare No Better

by J. David Osborne

Cyclone City is unraveling. A megacity built on ambition, now rotting from the inside—infested with warring cartels, techno-mystics, and assassins stitched together from spare parts.

Kentaro woke up without a past. No memories, no identity—just the faint hum of something monstrous buried inside him. The monks of the Dying World Clerics gave him shelter, a simple life of sweeping floors and weather control. But hunger and ambition claw their way back into his soul, dragging him out of exile—straight into a city that wants him dead.

Now, he’s hacking through cybernetic samurai, battling demonic creatures, and carving his way through assassins built from living myths. His katana whispers forgotten memories, his body pulses with a parasite made of stories, and the city’s fungal heart beats beneath the streets, watching, waiting.

As assassins and apostles clash, Kentaro finds himself tangled in a conspiracy that calls him deeper into the labyrinth of Cyclone City. And at its core, something monstrous stirs.

A mind-melting fusion of cyberpunk, animism, and body horror, Gods Fare No Better is a brutal, electrifying descent into a world where gods, demons, and mycelia fight for the future of a dying world.

Welcome to Neon Hell.

"Osborne's vision of a cyberpunk world is one tangled in mysticism. You have a deer-headed robocop, a talking sword, and a digital afterlife that comes with a price tag. Balancing the esoteric existentialism are gripping fight scenes and off-color humor. This is the closest a reading experience has ever been to watching anime." - Kelby Losack, homophobic author of Mercy and Letting Out the Devils

“Gods Fare No Better is a rich book with a spiritual cyberpunk heart at the center, full of humor, cinematic prowess, memorable action scenes, and masculine prose. J. David Osborne takes diverse range of influences including Takashi Miike, spirituality, cult films, anime, and manga, and filters it through his brilliant imagination and witty sensibilities. This is sharp, wild cyberpunk narrative that feels like a movie you can’t get enough of.”—Grant Wamack, author of Bullet Tooth & The Frolicking

“Without J. David Osborne, I would have never started writing.” - David Simmons, author of Ghosts of East Baltimore and Eradicator

"A hell of a ride! J David Osborne’s Grand Guignol cyberpunk epic is propulsive, sweeping, and hilarious. Gods Fare No Better will have you gasping at the audacious set pieces, loveable characters, and its compelling, blood-spattered neon world. As the guts, shattered bones and burnt out cyber-implants pile up in the phantasmagorical Cyclone City, you’ll think it can’t get any more outrageous. And then it does." Matt Sini, Getting Lit Podcast

“Somewhere between BLAME! and Blade Runner is Gods Fare No Better. Hyperviolent cyberpunk animism at full throttle—myth, metal, and memory stitched together by Yarn. The novel drags you through kill contracts, clown massacres, and a boss fight with a giant baby—all while something ancient pulses beneath the streets. It’s mythpunk, it’s body horror, it’s cyberpunk cracked wide open and rewired with fungal dreams.” - Jay Springett

575 pages, Paperback

Published April 17, 2025

About the author

J David Osborne lives in Oklahoma with his wife and son.

Reviews

[Joe Allan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. [...] though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have." - GEORGE ORWELL

One must imagine J DAVID OSBOURNE in tripartite aspect: Firstly, cackling, the same shade as thrombosis, face flecked with page; next, sweat playing at the brow, jaw set resolutely, jabbing at and weaving away from the keyboard like a pugilist; and finally, in the dead-sleep mask of trascendence with nothing but warm void behind the eyes. These are the three rhetorical frameworks our author moves between throughout the behemoth heft of 'GODS FARE NO BETTER' - a towering achievement to equal its own epic scale; a white-hot zipline through body horror, animism, crime fiction modalities, sex jokes, dick jokes, shit jokes, conspiratorial cloak and dagger and - most shockingly of all - a genuinely moving perspective on the natural world and (in totally earnest shonen-anime-the-power-of-friendship fettle) our need for community.
Finally, a brave author has dared to ask: "What if K.W JETER and GENE WOLFE had a baby, and that baby played videogames? And lived in a cave for a year trying to crack the threefold way, learning the language of the dusky branch and the wet stone? And at the end of that spiritual journey, having re-entered a changed, hostile society and now bearing a cool metal arm with a katana in it, released a banger of a mixtape?"

