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Sky City: The Rise of an Orphan #5
Skye City: The Return to Medio, #1
**The Watty award-winning series continues**
'Don't you remember? You were their little experiment. Half boy, half monster. Horrific, isn't it?'
'My name is Arturo Basilides - teenage slum dog turned rebel supersoldier. A smart mouth and sense of invulnerability have got me this far, but the plague they sent changed everything. The pain of losing a friend destroyed the best part of me. When another was taken, I was offered unlikely redemption and ascended to the stars for the sake of unrequited love.
'Life is not easy for any slumdog but none can claim to have survived what I have: abandonment, imprisonment, torture, death... I was never told the price of reincarnation. And I am no longer human in body or mind as I float above this wretched planet I must return to. War is imminent. I do not know whose side I am on. Or what happens next...'
Skye City is a biopunk adventure with light elements of fantasy. It is set in a near future alternative reality where science is indistinguishable from magic and oppression is near-inescapable. Technology has created a newer, 'superior' form of human and genetically engineered monstrosities are as terrifying as anything encountered in your nightmares.
The underclass have been underestimated and as they fight back, the boundary between freedom fighter and terrorist becomes increasingly blurred. Meanwhile, the drug-induced haze of a traumatised mind places a question mark over the meaning of reality.
'Don't you remember? You were their little experiment. Half boy, half monster. Horrific, isn't it?'
'My name is Arturo Basilides - teenage slum dog turned rebel supersoldier. A smart mouth and sense of invulnerability have got me this far, but the plague they sent changed everything. The pain of losing a friend destroyed the best part of me. When another was taken, I was offered unlikely redemption and ascended to the stars for the sake of unrequited love.
'Life is not easy for any slumdog but none can claim to have survived what I have: abandonment, imprisonment, torture, death... I was never told the price of reincarnation. And I am no longer human in body or mind as I float above this wretched planet I must return to. War is imminent. I do not know whose side I am on. Or what happens next...'
Skye City is a biopunk adventure with light elements of fantasy. It is set in a near future alternative reality where science is indistinguishable from magic and oppression is near-inescapable. Technology has created a newer, 'superior' form of human and genetically engineered monstrosities are as terrifying as anything encountered in your nightmares.
The underclass have been underestimated and as they fight back, the boundary between freedom fighter and terrorist becomes increasingly blurred. Meanwhile, the drug-induced haze of a traumatised mind places a question mark over the meaning of reality.
498 pages, ebook
Published August 23, 2015
4 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
R.D. Hale
12 books302 followersR.D. Hale is a professional writer with no formal qualifications to speak of, hailing from somewhere in the UK. Little is known about him other than titbits, rumours and hear'say.
Some say he is a menace to society, a ghost who has crept into the corporate machine with the intention of bringing down the establishment. Others say he is just an idiot from a council estate and his achievement is somewhat akin to a monkey on a typewriter randomly mashing out the full works of Shakespeare.
One thing is for certain though, he has made a statement which cannot be ignored and his words are going to make a difference to this wretched 'civilisation' we have created!
Some say he is a menace to society, a ghost who has crept into the corporate machine with the intention of bringing down the establishment. Others say he is just an idiot from a council estate and his achievement is somewhat akin to a monkey on a typewriter randomly mashing out the full works of Shakespeare.
One thing is for certain though, he has made a statement which cannot be ignored and his words are going to make a difference to this wretched 'civilisation' we have created!
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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February 18, 2018
Sometimes I really wonder what's wrong with people. And then I remember that the majority are idiots, and what many call "sheep".
Supremely clichéd and very typical of the incredibly lame 80s sci-fi with ooh so intelligent but beaten down by the world men and women who were born to be used by previously mentioned men. And other pointless things that are pointless. But not written in the 80s, written now.
And also really slow. And also who talks like that? And also the worst first person narrative I've read (they're all bad though right).
The possibility of good imagination but really hard to see it beneath the dross and, excuse me for mentioning it again, the sheer amount of clichés.
Makes me feel good about the fact that I haven't given in to the apparent necessity of things like wattpad. Publishers actually have a point.
Supremely clichéd and very typical of the incredibly lame 80s sci-fi with ooh so intelligent but beaten down by the world men and women who were born to be used by previously mentioned men. And other pointless things that are pointless. But not written in the 80s, written now.
And also really slow. And also who talks like that? And also the worst first person narrative I've read (they're all bad though right).
The possibility of good imagination but really hard to see it beneath the dross and, excuse me for mentioning it again, the sheer amount of clichés.
Makes me feel good about the fact that I haven't given in to the apparent necessity of things like wattpad. Publishers actually have a point.
December 13, 2014
I am a bit vexed with sixteen year old Arturo's continuing outlook on girls and women, that this is seemingly justified when Mila - who wasn't really his girlfriend to start with, but he slept with her before going to jail/the mines - has a girlfriend herself when Arturo spies them kissing. Arturo sees himself as good and someone who is the hero. He doesn't really behave with those kinds of morals. The world he lives in is as savage and strange as fairies and big foots and underground fights between taking his gang into the jungle and taking a Sky City citizan he befriended briefly slumming.
October 17, 2014
Book 5 sees Arturo and Mila discover more about the rebellion as they take refuge in the mountains. Upon their return to the slums, Arturo can't help but introduce his friends to the outdoor lifestyle he has become attached to, and he takes them for a trip into a forest with exciting and humorous results. The unfolding events reveal a lot more about the world of Eryx, especially its wildlife, and hint at the planet's history.
The author does an excellent job with secondary themes in this section of the story, namely the drug-like intensity of his near-future world, and the growing difficulty of telling fantasy from reality. On or off drugs, the world is just too mind-bending to cope with without some form of mind alteration and enhancement, which only feeds the Catch-22 situation of making the reality that much more surreal.
The author does an excellent job with secondary themes in this section of the story, namely the drug-like intensity of his near-future world, and the growing difficulty of telling fantasy from reality. On or off drugs, the world is just too mind-bending to cope with without some form of mind alteration and enhancement, which only feeds the Catch-22 situation of making the reality that much more surreal.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews