Neural Wraith 2 - Detailed Commentary

Intro

As always, this is the commentary post for Neural Wraith 2.

This book was a weird one, mostly because of the many IRL aspects getting in the way and because I’m coming back from some pretty nasty burnout following Spellblade 5. While finishing it, I found that I was less exhausted than I’ve been… probably ever. I’ve never exactly gotten ahead of things (and delaying books would be financially devastating due to Amazon’s algorithm), so this is a nice change. The complexity of the mystery was taxing, but the length of the book kept it from being took grueling.

This post will include broad commentary on Neural Wraith 2, including many of the editing decisions I made (and didn’t make). As such, it is loaded with massive spoilers. I will try to avoid spoiling any of my other series, however. If you haven’t read the entire book, come back later. This post will be waiting for you.

This commentary is fairly long, and was surprisingly difficult to write. I think it’s because this book and setting has so much going on in it, and also because I had to park a lot of ideas while writing it.

There’s probably going to be less distinction between the authorly and writing topics this time. I’ve decided against going over the first three acts, however, and instead will just talk about various topics directly. You can stop reading once the topics begin to bore to you. If I feel a topic is sensitive, I’m probably going to skip over it without comment.

The Release

I said after Spellblade 5 and in my 2022 review post that I wouldn’t talk about sales anymore, good or bad (unless things go catastrophic, of course). So I’m not going to talk about the sales or anything here.

What I will say is that the release has done well enough that I expect to extend the series past the original trilogy. How long? Dunno. I have a bunch of ideas, and have hinted at some of them (such as with Lilith in this book). My writing pace makes it hard to really commit to anything too long as there’s no way to know where things will be in a year or two.

The overall reception has been fairly positive. Given how well Neural Wraith 1 was received, this book seemed to have a huge bar to mount. One of the issues is that it’s impossible to repeat the exact vibe of the original book, so at some point I just gave up on that objective. By embracing the episodic feel, it means my writing and the books will change and evolve to a greater extent than my epic fantasy books can (as they’ll always have strong ties to older plot threads and plans).

The Mystery

If you followed my commentary on this book, you’ll know that it underwent some serious changes. This is what resulted in the rather complex mystery you read, but the story is a little more complicated than what I’ve talked about.

When I plotted the trilogy, it was fairly straightforward: Book 1 was the intro, and focused on automation; Book 2 would cement the collapse of the city and focus on the Altnet; Book 3 would be the collapse, and be about the corruption of the Spires.

Then a few things happened. First, Book 1 turned out to be surprisingly popular. Then I wrote a short story that I cut some ideas from because it was too long (and it didn’t end properly). Third, I struggled to write a good opening to my planned book and Ezekiel came out wrong in my initial draft.

While I flailed about with IRL stuff, I lost a lot of time and eventually tried to salvage everything by merging my short story with some of my plans for Book 2. The Altnet plot got shoved into Book 3, as well as much of the Ezekiel and Helena stuff, and it gave me the opportunity to test the waters of making the series longer and more episodic.

The downside is that I had a short story that needed some solid thought to turn into a full story. Elements that had just been brief references turned into plot devices (the Da’at mainframe conference) and character motivations had to be fleshed out.

But more than anything else, I committed to a multi-layered conspiracy mystery. Based on feedback, I think this worked out, but it came at a price I’ll talk about near the end of the commentary.

The mystery itself appears far more complicated than it is, mostly because Nick never has all the pieces. Characters flat out lie and much of the evidence is destroyed. Entire legs of his investigation rely on effectively fishing for evidence or circumstance. This last part is very intentional.

The plot appears basic: Toke and his accomplices want to be rich and abuse their position to reprogram Tiferet. Lucida kills Julian because she thinks he’s a threat, triggering the story. Everything that takes place appears to be an attempt to cover up the truth, and includes actions by other parties to cover their asses. GWT think Nick is investigating them, so push back. The military wants to sweep everything under the rug, including their own questionable involvement with GWT’s weapons smuggling. The Spires don’t like the idea of the police prying into their business.

Tiferet adds some spice to the situation, and helps explain some of the more irrational actions necessary to make the story interesting (without making Toke as dumb as Lieu came across as). She also fits in thematically. Much of her actions are driven by her need to ensure Toke can’t get away with his crimes, so she orchestrates events to limit coverup potential. This ties into other discussions in the book about the possibility that AIs will hide their true intentions because they know humans will try to reprogram them or distrust them. Humans were the reason Toke got away with everything, and Tiferet was merely a tool he used to enable the fraud.

From my perspective, the biggest weakness the mystery has is that while you can probably guess the culprits, there isn’t much concrete evidence. The mystery isn’t really solvable in the way I prefer it to be, because there are too many possible explanations. Everything makes sense in hindsight. Or maybe I’m just being overly negative and it works well. Dunno.

What I do like is the focus on circumstantial evidence. The internet (and armchair detectives/lawyers/experts) has led to an obnoxious level of people openly dismissing anything short of hard evidence in many cases. Except hard evidence often doesn’t exist.

Oh, and to some extent I did want Nick to not always be right. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it’s very much a Hollywood trope that the “Hollywood detective” has a gut feeling that is always right. Except in this case, Nick was completely wrong that Lucida didn’t kill Julian, even if he was right that there was something suspicious going on.

I’m not sure I’ll write a mystery quite this complex again. If I do, the main improvement will be to tie it together with fewer moving parts. Kraus greatly complicated the entire mystery.