If you've followed JDO's career through the emergent bizarro scene up until now, the maximalism of GFNB's form may surprise, given he and his fellow BROKEN RIVER BOOKS alumni's preference for garrotte-sharp minimalism; what definitely won't surprise is his continued facility for character vignette, for the just-so placement of the exact right word to describe a frozen moment of apokalypsis - transformative revelation - or a flash of impossible physical injury. His accuity for narrative movement likewise remains, impressively welding the pacey saunter of his earlier work like 'BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE WE'LL BE FRIENDS' and 'THE BLACK GUM TRILOGY' to this novel's increased bulk.

Listeners of JDO's and (similarly talented but differently skilled) KELBY LOSACK's Japanese-media-and-all-things-literary-and-irreverent podcast 'AGITATOR' will recognise many familiar elements here - particularly notable in the SHINYA TSUKAMOTO/TAKASHI MIIKE/steady clip of anime and videogame shoutouts; plus his magpie appropriation of Eastern cultural and aesthetic ephemera. Names and concepts are lifted without apology or restraint. This lack of restraint also extends to the novel's freewheeling leap between tones and the author's joyous lack of good taste or social responsibility. Cyberpunk is long in the tooth, fully commodified; just another hauntological internet moodboard for digital natives, shucked loose of all its former presience. The remaining neon shell is currently the recipient of a tenth or eleventh lifecycle, resurrected from the amber of YouTube Shorts edits and cyber-themed Spotify playlists, now utterly exhausted of all its potentiality as a warning against hypercapitalism or dystopic big tech or the dangers of treating the organic human body as a technological Ship Of Theseus: concerns which are no longer imminent but here in the room with us today. JDO cannily chooses to instead take the cyberpunk framework as far in the opposite direction as possible: GFNB is 'GHOST IN THE SHELL' meets 'HOTLINE MIAMI' meets 'GUYVER' meets 'CYBER CITY OEDO 808' levels of heightened gore and ornamental tech-porn, but with its own stoned shintoist standpoint. The legitimately thoughtful eye cast towards humanity's betrayal of the planet almost seems to be incidental, expressed at the writer's own shock. It lends those parts of the book a subtle thrum of poignancy, where a more considered wag of the finger could've instead landed as a lecture. Like PAUL KINGSNORTH's 'ALEXANDRIA' novels, our author is more interested in the sensorial slowburn of inhabiting a planet we are responsible for killing than he is proselytizing or shrieking. JDO instead saves the moralising for his beset and wearied protagonists.

As vaguely as possible: Kentaro, Zuno and Cielo Vargas return from 'DYING WORLD' and 'A WAR IN HEAVEN'. Each of them will grapple with their actions in the previous books, and a handful of teased or otherwise embryonic threads will find resolution or furtherance here. The on-page depictions of the numinous, the scale of the narrative, the character's personal philosophies conflicting with both their essential natures and the demands of their immediate circumstances - everything with a valence for drama is ratcheted up this time; and by the last third, to dizzying, symphonic effect. These characters have an agreeable flatness which I personally prefer in genre (think BRET EASTON ELLIS more than BRANDON SANDERSON): a handful of defined characteristics to act as ballasts against the tides of the drama, a lowkey but distinctive voice, some defining worldbuilding attribute or connexion - and the rest is pure violent reactivity to their pulp environment. The worry when you depart from JDO's structure here (at least with much modern pulp) is that you end up in unthinkingly fanfic-y wish fulfillment territory, which has its place like everything else, but is so often the most boilerplate, incurious, least successful element of a novel like this. The characters merely repositories for the author's cultural priors, magnets for everything good or bad within the setting depending on their adherence to our real world moral assumptions. JDO, like other revivalists/remixers in the edgelord fiction game (TARANTINO, REFN, NOE, MIIKE, TETSUYA NAKASHIMA) knows from the vast continuum of pop culture in his mind that a keen reader will only be pulled deeper into the consensual dreamtime of his fiction if the characters are allowed to challenge or appal us. Not every character in every story NEEDS to do this, mind; but every character inarguably needs THE CHANCE to be able to do so. JDO, outside of all the OTT ultraviolence and trippy pyrotechnics, has a historical fiction novelist's sober sense of interconnected social milieu and the downstream weight of group expectations. His books, even when set in a secondary world like his cyberpunk work, cleave to a recognisible facsimile of our own world's mad dash for stable financial grounding and an upwards trajectory in our careers. And he never forgets that a compelling character having the existential rug pulled from beneath them is every bit as gripping as an action set piece or fight scene.

