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Tronick
"Ghost in the Shell meets the Millennium series in this quintessentially American cyberpunk thriller."
Rosie Record’s gritty and violent dystopian—cyberpunk novel introduces readers to a world devastated by climate change, overpopulation, religious extremism, corruption, and two opposing forces vying for control of California-Annex.
Too tall to see beyond and impossible to breach, the iconic wall encompassing California-Annex is nothing more than a forgettable reality for generation PW1.6. But while the general populace is addicted to Shine and manipulated by the incessant n-sub messaging, Fiona Tronick is different. She's seen as a grungy pusher selling Shine, but she's really a street operative for The Agency—a Controller. And she's always been loyal to her employer.
As civil unrest simmers throughout the Annex, she's confronted with information that makes her question The Agency's agenda. She starts to see the lies go deeper and wider than she could have ever imagined. Everything is connected. Connected to her.
From Topside Stacks to the underbelly of the Trenches, follow Tronick as she rubs shoulders with political leaders in coastal mansions, confronts religious zealots in flooded San Diego, reconnects with her outlaw brother, and taps into the Annex's gritty underworld.
Rosie Record’s gritty and violent dystopian—cyberpunk novel introduces readers to a world devastated by climate change, overpopulation, religious extremism, corruption, and two opposing forces vying for control of California-Annex.
Too tall to see beyond and impossible to breach, the iconic wall encompassing California-Annex is nothing more than a forgettable reality for generation PW1.6. But while the general populace is addicted to Shine and manipulated by the incessant n-sub messaging, Fiona Tronick is different. She's seen as a grungy pusher selling Shine, but she's really a street operative for The Agency—a Controller. And she's always been loyal to her employer.
As civil unrest simmers throughout the Annex, she's confronted with information that makes her question The Agency's agenda. She starts to see the lies go deeper and wider than she could have ever imagined. Everything is connected. Connected to her.
From Topside Stacks to the underbelly of the Trenches, follow Tronick as she rubs shoulders with political leaders in coastal mansions, confronts religious zealots in flooded San Diego, reconnects with her outlaw brother, and taps into the Annex's gritty underworld.
352 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2021
12 people are currently reading
1128 people want to read
About the author
Rosie Record
2 books16 followersFrom Southern California to Japan to Texas and finally back to SoCal, Rosie Record spent the remainder of her childhood in a sleepy mountain community with dreams of writing, pushing east, and exploring the world. After graduating with a BA in linguistics, she became entrenched in the world of corporate instead. It wasn’t until she moved to NYC she began to write again.
Record believes books have the power to hold a mirror up to society and ask, Do you still like what you see? …an important question she asks while exploring concepts of control and what it means to be free in her gritty cyberpunk novel, Tronick.
Record believes books have the power to hold a mirror up to society and ask, Do you still like what you see? …an important question she asks while exploring concepts of control and what it means to be free in her gritty cyberpunk novel, Tronick.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 18, 2021
Rating: 3.5/5.0
In this action-packed New Adult dystopian novel, the suspense and twists will have the reader aching for more of this mysterious plot.
Read full review in the 2021 June issue of InD'tale Magazine.
In this action-packed New Adult dystopian novel, the suspense and twists will have the reader aching for more of this mysterious plot.
Read full review in the 2021 June issue of InD'tale Magazine.
July 10, 2021
This was my first foray into this genre, and I have to say it was a good one!
Tronick is a well written, gripping story that makes you feel like you grew up in the California-Annex.
I am looking forward to more stories from this great author!
Tronick is a well written, gripping story that makes you feel like you grew up in the California-Annex.
I am looking forward to more stories from this great author!
June 7, 2021
Tronick is an immersive dive into the dystopia of tomorrow and one heroine’s war against the monsoon of societal psychosis. Tronick is the antithesis of the modern hero and all the more exciting for it. The brutal honesty, sensuality and ruthlessness in pursuit of the truth is a gulp of air for anyone drowning in the stale suffocation of the modern day. The reader is drawn in from the first and taken on a wild, ferocious ride until the very end. An absolute rollercoaster of Badass.
May 5, 2021
Ghost in the Shell meets the Millennium series in this quintessentially American cyberpunk thriller. Fiona Tronick is a Controller, a street operative of The Agency—a covert, decentralized power challenging the more overt, authoritative Governance. These two forces butt agendas within two major domains of the walled-up California-Annex. The iconic wall means little to the thoroughly conditioned PW1.6 generation, raised amidst a jungle of vegetation-decked skyscrapers gleaming from Francisco in the north to flooded-out Xīn SD in the south. . .