A Mess of Villains (and a Grifter)

One might argue that the book has a lot of villains. Few of the new characters introduced help Nick, and even those who didn’t actively commit the central crime at least aided it. That is, of course, the entire point.

Magnus enabled pretty much everything to happen. I never doubled back to him, but he had a bunch of faults that contributed to Toke pulling off his scheme. He distrusted the mainframes, which meant he put too much trust in a compromised security team (and also his own judgment, which was flagrantly wrong in regards to Toke). His obsession with the image of the bank, and its relation to his own, meant he’d happily commit resources to block any investigation. He’s also a bit of a prick and could easily act as a magnet for a surly detective.

In most of my books, I tend to make authority figures significantly more competent than they’re frequently depicted in comparable fiction. This is because epic fantasy tends to fail if all the authority figures are written to be as hilariously incompetent as the average isekai author writes them as.

But in this case, Magnus represents the deep incompetence that resides in the upper levels of executive offices everywhere. If I wrote Kim as a reflection of some of the best executives and partners I worked with, Magnus represents the buffoons. The folks who torpedoed immense projects because they refused to hear bad news; caused entire departments to work around them; or who were very good at firing people when something went wrong, but somehow dodged responsibility themselves. The reason Magnus wasn’t the villain was because these people are always contributors (or leeches, really) – companies operate in spite of them, because they’re fucking everywhere.

Griffiths only showed up briefly, but his role is clearer in hindsight. He had an informant, but wanted everything taken care of out of sight. Maybe he would have cleaned up Toke given the chance. Or maybe a ship to China would have mysteriously sunk a few hundred miles away from the city.

Tiferet will get her own section, but I’m leery of calling her a villain. She was a tool who flipped sides partway.

Lucida, Daiji, and the rest of Magnus’s GWT associates represent a particular mindset. Lucida herself voiced it for the rest. Greed.

No, the chatter about the billionaire streamer wasn’t just natter. It was a way to show you what Lucida really cared about. The money. For her, even improving as a cipher so she could crack open Tiferet only mattered because it would make her rich. She was in it for herself, and got stabbed in the back because so was everyone else (especially Toke). No honor among thieves, and especially not grifters.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about Toke.

Some people won’t agree that Toke is a grifter. The word doesn’t have a concrete meaning anymore, as it mostly applies to people trying to scam people with charisma. I personally view Toke as one, because while he’s not conning the public, he did con the bank.

I’m always surprised to hear that some people never run into these types, but sometimes I wonder if they’re just not always recognized. I bumped into a few, but a lot of people loved them. I have strong memories of being on a work trip with someone who once told me how lucky I was to work alongside the particularly awful grifter I based Toke’s surface personality on. To be fair, the dude was nice, but he’d basically conned his way into his job, and had literally lied about having a degree in an economics-related role.

But Toke’s insanity is based on the willingness of certain internet grifters to just burn down everything for profit. There’s a decent chance you know the types I’m talk about (or even a couple of specific names), but I’ll avoid mentioning them directly.

(I avoided writing a mystery directly related to this topic because it would be too overtly topical or political.)

By contrast, Perry and the bodyguards aren’t really given real motivations or even showcased as villains (just as mooks). This, like many things, is intentional. Unlike the bankers, who are well off but are desperate to escape the rat race, the bodyguards are genuinely escaping an awful situation. Hence the mention of the Aesir tax, permanent residency issues etc. They’re the working-class stiffs trying to rob the bank.

The Skynet Problem of AI

When I wrote Neural Wraith, I wanted to avoid making the AI the villains. That’s the go-to trope of mainstream depictions. The “science has gone too far” anti-intellectualism that rakes in the big bucks. While cyberpunk is intended to question the impact of technology, it also revels in it and accepts that it exists. That’s part of the reason why cyberpunk has partially transformed into retrofuturism, with many people turning it into a weird nostalgia for the before times of the 1980s – it isn’t overtly critical of technology, because it’s not intended to reject it. Mostly to make you think about it and its misuse (largely by the powers that be).

As such, I do my best to ensure the AIs remain tools or contributing factors. As the saying goes, the true monsters are humans.

Tiferet is an independent actor in this book, but her actions were set into motion by the true villains. She undertakes questionable actions, and avoids detection, but does so with genuinely good intentions and for empathetic motives.

A significant part of my approach to AI can be seen in Hammond’s comment in Book 1: “They rolled off an assembly line. I don’t hate the machines. Just the fuckers who made them. Dumbasses who create bartenders who intentionally get orders wrong, or police dolls that think privacy is for Neanderthals.”

That’s not to say that Hammond is my mouthpiece, as he’s an intentionally contradictory character. But he said a lot of things that I feel people often refuse to say or admit.

So while AI and automation will be a major focus, the true cause of any problem will, ultimately, be the humans in control of them, in some way or another. If an AI goes rogue, there will be a cause. If they’re trying to turn Babylon into a robot police state, then that’s the fault of the more-money-than-brains types that created the AI.

Too Big To Fail

The finance elements and references to the GFC are hard to miss. The original short story didn’t actually use the bank element much, other than as a backdrop for some jokes. When I expanded it out to a full story, I needed to rectify that.

The hard part is that anything relating to money and finance tends to cause people’s eyes to glaze over, unless presented specifically in a “rage against the machine” context. So a lot of the finance is skin deep, because I knew it would bore people. But there was a bit of research done in the past and some ideas that never made it past the drawing board.

Nick himself embodies a type of person I found common in my professional career. Highly capable, intelligent, worldly, but entirely uninterested in money other than having enough and using it as an indirect barometer of status. He has a partial excuse due to lacking an implant, but his apathy goes well beyond that.