GFNB is dense, allusive, heaving with incident. The voice is conversational, manic; the story alternately revving or lowing like a mechanical cow. These sentences coil, rear back and then lash out before retracting again like snake or whip. This is fiction born equidistant between DAVID LYNCH's 'deep waters', where the biggest fish of the imagination are caught, and MARTIN SHAW's 'deep forge', where a man must spend a night shift in his own soul to clarify the story before him.
JDO somehow jigs expertly on this paradoxical point between meditative intuition and considered excavation. Atop the highwire set for himself, succumbing to neither undercooked pomp or strained modern day applicability, he gives us perfectly wrought, literary infused pulp of the gold standard. Able to comfortably sit beside FLEMING's 'BOND' books, HOWARD's 'KULL' and 'CONAN' stories or FRASER's 'FLASHMAN' series, you might equally slot this rewarding and beautiful bollock-punch of a novel next to GARY SHIPLEY's 'DREAMS OF AMPUTATION', DEMPOW TORISHIMA's 'SISYPHEAN' or even the bratty, drug-battered esotericism in BR YEAGER's 'NEGATIVE SPACE'. There's also something faint but alluring shared with the mischieviousness of the protocyberpunks - BURROUGHS, BALLARD, PKD, POWERS, BESTER, PYNCHON, MOORCOCK. Perhaps the familiar grime and grot to go alongside the playfulness.

As for flaws - I've already polished and buffed every spare inch of the book. My feelings are clear. GFNB (and this extends to the rest of the BROKEN RIVER BOOKS authors, all of whom are distinctive, vital and well worth reading) don't traffic in worldbuilding consistency as is de rigueur for much modern sci-fi/fantasy, preferring a grab bag approach led by what would be additively ridiculous or especially sick; nor do they stick to tidy 'A to B to C' character arcs, focus-grouped sensitivity in language or procedure, or that MFA autofiction voice people like so much. A lot of the received wisdoms of the novel as a (seemingly) fully mapped out form are called into question by these authors. GFNB isn't a staid novel of ideas or yesterday's distinguished sci-fi formula or even your grandfather's planetary romance. These guys write novels of both the id and the bodily, streaked with gore, still wet from becoming. The books pulse in your hand and tang the air before your eyes. Rather than navigate the high/low, trash/prestige, pulp/literary divide, they eat it and excrete it and laughingly set themselves on fire. GFNB is a joy to read, even when uncomfortable and painful. It's like downloading a compilation of all the deafening, kinetic, whirring parts of 'TETSUO THE IRON MAN' directly to your eyes, but every few seconds is interrupted by a quick artefact-clogged insert of the most environmentally tragic moments from 'PRINCESS MONONOKE'. Someone could bounce off of this book for a million different reasons, and any single one of them would be a real shame. This is cyberpunk for the esoteric seeker as much as it is a rollicking, thoughtful, provocative, extremely funny slice of hyperviolent literary anime; more like the prose equivalent of Japanese v-cinema than the first wave of cyberpunk ala WILLIAM GIBSON. It shares the same anarchic, unapologetic and unvarnished joy at life and possibility of form as JDO and KELBY LOSACK's 'AGITATOR' project and should be seen as part of a larger multidisciplinary effort to repatriate excitement in art.

(If you stumbled on GFNB and want more of that same juice but with its own zest and flavour - opt for the full body immersion. Read GRANT WAMACK's 'MELANCHOLY'S FINEST' and EDDIE RATHKE's 'HOWLING EARTH TRILOGY' and DAVID SIMMONS's 'ERADICATOR' and KELBY LOSACK's 'MERCY' and push out from there. It's all worth it).