Read more at US Review of Books https://www.theusreview.com/reviews-1...
Read more at US Review of Books https://www.theusreview.com/reviews-1...
July 28, 2022
“Like sinister voices of sirens calling out to desperate sailors, the mechanical hums of neural-dynamic subliminal messaging, or n-sub, called out to a populace desperate for reasons to keep living. N-subs spun melodies about the failings of humanity, amplified all possible insecurities, and then promised the solution came in a package available with a finger tap on a smart screen.” p.6
The California-Annex—is it a haven protected from the disease, war, and pollution destroyed world beyond, or a dystopic, over-populated prison? It is a city surrounded by an impenetrable wall, a warren of green-buildings walled in hanging gardens and governed by The Agency? Most people don’t even ask what’s outside the wall anymore, but perhaps that is the result of the careful N-sub propaganda. Or perhaps it’s all just a matter of faith—faith in what was on the other side.
Fiona Tronick—is she a drug dealer or a government agent? A strong, independent woman or a lost, abused girl? The daughter of a drug-addicted whore or the daughter of a wealthy corporate mogul? Maybe even she doesn’t know. Before today, she thought she knew who she was–a master Controller. One of the power-wielders, she could shut down the cops with a word. She thought she knew her world, every back alley, every seedy bar. But then she finds herself drawn to the mysterious cover-up scandal of a murdered influencer. Next she knows a milky-eyed stranger shoves a briefcase at her on public transit, and her boss sends her into the dangerous trenches on an impossible mission to connect with her estranged brother. Meanwhile, religious fanatics are threatening the antiquated bookstore Tronick feels is the one space she is truly accepted. Like a punch in the gut, the certainty of her world and her power is crumbling, sending her deeper into the neon and chemical-soaked underbelly of the walled city, haunted by the milky-eyed man’s question: “Is reality real?”
Rosie Record brings us a marvelous cyberpunk noir full of drugs and thugs, government propaganda and corporate scheming, double agents and double crosses, gun-fights, and bloody noses. Her world lies often a little too close to the real world to allow the reader to escape into fantasy. The text is densely soaked in color and emotion, twists, and uncertainty. A shiny neon dystopia soaked in a nihilistic gray morality, dripping with the slime of corruption, lust, and greed.
Fiona Tronick, the main character, is herself an ambiguously moral character, complicated in her loyalties to disparate groups, certain in her value as an expert manipulator of people, yet purposefully alienated from any meaningful relationship. She dishes out as much brutality as she takes and acts as the empowered bully on the streets. But Tronick wants, ultimately, to do the right thing. She watches and participates in the brutality of her world, pretending she has power and purpose to make the world better, but in the cruel, sensory-soaked and corrupt world, “the right thing” is a hazy uncertainty. Who is in control of the populace of this walled, half-sunken kingdom-by-the sea is a constant battle, and somehow, Tronick is the tool the factions all have their hands on. Eventually, ironically, she is manipulated into reluctant heroism, left with no choice but to act as her connections to safety and her illusions are brutally stripped away.
Yet, Ms. Record has no intention of making things easy on her heroine (or her reader, for that matter). This is not a novel that offers answers and rose-colored resolutions. Don’t expect a kiss and a fade to black. True to both the cyberpunk and the noir genres, the ending is as ambiguous as the characters. After all, this is really an exposition on the difference between faith and reality. Are those just shadows we see on the wall of our cave, or is what we believe about the world the true? How did we get here? What is on the other side?
The California-Annex—is it a haven protected from the disease, war, and pollution destroyed world beyond, or a dystopic, over-populated prison? It is a city surrounded by an impenetrable wall, a warren of green-buildings walled in hanging gardens and governed by The Agency? Most people don’t even ask what’s outside the wall anymore, but perhaps that is the result of the careful N-sub propaganda. Or perhaps it’s all just a matter of faith—faith in what was on the other side.
Fiona Tronick—is she a drug dealer or a government agent? A strong, independent woman or a lost, abused girl? The daughter of a drug-addicted whore or the daughter of a wealthy corporate mogul? Maybe even she doesn’t know. Before today, she thought she knew who she was–a master Controller. One of the power-wielders, she could shut down the cops with a word. She thought she knew her world, every back alley, every seedy bar. But then she finds herself drawn to the mysterious cover-up scandal of a murdered influencer. Next she knows a milky-eyed stranger shoves a briefcase at her on public transit, and her boss sends her into the dangerous trenches on an impossible mission to connect with her estranged brother. Meanwhile, religious fanatics are threatening the antiquated bookstore Tronick feels is the one space she is truly accepted. Like a punch in the gut, the certainty of her world and her power is crumbling, sending her deeper into the neon and chemical-soaked underbelly of the walled city, haunted by the milky-eyed man’s question: “Is reality real?”