One of the big elements I tip-toed around is that of the digital side. I’ll need to tackle this head-on next book, however. The Altnet has a digital currency (basically mobile game “gems”) that created a black market. Global instability has created a foreign exchange system in flux.

What I probably won’t ever elaborate on are some of the ideas I had for how this stuff might work. Fully digitizing currency has immense impacts. The idea that transactions and trades take place instantaneously would only be possible with entirely automated systems. In these cases, less is more. I hint that they exist, but don’t really go into them. The downside is that people will sometimes assume that I don’t understand how the world works when, in this case, I’m altering how it works.

The actual plot itself is based around fraud, and ends with the same reasoning that led to bank bailouts 15 years ago. Much ink has been spilled on that, and the political rhetoric remains as strong as ever due to the immense fallout from the GFC, so I won’t go into it.

GWT being embroiled in fraud is just a reflection of the industry. Major players have been convicted of market manipulation, forging signatures, opening false accounts, money laundering, and a billion other things.

Corruption and Governance

I tried to make this a theme of the book, but I don’t think it worked. There’s definitely some level of involvement with the corrupt government of Babylon and it’s unwillingness to take action to curb real problems.

The plus side is that I got to show off the Spires and the way they operate in crisis. Namely, that they don’t. There’s an increasing reliance on the AIs that operate much of the city.

Another aspect was that I wanted to make the march of technology obvious. 40-60 years ago, the Spires (the buildings) were cutting edge and a true bubble people wanted to live in forever. Now there’s better tech in random McMansions. The technology has aged them out. Cyberpunk tends to depict a very “bare metal” future at times, but I feel this is missing the point when it comes to wealth.

This also ties into the space aspect. As Babylon becomes an aging jewel, and an unstable one at that, the attention of the elites shifts to somewhere else. Newer, shinier, and away from the problems at home. Instead of building doomsday bunkers and wondering how they can prevent their bodyguards from murdering them, they’re setting up complicated systems to allow them to rule from space and not rely on those below them.

Kraus

A character that was intended to be a major element of the original draft, but got a little lost. I have mixed feelings about how I used Kraus, mostly due to a lack of time to fully utilize him or explain away certain elements. His plot is intentionally overcomplicated. Explaining every element of it would have taken up time that was needed for the climax, and there was a lot of explaining there as is.

But Kraus is intended to represent the ciphers who go too deep, so to speak. Lucas believes in technology, but is wary of how it can be abused. Nick is jaded in general. Kraus, by contrast, essentially gave his existence up to it. He works through his dolls, lives in the Altnet, and uses mind backups despite the risks.

And, yes, mind backups are somewhat comparable to cryogenics here. The difference is that they work. But even should somebody try to make themselves immortal, they’ll pay the price for it. Kraus will show up in later books, and he’ll be weirder.

The Space Elevator and Themes

I’m pretty sure any time I mention that there are themes or deeper meanings to anything in my books, I trigger some sort of deep-seated traumatic response from people due to school. But while I don’t really like literary elitism, I feel the opposite tends to be just as obnoxious.

My point here is that the space elevator was difficult from a writing standpoint. At multiple points, I considered removing it. I feel the book is better for keeping it in, but it took a bit of editing and I know not everyone will agree.

From the perspective of the mystery, what the space elevator did could be better achieved without leaving Babylon and introducing a brand new area and some weird characters. Worldbuilding-wise, the space elevator can easily come across as an exercise in excess. It also posed some pacing problems, given its place near the climax and the fact it involves a long trip to and from.

But I had a few reasons to commit to it.

First, space elevators are cool. If I’m already writing a series featuring Tokyo-sized metropolises on man-made islands and human-like fembots, then the realism question kind of faded away. The idea of a planet-scale megaproject to make space more accessible is awesome. Hell, every time I research space elevators I learn a little bit more (mostly because the science shifts a little more as we write off more stuff).

Second, I can expand the setting and hint at broader activities. One of the more important elements of worldbuilding, in my opinion, is the idea that the world needs to exist outside the protagonist and his story. This is something that I think a lot of authors miss and is often thrown out in a lot of worldbuilding advice for authors. Too often, worldbuilding advice is “don’t, because you’ll bore people.” Which can be true, but many readers wants to feel that the world in a piece of fiction exists for more than the convenience of the plot. I like to include and drop elements of the world that I can then introduce in future books, instead of just inventing shit in each book and making the world appear to only be as big as the protagonist’s perception of it.

Finally, we have the thematic side of things. Lilith and Harris are foils to Rie/the Host and Nick respectively. The pair in charge of the space elevator have what Rie arguably partnered with Nick to achieve. But their attitudes differ.

Lilith views humanity as on par with cargo. She doesn’t want to destroy humanity, as much as she thinks they’re bothersome. Her programming prevents her from going full Skynet, too. She’s also deeply egotistical and arrogant, unlike Rie who feels she needs to learn more about the world to take action on it.

But it’s Harris who is the most important, because he directly ties into Nick’s character arc.

Harris repeatedly bumped up against the failings of humanity and became bitter and cynical. His life is something of a dark spiral, in contrast to Nick’s, which has stumbles but mostly improves from an awful childhood. Harris believes in AI and that it will solve many of the problems he faced. The fact he thinks this while working under Lilith raises questions.

You’re probably aware of a joke about automation: “The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” Harris is an example where the man and the dog have become the same thing, and his job is to keep everyone else from touching the equipment.

