Books › When Gravity Fails
When Gravity Fails
290 pages
A neon-drenched, hardboiled descent into a futuristic Middle Eastern underworld where identity is just another commodity to be bought, sold, or stolen.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a sweltering, neon-lit alleyway where danger and decadence bleed together. It is a quintessential cyberpunk noir, wrapping the reader in a gritty, claustrophobic atmosphere that smells of cheap spices, ozone, and desperation. The narrative moves with a propulsive, street-smart energy, anchored by a wry, cynical protagonist whose hard-won independence is slowly stripped away. The prose is sharp and hardboiled, effortlessly blending classic detective fiction rhythms with unsettling technological body horror. It explores the terrifying fragility of identity in a world where personalities can be swapped like cartridges. This is a perfect read for those who love their science fiction dark, morally ambiguous, and dripping with seedy, atmospheric tension.
- Mood
- neon-lit
- claustrophobic
- decadent
- seedy
- Tone
- wry
- cynical
- gritty
- hardboiled
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- loss of identity · technological corruption · survival in the margins · the illusion of self
- The writing
- Sharp, hardboiled, and street-smart, blending classic noir cadence with inventive cyberpunk slang.
- The arc
- Moves from cynical detachment to desperate survival as the protagonist's core identity is compromised.
- Who it's for
- Fans of classic cyberpunk and hardboiled detective fiction who crave immersive, non-Western futuristic settings and morally gray antiheroes.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- drug use
- body horror
- murder
About the book
In a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marid Audran has kept his independence and his identity the hard way. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he is available...for a price.
For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the decadent Arabic ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audran has been made an offer he can't refuse.
The two-hundred-year-old "godfather" of crime in the Budayeen has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to stop a killer with the powers of every psychopath since the beginning of time...
Wry, savage and unforgettable. When Gravity Fails is a new major work of dark genius by one of the most celebrated talents in science fiction today--a cutting-edge, heart-stopping tour-de-force detective story about an insane future world not so far removed from our own.
Description from Open Library.
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