"Yes there were giants in the Earth it was real all of it. All of the stories they told you when you were a child they were all true. Imagine that. Imagine if adulthood is the fairytale and childhood is the reality. Imagine giants' graves all over the land and the motorways roaring past them and it is the motorways which are the romantic lies."
- PAUL KINGSNORTH, 'BEAST'.

[Dave Postma · Rating 4 out of 5]

David J. Osborne’s Gods Fare No Better is a chaotic, magic-laced cyberpunk tale that darts between surrealism, satire, and sincerity. It’s messy in places, but undeniably imaginative.

The Good:

One of the book’s main strengths is its cast of colourful and memorable characters. Figures like Zuno, Cielo Vargas, Nurari, the Buffalo King, Sasuke (in its eventual form), Little Stinker all bring energy and style to the story. They feel like half-mythic figures drawn from fever dreams and manga, and they help keep the book vibrant throughout.

Osborne also does well in creating strange, original settings: a cyberpunk rodeo and a suicide clinic are a few examples. These glimpses into this alternate near future, however fleeting, give the story a welcome texture and keep the pace snappy. And speaking of pace—this is a fast-moving book. We whip through multiple locales, battles, and plot shifts quickly, which works well in a story that leans into pulp stylings.

Another highlight is the integration of magic realism. Unlike many cyberpunk books that double down on tech-noir cynicism, Gods Fare No Better injects a surprising spiritual and magical current into its DNA. The author clearly knows the language and logic of magic, and it adds a sense of authenticity..

The humour also mostly lands—it’s wry and weird in a way that suits the material. While it rarely goes beyond a smirk, it's consistent and helps keep things from getting too self-serious.

The Less-Good:

The Japanese elements—especially names and tropes—felt off. Characters names like the Tsukamoto district, Sasuke, Kentaro, Ryu, Tetsuo etc come across more like borrowed Japanese aesthetics (real life persons to manga), than something deeply understood or integrated. Compare that to a name like Cielo Vargas, which feels much more grounded and intentional. There’s a missed opportunity here to either research more deeply or avoid pastiche.

There was one section that felt directly lifted from Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and I felt the author could have handled the homage with a bit more subtlety or originality.

The protagonist is another weak spot. Even with the improvements made in this rewrite (particularly around the sword subplot), he still feels like a bit of a cipher—a “Joe Average” surrounded by far more interesting supporting characters. Mika, his love interest, also was a kind of a walking cliche in the first editions of these books, but the new rewrite 'fixes' the problem. Still, it’s clear that characters like Zuno steal the show, and i was particularly keen on Cielo from the main cast as well.

While I'm already enamoured with the book's cast of villains, a bit more detail would have made them even more compelling. On paper, characters like Little Stinker (bodes well for possible future introduced Yuru-Kyara characters), Hammerhead Shark, The Ruins, The Rodeo Affiliates, Mantis Blade and his little crew of cyberpunk mercs, and the Rot Boys sound fantastic. But in practice, they don't quite stick enough. A bit more time spend with each—just thirty seconds of character work—would’ve gone a long way. Osborne could take a cue from something like Vampire Hunter D, and how it handles it's lower-tier villains.

Helwig, in particular, feels misaligned—his blend of Nordic(?) and samurai elements never quite clicks. I mean the samurai boss fight is a bit of a cliche. And i appreciate the effort to liven it up with a blend of cultures. But perhaps it touched my uncanny valley instincts, something feels off and inauthentic.

Stylistically, the prose is functional and clear, and sometimes funny—but also a bit too “wink-wink” and surface-level for my taste. It doesn’t approach the poetic heights suggested by its title, which directly quotes Cormac McCarthy but never reaches his level of language or depth. Occasionally, the book leans too hard into “edgy” territory, which can result in passages that feel more juvenile than daring.

Final Thoughts:

Gods Fare No Better is a book with vivid ideas, real personality, and a pulse. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t aim for perfection—it aims for speed, style, and strangeness. In many ways, that works in its favour. If i came out a bit too crass in my critique, it is because i hope my feedback is worth something, i had a good time and i still give it 4 stars.