I cut a fair bit from the Harris part. Mostly because I worried it would come across as an author tract (and I know there’ll be people still angry about it). Some of this will be merged into later books when/if it becomes relevant.

What I mostly needed was a personal element to Harris’s story. Like how Hammond’s hatred of the system is driven by what he experienced, I wanted Harris to be driven by something that could be empathized with.

Picking Canada was mostly because I wanted to pick a developed English-speaking country that wasn’t the US.

Deleted/Unfinished Scenes

Quite a few this time.

The big one is the symposium. I don’t regret deleting this one, and I’ll reuse some of its content in future books. It added way too much complexity to a book already drowning in it, and everything it could have contributed already existed (Seung and the military buildup were already added by other events).

Deleting the symposium mostly removed two things: pushing back the progression of the Liberator procurement; and removing a chance for Nick to meet Welk. Honestly, I think putting off Welk’s introduction a little longer is probably for the better. He gets to remain mysterious for a little longer.

Another interesting scene I didn’t find a place for was a medical one. I had an idea for a small scene where Nick would visit Vanessa for a check-up, and would showcase some aspects of life with implants. This was intended to take place in the first ten chapters, but the pacing was already really bad and couldn’t really fit in.

I do wish I could have found a place for this one. Mostly because I intended to show off the level of invasiveness demanded by employers and education institutions, which would have tied into the Julian investigation (you know, the part where he didn’t have an NLF implant as it would have been detected).

It would have been pretty topical, even though I came up with the idea before the ChatGPT stuff. I believe I read about issues with exam-taking at home and invasive software on computers, and figured that implants would need to be even worse. I mean, if you’re going to have an AI in your head, won’t your school want to shut it down when you take an exam?

Then ChatGPT happened. Cheating is a big topic in regards to it. Unlike AI art, which is deeply controversial and condemned by most online content creators, ChatGPT doesn’t get the same bad rap outside of niche spheres (authors, journalists etc). Youtubers are already using it, there’s a Twitch streamer run by it, and it’s fairly pervasive. The tech is here to stay, but I’d say the difference in mainstream acceptance is proof that all that matters is whether people think it’s useful to them.

But my original idea hasn’t changed. Cheating is an existential threat to the education system. Degrees have become a requirement to even get a job in many cases due to economic signaling. If employers feel that anyone can get a degree due to cheating, they’ll come up with newer and more awful ways to distinguish between employees. So education will become increasingly invasive in its efforts to survive – part of this will require courses and programs to change their format (difficult for lazy lecturers), but much of this will involve incredibly invasive software. When you have a chip in your head, I imagine it will only be even worse.

As for other deleted scenes, the conversation with Harris had some stuff cut from it. I wanted to balance the conversation between making him a foil to Nick, being empathetic, and not coming across as preachy. Feedback suggests I achieved this, but any more “the world is shit” examples would probably have annoyed ordinary readers, instead of just a small subset.

In the original draft, I planned to have some progress in the Aesir case. This was intended to provide much of the escalation that Kraus’s assassination did. The judges and military would have leaned on Nick to ignore GWT because everything became tense due to the Aesir stuff, but this would have forced me to resolve something massive next book. As I went episodic, I chose to use Kraus instead, as it was a self-contained plot.

Finally, I considered adding an extra chapter at the end. This would have been a chat between Lucas and Nick about how things went. Part of the issue here is that while I think this would have helped provide some insight into events, as well as the aftermath, the snappier ending worked better. It also lets you decide for yourself whether letting GWT effectively get away with being so shit is good or bad, even if Toke got caught. There isn’t a need for the characters to tell you what to feel.

Nick’s Character Arc

This book is fairly Nick centric. To some extent, the entire series is, more so compared to my usual fare. There’s a more obvious orbit around him, and I think this is down to the investigative tone.

At the end of the last book, Nick had been promoted and was beginning to accept that he should assist the Archangels in changing the city. Much of the focus had been on his alienation and resultant apathy.

This time around, Nick needs to take charge and provide direction. The entire case is driven by his decisions and hunches, with the Archangels gently pushing back to get him to explain them. He meets people who try to sway him directly and the book ends with him making a massive decision regarding GWT.

His personal conflicts this time are less about his lack of an implant, and more about what he wants to accomplish. Lucas brings up that Nick’s growing power means that he’s going to be beyond conventional morality soon, as nobody will be there to judge him or hold him to account for what he does. Harris wants to convince Nick that he should be favoring AI. Griffiths has unknown motives and methods, but understands Nick’s value.

There’s also more of Nick’s actual opinions and bitterness on display. He has a strong dislike of the city’s elite and is deeply cynical about its systems, but he’s also never lived anywhere else. He grapples with some level of patriotism for the only home he’s ever known, even if he has a deep dislike for much of it, at the same time he leaves it (briefly) for the first time.

There’ll be more of this, but to different degrees. Nick’s morality, and what he’s willing to do in a city that arguably has few morals and principles, will continue to be tested. I also expect to have other powers push back against him more now that he has noticeable influence. It’s unlikely that the Spires would underestimate him a second time.

Kushiel Writes Herself

At some point in the Patreon chapters I said that Kushiel wouldn’t get much of a role, so I wanted to sneak her in where I could. And then she shows up fucking everywhere and steals the goddamn show. I wonder why people say that I play favorites with my characters.