Rosie Record brings us a marvelous cyberpunk noir full of drugs and thugs, government propaganda and corporate scheming, double agents and double crosses, gun-fights, and bloody noses. Her world lies often a little too close to the real world to allow the reader to escape into fantasy. The text is densely soaked in color and emotion, twists, and uncertainty. A shiny neon dystopia soaked in a nihilistic gray morality, dripping with the slime of corruption, lust, and greed.
Fiona Tronick, the main character, is herself an ambiguously moral character, complicated in her loyalties to disparate groups, certain in her value as an expert manipulator of people, yet purposefully alienated from any meaningful relationship. She dishes out as much brutality as she takes and acts as the empowered bully on the streets. But Tronick wants, ultimately, to do the right thing. She watches and participates in the brutality of her world, pretending she has power and purpose to make the world better, but in the cruel, sensory-soaked and corrupt world, “the right thing” is a hazy uncertainty. Who is in control of the populace of this walled, half-sunken kingdom-by-the sea is a constant battle, and somehow, Tronick is the tool the factions all have their hands on. Eventually, ironically, she is manipulated into reluctant heroism, left with no choice but to act as her connections to safety and her illusions are brutally stripped away.
Yet, Ms. Record has no intention of making things easy on her heroine (or her reader, for that matter). This is not a novel that offers answers and rose-colored resolutions. Don’t expect a kiss and a fade to black. True to both the cyberpunk and the noir genres, the ending is as ambiguous as the characters. After all, this is really an exposition on the difference between faith and reality. Are those just shadows we see on the wall of our cave, or is what we believe about the world the true? How did we get here? What is on the other side?
June 15, 2021
Loved this! The cover of the book is also so bad ass. The chapter names (various colors) aligning with the energy of each chapter was unique and fun. Tronick’s grunge and rock n’ roll-esq aesthetic and personality was entertaining throughout the entire book. The dystopian world / other characters Record brought to the table was eclectic in all the right ways.
July 29, 2021
Tronick is a don't give a shit (but actually give way too many shits) bad ass kind of antihero akin to Jessica Jones immersed in a dystopian cyberpunk California of the future. The US government has fractured into untold pieces, even the populous doesn't seem to know due to the ironclad censorship and holographically enhanced border wall. Pumping out subliminal messages continuously, the government tries to keep a grip on the minds of the people. Tronick lives in this world, and would have been content to continue her dirty work selling drugs for the government, but is thrust into a grand scheme to bring it all crashing down.
I had a good time reading this. The most impactful theme seemed to me to be how this woman deals with traumas of the past -- emotional, violent, sexual, you name it -- while carrying the weight of the future, for her close circle of loved ones and for the broader peoples. Sometimes she acts irrationally but it is in the heat of great stress and uncertainty, a very relatable position at times.
I had a good time reading this. The most impactful theme seemed to me to be how this woman deals with traumas of the past -- emotional, violent, sexual, you name it -- while carrying the weight of the future, for her close circle of loved ones and for the broader peoples. Sometimes she acts irrationally but it is in the heat of great stress and uncertainty, a very relatable position at times.
May 20, 2021
Record manages to accomplish something that is often lost in dystopian stories—she mixes in a heavy dose of character, cerebration, and heart over a sleek and all too realistic backdrop. Fiona Tronick doesn’t just amble through the story. She is the story. Her inner turmoil and independent spirit feels real and heartfelt. Dystopian stories often exist in a bubble of, "This is just the way the world is", but Tronick takes its time setting the scene and creating a world that could exist in our near future. Visually expletive and quietly raw. A thoroughly satisfying read.
May 25, 2023
TRONICK by Rosie Record is a cyberpunk novel that attracted me by its cover. They say you can't judge a book by its cover but I feel like the Claire Redfield-esque biker girl picture is full of personality that drips out of the image. You can tell a lot about who Fiona Tronick is by this image and it inspired me to pick up the book. Was it worth it? Oh yes, definitely, though I would love to have a sequel in order to answer some of its mysteries.
The premise is that California is isolated from the rest of the world by the massive wall that covers the entirety of the country. It apparently covers much of the ocean around it as well, calling into question whether or not this is a Matrix-like simulation or perhaps Dark City experiment. The people inside, generation PW 1.6 don't know and don't really care as they're too wrapped up in their own problems.
