There's no bigger war crime in literature than the reboot of Net Force by Jerome Preisler. This is shocking since he created one of my favorite franchises in the Clancyverse Power Plays. One has to wonder why the publisher didn't hand him his old franchise again.
The Net Force reboot comes at you with multiple books in one and a legion of characters sold as though they will pay off in the long run, but it's quite evident within a few pages that it's not going to live up to the hype.
Jerome Preisler stated in an interview that he wanted to "Make the fans mad" by drastically changing characters from the previous series written by Steve Perry; he felt Alex Michael was too Alpha male and leaned in hard to make him into a Beta male, and it shows. Alex is now a flower-sniffing soft male whose only true love is his dog.
John Howard is painted as a monster who might or might not end up being a total d bag. Jerome Pressler really did his homework on how to piss off fans.
But sadly, as he masterfully did this, his own characters he brought into the series fall face first into the concrete floor. The strong female lead known as Kali is just a massive rip-off of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, with the CIA handler who's out to get her, playing the future love interest of Kali.
Leo Harris is Alex Michael's or a Steve Day monster mash. That's one character that stands out and makes you chuckle, the series would have been fine with him in a lead role.
Another is Bryan, an autistic computer hacker working for Net Force. The only problem is that we never get to feel invested with any of these characters since Jerome Preisler decided to play hopscotch with each freaking chapter. Sometimes, you'll go through chapters without even knowing what happened to those characters that were just mentioned. Then we'll bring in new characters from different countries, back to your old character for a few pages, and then back to something else.
Net Force felt cold. No life. No connection. JUST LIKE SOCIAL MEDIA!
Oh, there's also a villain in there, too, besides Jerome Preisler.
One might say well, it's just the first book; I'm sure it'll get better in the second. Yeah, I read the second book; you spend time with Kali, and the actual net force you once loved is pushed to the middle of the book. A lazy cliffhanger from the first book isn't told until 158 pages of the book, and the payoff is just a shrug. Jerome Preisler does lean off the Beta Michael's and lets the character be; Howard is pushed to a more critical role; one has to wonder if Jerome didn't hear the fallout online and decided to play nice.
Still, it doesn't do enough to push or grab your attention to read the 3rd or 4th installment of the book.
The major problem that Jerome Preisler fell into was believing his own hype. He went into this thinking if I push enough buttons, maybe I'll get a reaction, which will lead to major success! Yeah, that didn't happen, and the author lost the most important thing ever: THE STORY!
Jerome Preisler dives into the A. I and Transhumanism WEF type of logic, like most Cyberpunk stories, but the formula doesn't win any points, to be honest.
It's a shame what Net Force became under Jerome Preisler, a franchise that has major legs in this battleground of A.I and the corruption that lies within it, this could have been a new groundbreaking tale if done right and perhaps under a better author, not one who was happy to gush about his experience to his bank teller, Jerome Pressler, really did say that in an interview.
I'm giving the Net Force reboot a 2 out of 5. I'll stick to the original.