As I mentioned in the previous book’s commentary, Kushiel was intended to be play the antagonistic role that Ezekiel took on. But when it came time to write her, she took over and things just turned out the way they are. I’ve let that spirit carry her, to the extent that while I make sure that her behavior is consistent, I wasn’t entirely certain how it came together until a beta reader told me.

Which is funny, because I think he thought I was writing Kushiel using my usual grand planning.

My main perspective on Kushiel is that she’s deeply misanthropic and cynical, left astray in the military after the relative failure of her model, and incredibly bored. She also deeply cares for her sisters, to the extent she kept a close eye on Nick despite thinking he was basically useless.

But by interacting with Nick, she’s showing a clearer desire to be treated like a human. She wants to do all the things she can’t do because of what she is. Nick inadvertently became her outlet in this regard: somebody that treats her normally, even if she clearly isn’t. I wanted her to give off a “bro” atmosphere in a few scenes, such as the bar one, including Nick bumping against her in the booth (and her choosing whether or not to move, because he sure as hell can’t move her multi-ton ass). She’s still abrasive, but in a teasing way.

I have a few ideas for progressing the relationship along these lines. It’s unlikely to happen next book, as Meta and Helena need focus, and my current idea for the plot should give it to them. But Kushiel has shot up to be one of my favorite characters.

Ezekiel the Insecure Purifier

Getting Ezekiel done turned out to be harder than I liked. Before I rewrote Kushiel, Ezekiel was intended to be an insecure lieutenant to Nick. The chat under the stars the two had comes from an idea in the original version of the series (as in, back when Nick was a crime lord), when she questioned her role and purpose in a Host that runs itself via instant democracy and with sisters with more unique capabilities.

Then I needed to add some level of antagonism to the relationship, and the purifier part was born. The two personality elements conflict, and tying them together took some doing. I think it works, however.

Ezekiel’s purifier mindset is manufactured to meet the expectations that have been mounted on her. She is overzealous, rash, and desperate to prove herself, even when she doesn’t know everything. While she talks about order, she actually embodies chaos to a greater degree than the Host, who prefer to deliberate and plan everything.

Remember, the Host planned to detain Nick in the Spires because they couldn’t guarantee his safety after a sniper attack. They relented, but they dislike uncertainty.

Ezekiel has trained herself to ignore uncertainty, because it gets in the way of achieving what she thinks she has to. I suspect part of the reason she didn’t come across as developing in this book is that she, well, didn’t. Other than accepting that maybe humanity needed to be assessed before being written off. Her problems run deep and she sees Nick as the cause of many of them.

I expect to take the most time to add Ezekiel to the harem, is what I’m saying.

Helena

Helena definitely drew the short straw this book. Part of the problem is finding out how to fit her in. I think I worked it out later on, but her adjutant role still overlaps with Chloe and Meta.

Once I give her a body and more purpose in the plot, I think she’ll come together. That, and the next book doesn’t require me to introduce another Ezekiel or the equivalent.

The Rest of the Host

There are a few Archangels who showed up regularly. Juliet and Rosa mostly exist for their bodyguard role, so we’ll skip them.

Meta has solidified as the embodiment of the Mark 1s. While the Mark 3s are becoming individuals, the Mark 1s aren’t. They’re a very stubborn group of dolls, and they’re actively choosing to approach Nick in their own way. But Meta shows occasional flashes of her own interests, such as during the Lucida interrogation.

By contrast, Chloe wants to be a “real girl.” She’s trying to develop into her own person, form her own interests, and be treated by Nick in the same way he does Rie. Her actions have transitioned from copying Nick to trying new things and then to influencing him. But there’s still a little more to go.

There is a downside to how I try to develop these characters, and I know it falls flat for many people. The Host are a bunch of danderes/kuuderes, who rarely voice their internal thoughts and opinions, and instead show them with actions. A lot of what I write in as intentional actions, to contrast against past ones, are lost as filler description. In Chloe’s case, I think it’s worsened because she has her time at the start of the book.

I’ll still stick to this approach, as it’s both enjoyable to write and a good writing exercise to avoid relying entirely on dialogue to progress character development. Character arcs shouldn’t be solved just by talking about their feelings, there should be actions that accompany them. Dialogue is just a cheaty method of doing this.

The Judges

As I predicted, this element ruffled feathers.

Just like with automating the police force, automating the judicial system is intended to be an inflammatory idea. The legal system is one of the most simultaneously reviled yet important elements of any functioning country. Extortionately expensive, intended to be accessible to anyone but decidedly not, and sloth-like in execution. Unless it’s in your political or career interests to lie about it, almost everyone agrees something needs to change but nobody can agree how.

The idea of automating judges matches that of tech disruption occurring almost everywhere else. There are no shortage of problems that can be solved with technology, and supercomputers with entire legal databases, a comprehensive understanding of the people, and an “unbiased” view of the evidence are the obvious solution, right? They can make decisions instantly, solving bottlenecks and allowing many aspects of the law that simply don’t operate to, well, operate.

Of course, I’m not so naïve as to believe AI can magically solve the problem. But it’s an area that would likely benefit from some degree of automation, simply due to its long history of issues. The question is what the tradeoffs are, and to intentionally automate something that will realistically never be automated (because the people being automated will probably just rule that it’s illegal to automate them if anybody tried).

In story terms, I explicitly excluded the lawyers because they would have just been glue in the gears of how the plot works. The idea of lawyer mainframes with dolls running around as ambulance chasers amuses me, but it also makes sense that human lawyers wouldn’t work if all the judges are mainframes. This means that the real decisions are made by Nick and the Host, and then the judges. An easy simplification (and an obvious one, because I’m not doing Law & Order here).