Fiona exists in the border between the street as well as the rich and powerful. While she pretends to be a low-level drug dealer, she's actually an agent for the Agency. The Agency is a secret police that manages not only law enforcement in the California Annex but virtually everything else as well. Fiona thinks of herself as a rebel and one of the people but she's involved in numerous projects to keep the crooked system functioning.
Ultimately, Tronick's fence sitting is unsustainable. As much as she likes to think she can walk the line and just hang out with the underworld as her friends, the simple fact is she is part of the system. A system that considers her friends to be enemies of the state and is using Tronick to get to them. The fact Tronick is blind to this fact is a bit unbelievable but the book shows she suffers from serious self-denial.
I really like the world-building of this book as we see the kind of hard scrabble existence that the California Annex's citizens suffer through. Many of them are seeking something higher, whether religious or philosophical, but this just leads them to become vulnerable to scammers. The fact the Agency actively puts out bad faith operators to avoid losing even the slightest bit of control is a neat little detail.
I think if you like dystopian science fiction but have aged out of The Hunger Games and Divergent readership, then you will like this. It's definitely adult and mature but has a very likable protagonist even if she's got some serious issues. I also think this is something that would appeal to fans of classic and more recent cyberpunk fair too.
The premise is that California is isolated from the rest of the world by the massive wall that covers the entirety of the country. It apparently covers much of the ocean around it as well, calling into question whether or not this is a Matrix-like simulation or perhaps Dark City experiment. The people inside, generation PW 1.6 don't know and don't really care as they're too wrapped up in their own problems.
Fiona exists in the border between the street as well as the rich and powerful. While she pretends to be a low-level drug dealer, she's actually an agent for the Agency. The Agency is a secret police that manages not only law enforcement in the California Annex but virtually everything else as well. Fiona thinks of herself as a rebel and one of the people but she's involved in numerous projects to keep the crooked system functioning.
Ultimately, Tronick's fence sitting is unsustainable. As much as she likes to think she can walk the line and just hang out with the underworld as her friends, the simple fact is she is part of the system. A system that considers her friends to be enemies of the state and is using Tronick to get to them. The fact Tronick is blind to this fact is a bit unbelievable but the book shows she suffers from serious self-denial.
I really like the world-building of this book as we see the kind of hard scrabble existence that the California Annex's citizens suffer through. Many of them are seeking something higher, whether religious or philosophical, but this just leads them to become vulnerable to scammers. The fact the Agency actively puts out bad faith operators to avoid losing even the slightest bit of control is a neat little detail.
I think if you like dystopian science fiction but have aged out of The Hunger Games and Divergent readership, then you will like this. It's definitely adult and mature but has a very likable protagonist even if she's got some serious issues. I also think this is something that would appeal to fans of classic and more recent cyberpunk fair too.
June 6, 2021
Tronick by Rosie Record
Publisher: Suncoast Publishing
Genre: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publication Date: June 1, 2021
Tronick by Rosie Record is a standalone dystopian novel. There could be future books, but I'm really not sure.
In some ways, this felt like a futuristic 1984 and in other ways it just felt disjointed and confusing. This was the first book I've read by the author, so there may be a learning curve to following her writing style...I'm not really sure.
So, there's a wall and the government sees and controls everything. Subliminal messages are sent out to control people and people with money can have genetic modifications to slow their aging. Also, there's a population problem.
I'm so grateful to Rosie Record, Suncoast Publishing, and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this ARC ebook in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Suncoast Publishing
Genre: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publication Date: June 1, 2021
Tronick by Rosie Record is a standalone dystopian novel. There could be future books, but I'm really not sure.
In some ways, this felt like a futuristic 1984 and in other ways it just felt disjointed and confusing. This was the first book I've read by the author, so there may be a learning curve to following her writing style...I'm not really sure.
So, there's a wall and the government sees and controls everything. Subliminal messages are sent out to control people and people with money can have genetic modifications to slow their aging. Also, there's a population problem.
I'm so grateful to Rosie Record, Suncoast Publishing, and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this ARC ebook in exchange for my honest review.
November 19, 2022
Let's be clear y'all, this is a good read! However, it is very complex in the writing style and for someone that is a teen story (Twilight, Hunger Games etc) causal reader, I think it will be a bit much. If Blade Runner was a novel I think this would be it in the sense of complexity, story depth and grittiness.
April 13, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews