Cold Reboot

by Michael Coorlim

The future is a cold place when you don’t have a past.

Marketing exec Erica Crawford lost hers when a coma robbed her of all memory of the last ten years, and not even the FBI knows what she’s been up to.

Now she wanders the streets of 2025 Chicago, trying to get by on a meager allowance of government assistance credits, without friends, funds, or a work history within the last decade.

Increased automation and a depressed economy have put a lot of people in her situation – but how many of the urban poor are stalked by assassins sent by a past they can’t remember? How many of them have to rely on strange skills and muscle memory to survive?

Between the drone filled skies up above, and the rumbling of the El trains down below, Erica’s only hope is to adapt to the streets of a world where technoshock can be as deadly as a hit-man’s pistol.

Genres: Cyberpunk

280 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 18, 2016

About the author

Michael Coorlim is a teller of strange stories for stranger people. He collects them, the oddballs. The mystics and fire-spinners, the sages and tricksters. He curates their tales, combines their elements and lets them rattle around inside his rock-tumbler skull until they gleam, then spills them loose onto the page for like-minded readers to enjoy.

He writes fast-paced stories about real people in fantastic situations, plots with just a twist of the surreal, set in worlds just a shadow’s breadth from our own.

Some whisper that he may, in fact, be a wizard. Others maintain that he’s naught but bluster and blarney. The truly wise know that there’s nary a difference.

Questionable activities

Michael Coorlim’s fiction can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, and Smashwords.

He also writes the indie-focused book blog Book Nouveau.

Pry a little deeper

If you want early notifications of upcoming titles, discounts, giveaways, and other fun you can subscribe to his new release mailing list. You can also find him on facebook and twitter as @mcoorlim. Email him at Coorlim@gmail.com – he’d love to hear from you.

Reviews

[Norine Luker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good urban fantasy

Erica wakes from a coma, doesn't know what happened to her past ten years or why. A quick trip to the future with some action, mystery and betrayal thrown in

[Syd Hughes · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

Week start and middle, however finished strongly.

Torn about the score, wanted to give it 3 stars but sadly couldn't justify it.

[Connie Fogg-Bouchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

lost and alone

Erica comes to in a world that has passed her by. with nothing but her government issued basics and a place no one wants to call home, she wants to find out who and why her mind has been wiped. where has she been for the past ten years and when did she learn to shoot a gun? why does someone want to kill her?

[Sean Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

explosively fun, this would've been a 5 star read: the action was tight, the characterisation strong, but unfortunately we don't really get much of an explanation for the missing decade. The point of the series perhaps, but it does leave one feeling high and dry. I am hoping for more!

[Jeff Valluzzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty gripping near-future sci-fi / thriller. The ending fell a little flat, but mostly it just left me wanting to read the rest of the series. I did notice a few editing errors throughout the book, unfortunately.

[Max Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book starts off real slow. The full half of it is spent on the heroine trying to acclimatize to the brave new world of 2025 with the occasional hint that she is actually a badass vigilante or shadowrunner or something like this ("strange skills", indeed). The author gives a lot of attention to smaller details, it looks like he thought hard about how the near-future will operate. While I do not necessarily agree with all of his extrapolations, enough of it is believable to ponder about.

And then the shit actually gets real. The heroine accepts her action part and starts doing exciting stuff like burglary, shooting people and/or breaking their kneecaps, that sort of thing. The book ends with the secondary conflict resolved and the protagonist pondering what to do next. Spoiler: She does not find out how she lost her memory or why she is such a badass in this one. I would prefer that she did and I do hope she will in the next one in the series. The FBI plotline is also only hinted at and maybe will be explored later.