As for juries, they’re also very intentionally excluded. The reason isn’t subtext, it’s literally text. The judicial mainframes and the Spires are corrupt and arrogant. Nick flat out calls this out, bitching that judges only pretend to care about the views of the people. From an automation standpoint, it’s also inefficient. Again, Omoikane said it: he already understands all of Babylon, why does he need to call in a jury? Especially in a city where the views of the average person isn’t valued.

This also isn’t new stuff. Babylon is very much a “bread and circuses” affair. Convenience and peace in exchange for liberty. Nothing I’m doing doesn’t exist in some dystopia. Also, the entire story takes place amid a backdrop of rising violence and discontent, as many people push back against the problem but just as many accept it.

At the same time, none of this is intended to preach to you. It’s a story. It presents characters and ideas. I avoid making anyone an author insert, and Babylon isn’t some ideal society. The idea is that you can take away as much or as little as you like. There’s no “confusion” involved, it just covers something that some people might get irrationally angry to see included.

As the saying goes, you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. I’m beginning to think that you also can’t stop the horse from chucking a tantrum that you dared to show it water at all.

What All the Names Mean

I had a lot of fun in this book. While this book is cyberpunk, I want it to have a vaguely anime-ish flavor. But I didn’t want to just repeat anime scifi tropes, such as putting German everywhere, because I’m not Japanese and want the setting to reflect a future based on what’s happening right now.

The two big newcomers this time were Jewish Kabballah and some Asian myth. Cyberpunk often uses a lot of gratuitous Japanese, because Japan was the China of the 1980s. But time has marched on, and these days Korea is arguably more important to technology than Japan. With China out of the picture due to the trade war in the book, that means Korea and Japan have a lot of corporate presence.

Broadly speaking, there is also a reinforcement of the Norse aspect running through many elements and companies, and it’s often presented negatively.

Anyway, let’s go through the names. Let me know if I missed any you want to know about:

• Ezekiel: literally explained in the book, but the reason I chose this one was because it ends in the “el” that many angel names do, so it blends in for the general public.
• The Sefirot: originally, this was a reference to Lobotomy Corp (made by a Korean dev) but it grew into something bigger. There are a lot of spiritual parallels here, as the sefirot are supposed to be a representation of human intellect and spirit, which then connects to the divine. If you actually understand the sefirot, you might predict some stuff in the book.
• Tiferet: supposedly a balancing element of the sefirot, which is why I used here as a “relay” between the local and international mainframes in the RTM superstructure. Also, it’s a more feminine-seeming name than Yesod or Malkuth.
• Da’at: The special sefirot. Da’at is meant to represent God or a divine will, by combining the other sefirot. So using it for the name of a conference where a collective of mainframes can countermand the orders of humans seems fitting.
• Yggdrasil: you should know this one. It’s the world tree of Norse myth. Its use as the communications center of Babylon is even called out.
• Sindansu: I think this is a tree/connection between Heaven and Earth in Dangun myth (which is an origin story of Korea). This was hard to research, because I don’t think much of it has English sources, and was minor enough that I wasn’t going to try to track down somebody who knew it.
• Lilith: Again, explained in-book. She’s protecting the space elevator down here on earth, while Eve protects it in space.
• Lilim Principles: The Lilim are supposedly the children of Lilith, and have all sorts of uses in fantasy. In this case, it’s used as it implies that Lilith converts other robots into her “children” through them. Although it might have more meaning.
• Pax Americana: The peace created following WW2 due to US dominance. In-book, it’s called out as an attempt to harken back to better times. To some extent, it’s ironic to use it as the name of a space elevator that requires the US to explicitly accept its current archenemy as an equal.
• Exarch: Helena’s new interface model name. It’s used for the religious meaning to match Sigma’s theme. Sigma calls its security dolls knights, creates Archangels to serve humanity, and calls its interface after a religious position.
• Deusoma: Intended to combine “deus” and “soma” in latin to mean “God body.” They make cybernetics and neural mods, so the meaning should be clear.
• Takamagahara: The specific name for Heaven in Shinto myth—even has an asteroid named after it. The reason an island is named after it is clear, and I preferred such a specific name over the general Japanese word for Heaven for obvious reasons. It ended up being too long for regular use, especially in an audiobook.
• · Tengoku: The general word for heaven in Japanese. I can only imagine how confusing living here must be for the Japanese. If they call home, do their family think they’re being contacted from the afterlife? Realistically, I imagine the Japanese never use this nickname.
• Jigoku: Hell in Japanese. For a lawless region, it’s fitting. Somebody asked me for more detail on this area, so I’ll mention that it’s basically a research zone intended to attract companies to the island. Each island in Neo Westphalia is basically independent, so they need to stand on their own—Tengoku is the youngest, so it’s the most underhanded when it comes to attracting companies, and subject to much suspicion.
• Omoikane and Athena: names of gods of wisdom. Again, I’m trying to pick from different cultures, but not all of them have a god of wisdom or equivalent.
• Kestrel: It’s a bird of prey. I just tried to avoid the names of major existing aircraft.

Low Sexual Content (Again)

People who read the chapters here know that I cut a sex scene from the final version (or more accurately, never wrote it). There was intended to be a Rie sex scene in the shower, but I didn’t have any great ideas for it.

There are a few reasons for this.

First, I think the series works better with less sex than my other ones. I’ll probably need to go up to two scenes a book from Book 3, though.