[Edward Rathke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Been fortunate to read this series in a few different versions but this really is the most striking version. And it's the most striking version of what cyberpunk can be. I often feel like cyberpunk's been stuck in what Gibson laid down forty years ago and what Stephenson riffed on thirty years ago, but it's wild to see a novel that takes the best of Gibson (technomagic thriller) and the best of Stephenson (laugh out loud humor) and then combines it with the ultraviolence of Akira and everything that makes J David Osborne the kind of writer he is.

This is a wild, violent, hilarious, and fascinating ride through a dystopic cyberpunk city but also a version of heaven and hell that could only come out of the world Osborne creates here. This novel is also just a kitchen sink of kitchen sinks, which I mean in the best ways possible. It has everything! So many elements will keep you turning pages, from the thrilling structure, the humor, and even the surprising emotional core bleeding through certain moments. For a world so defined by isolation and loneliness, our main cast finds hope and a future through friendship. And each are unlikely friendships but that makes them feel all the more realistic.

I've been saying for years that cyberpunk needs to evolve and broaden its horizons, and I'd say Gods Fare No Better is the start of something new here.

[David Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cyclone City is unraveling boaaaaaa.

J. David Osborne is one of my favorite writers, and definitely top 10 dead or alive. This book is a masterpiece, his magnum opus. There’s so much happening I found myself rereading whole chapters, and not because the book was difficult to understand, but because I wanted to savor special moments and make sure I didn’t miss certain parts. This book is full of insane ultraviolence and moments of love and despair that pull on your heartstrings. Memorable characters like Zuno the deer man, or the World Serpent, which is exactly what it sounds like. (Personally, I’m a Truther and I believe the World Serpent is a psyop, but you’ll get to that.)

If you’re a fan of Cyberpunk 2077, Blade Runner (the new one, I ain’t never watch the old joint because it’s too old), Tokyo Gore Police, strange designer drugs sold as bath salts or plant food at non-chain gas stations, Sweet Home Alabama (the movie, not the song) Com Truise, Kel Tec and KRISS Vector guns, and those anime-style cargo pants with straps and multiple pockets that Japanese fashion influencers wear, then this is the book for you.

[Jesse Childress · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think this is a very bad book, in more or less every sense that I can think of. I was in fact quite surprised at how bad it was. All I can say in its defense is that I actually finished it, and had I been truly bored with it, I would not have. So, my small commendation is only that it is not entirely boring.

I'd like to quote JDO himself to encapsulate my thoughts on the book:

"It's a [novel] that relies too heavily on its asymmetry, the uniqueness provided by smashing two disparate things together, rather than on something like attention to detail or elegance or craftsmanship. It's just pleased with itself because it's different." (JDO, Gods Fare No Better, p. 497)

I'd like to think JDO was talking about GFNB at least a little when he wrote that.

[Grant Wamack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gods Fare No Better is a rich book with a spiritual cyberpunk heart at the center, full of humor, cinematic prowess, memorable action scenes, and masculine prose. J. David Osborne takes diverse range of influences including Takashi Miike, spirituality, cult films, anime, and manga, and filters it through his brilliant imagination and witty sensibilities. This is sharp, wild cyberpunk narrative that feels like a movie you can’t get enough of.

[Thomas Trang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one hell of a ride.

Try to imagine a cyberpunk city shot through with samurai noir, ambergris fungal funk, anime animism, and some gnostic spirituality. And a ton of splatter. It’s loud, it’s ugly, it’s beautiful.

Try and keep up with the breakneck plot and the inventiveness on every page… or don’t. Just let the thing wash over you.

This novel won’t be for everyone.
That’s what makes it cool.

[Matthew Sini · Rating 5 out of 5]

J David Osborne is a genius! This book might just be his magnum opus. It has everything: telepathic fungal rhizomes, techno-spirituality, hysterically funny action set pieces, and lots of dick jokes.

Apparently more books are to follow in this world, but this first entry may just be era-defining. I am not even kidding. This is where genre writing should be heading!

[Kelby Losack · Rating 5 out of 5]

J. David Osborne’s vision of cyberpunk is tangled in deer-headed robocops, talking swords, and a digital afterlife that charges rent. This is the closest a book has ever come to watching anime.