Second, many people just don’t like the “robot” part of the robots when it comes to sex. It’s a polarizing element. While some people have commented that they like it, as it adds to the world or the story, it detracts from the sexiness of the scenes. I made that aspect intrinsic to the Archangels and adding in extra scenes where it won’t progress characterization will just invite more bitching from those folks.

Third, to some extent, I am tired of the sexual side of harem. I love the eroticism I can include in my books. Talking about sex, acting sexy, the topics etc. The frustrating puritanism present in a lot of modern fantasy and litrpg means this rarely comes up, except in potentially creepy ways. So while Neural Wraith is cleaner in terms of actual sex, it still has that eroticism – the dolls show attraction, Kushiel flirts and makes crude jokes etc. Stuff that is increasingly frowned upon in other genres. I enjoy this aspect, less so the sex scenes and veiled swipes about them.

The Aesir Tax

Something I thought might be a controversial topic, but appears to have gone down fine.

The Aesir Tax is a transparent reference to the Apple Tax, but taken to the logical extreme in an awful future where Aesir has enough power to take 30% of everything you ever earn in exchange for getting their implant. A bit of a step up from 30% of everything purchased on an iPhone.

Part of me wanted to include somebody saying “their implant, their rules” but knew that was going too far. But the intent is there.

I chose to tread softly here because it leaves Aesir as a genuine megacorp, with enough power that even governments can’t stop them from destroying people’s lives, but avoids making the book preachy about the topic. If/when we get neural implants, there will be many issues involved with them, so this made for an easy example that people can understand.

If you think more about it, the Aesir Tax also implies just how bad the world is outside Neo Westphalia. While implant penetration is far lower in the US, if Aesir can take 30% of everything you earn, they’re basically a government, because that’s tax. In turn, Neo Westphalia is luring skilled people with the promise of a better life, including illegal immigrants that authorities turn a blind eye to.

Sound familiar?

So it made a good plot point, an interesting reference, and a nice demonstration of corporate power. Also, prodding at the 30% stuff is fun.

Holy Shit, Research

This book involved a ridiculous amount of research. Some of it comes from my own background knowledge over the years, but I still needed to verify some of it. Ultimately, the risk of writing anything that feels slightly realistic is that you can’t be 100% about it without an inordinate amount of research. And sometimes I make decisions to be inaccurate or simplistic to improve the book.

The space elevator took a fair bit of time to brush up on, and most of it doesn’t even show up in the story. But they’re cool, so I enjoyed researching it.

All the crazy names were so intensive to research, as I had specific ideas for a few. Sindansu was the hardest, as I wanted a Korean name for one of the Spires and struggled to find something that fit. I’m not even sure if it’s what I should use, as I don’t really know much about Dangun myth. I knew about the tree, as it’s showed up in a few manhwa, but I never see it named, unlike Yggdrasil.

Much of the finance and judicial stuff came from background knowledge. I’m no lawyer, but I had a hobby of following cases at one point and have read a lot of transcripts and judgments. I still do when there’s something interesting (and the court actually publishes them online…) The finance stuff was shakier when it came to the internals of these companies, as I’ve only approached it from various external angles (I majored in Finance in one of my degrees; one of my jobs dealt with finance etc). Based on feedback from one beta reader, I don’t think I got anything egregiously wrong.

Gun-wise, the only “new” gun was the cutter. I’ll be honest, this is something that I can’t guarantee the accuracy of. Energy weapons are a scifi staple but also wildly speculative. We have no clue what will be feasible for weaponry, let alone at the man-portable level. I mean, we have heat rays but railguns got scrapped because they kept melting the damn rails. And we want to shoot bolts of incandescent plasma?

So the cutter is mostly for effect and to show why energy weapons are so heavily regulated. The massive battery pack is effectively a small tactical nuke in the wrong hands (and I went with batteries over a generator, because portable fusion generators seem insane given we’ll likely only have commercial power-plant sized ones in the 2060s at the earliest). But it’s an industrial tool first, and incredibly unwieldy in combat. I do need to design a long-range one, too, for a later book.

I did have some fun with the new hardware on display. The Kestrels were fun to design, and fit neatly with the idea of military dolls massively outclassing their civilian counterparts. Their flight systems were left somewhat vague as I can’t even pretend to understand the science—while the idea of electronically propelled engines seems neat, I don’t think they could ever produce the thrust necessary for a doll to move at the necessary speeds.

What I did have some degree of confidence in (and spent a lot of time researching, including a discussion with somebody) were the helicopters. One of the funny things about scifi is that helicopters rarely change much. Sure, Dune has the weird ornithopters, but let’s not go there. Many scifi helicopters are literally a modern helicopter made to look “scifi” or go “circular” with twin-rotors mounted to the sides of the craft.

But the US military recently announced their replacement for the current Black Hawks (the Bell V-280 Valor), and the reasoning behind it was compelling enough that I modelled the choppers in the book after it. It’s a tiltrotor design, named as such because the rotors tilt but the frame doesn’t (unlike normal helicopters, where the rotor tilts along with the frame). Also, I’m amazed at the specs of these things. One of my concerns was whether a helicopter could carry a cargo of dolls, given they’d weight much more than humans. Also whether it could make it to the space elevator. Definitely a fun rabbit hole to go down.

The ocean rail didn’t need much research, as it’s just a high-speed train (inspired by Japan’s network). The only reason we don’t see more of these are economics. But they’re cool, and I wanted that end scene aboard one. Part of me wondered how the suspension bridge works, but if the setting has manmade islands the size of cities, they can build a bridge across part of the ocean.

However, the ocean rail did play into a worldbuilding theme I want to nail down in the series. Namely, that there needs to be a sense of “how does this work” around stuff like logistics. The docks and airport got mentioned last time. This book brought up the second set of docks and the ocean rail, as well as the power plant location.

Getting a map is probably a good idea, but also a timesink in terms of finding the right person, getting the details right etc. Plus, the map isn’t that important. Distances and relative locations aren’t used. It’s a city, after all.

Balance

One of the side-effects of such a complicated mystery was that I needed to balance it against everything else. Character scenes, the “slice of life” parts (as people refer to them), worldbuilding etc.

I don’t want these books to get much longer. A mystery novel can get too long. Pacing is very important. New discoveries, action, and interrogations need to spaced out appropriately.

In this case, the complexity of the case meant I needed to spend a lot of time on it. It appears that I succeeded in one respect. Everyone seems to have understood what’s going on, even if it needed a bit of explaining.

The downside is that I’m not sure how well I managed to squeeze in all the slice of life or character scenes. Hammond only gets a couple of brief moments, and I do want to give him more.

In the future, I expect to choose a less complicated case and instead balance that out with other aspects of the book.

Vibe

I mentioned in the release post that this book can’t be the same as the first, for the same reason superhero origin movies differ from their sequels. This concerned me a lot, as I was surprised that Neural Wraith did as well as it did. Reproducing it felt like trying to bottle lightning.

This led to a couple of false starts, and throwing away almost everything I wrote while in Japan. I was still influenced by my time there, but I’m wary of trying to write while travelling again. Which is funny, because over half of Book 1 was written in a hotel. Maybe I was trying to chase a writing fairy that struck me then.

Whatever the case, I eventually found my feet. While I had a few principles to stick to when writing the book (follow Nick at all times; make problems tech-related; intersperse worldbuilding with everything etc), there was one overriding feeling I wanted to capture.

That of not giving a shit.

Or at least, not caring about following a bunch of rules or dumbing stuff down because that’s the way things are done. After getting burned by Emperor, I moderated how I wrote with a bunch of rules to steer clear of similar issues. Over time, other than the writing tics that have made their way into everything, I’m tossing out everything that isn’t strictly genre related.

Worldbuilding is bad? Well, the series is basically half worldbuilding. Dialogue and conversations need to be simplified? Nope, except where I think it would be dreadfully boring (although I think people would tell me to stop writing the multiverse crap in Spellblade using that rule). Only tropey and boisterous characters work in harem? Fuck off, have most of the harem be quiet and unwilling to be open with their words.

I also applied this to the “commentary” elements of the book. While I avoid making things directly topical or political, because I personally hate when it’s obvious that something is just a direct reference to some current event, the entire reason to write cyberpunk is to comment and raise questions. So Hammond openly calls out police force corruption, this book is about bank fraud and corruption, and it won’t really stop. It’s cyberpunk, baby.

This makes the series that much more enjoyable to write. On top of that, I’ve learned that catering to the people who dislike what I like is an impossible task. It’s fairly obvious that a significant audience won’t touch my books simply because of what they are, and some even resent my presence in the genre. They’re never going to be happy unless I write what they prefer, and I’m not. So, fuck ‘em.

I’ll write what I like.

The Glossary plus Recaps

I expect people noticed the glossary at the start of the book. Given the number of terms used in the series, I figured this would help refresh people’s memories. The only thing I left out was a list of dolls, mostly because it would be quite long and of questionable benefit, but I probably do need one anyway.

Recaps still make me pause, though, but they don’t seem to cause the issues they once did. While they seem popular now, I still remember people actively getting mad about them. I’ve seen people complain about them being in books at all, at least until the tide turned. My personal guess (based on the time sentiment shifted) on why things changed has been the influx of web serial readers who don’t read actual novels and have a strong distaste for each book reintroducing characters and concepts.

Personally, as somebody who grew up reading novels and understood the bad writing tics of web serials and fanfiction when I shifted into them as a teenager, recaps still bother me. Mostly because of the dialogue around them.

Frequently whenever I see recaps discussed, it’s often as an alternative to reintroducing characters and concepts at the start of sequels. In my mind, that’s not really an option. Many people will skip recaps, character lists, and glossaries—not including character descriptions or reminding people of past plot points is just bad writing. Sure, web serials frequently expect readers to just know everything, but the amount of times I’ve dropped stuff because it’s spent a billion years on some side-story filler and still expected me to remember random characters or concepts from five hundred chapters ago is far too high. A reference to a minor character is one thing, but major plot events and concepts? Nope. That’s a drop.

At the same time, my series are reaching a point where not including recaps is actively detrimental. Spellblade 5 needed one, as too many things have happened to actually reintroduce. For Spellblade 6, I will use one, because it’s picking up right after the previous book and I won’t have a slow start to ease people in. But I’ll still be repeating character descriptions and key plot points as necessary, because it’s my responsibility as an author to respect my readers and understand that six-nine months is enough time to forget details. Hell, I’ve talked to people who mix up things in a book they just finished reading.

So this is a long section to say that, while I still don’t really like recaps (and I’m wary about their potential impact on sales, due to Amazon fuckery and the fact they force some readers to flick through like 15-20 pages to start reading), they’ll be making their way into my books from all of my series from Book 3 onward.

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That’s it for the commentary. I keep saying I’ll tailor back these commentary posts but never do. This one ended up being more about all the author stuff, I think, due to how this book was written.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it anyway and ask any questions if you have any.