Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick
by David Wong (author) & Elizabeth Evans (Narrator)
I’m not going to lie, this book was a surprise to me.
My initial purchase of this title was because (a) the title was funny and (b) the storyline sounded like a simplistic entertainer, if nothing else. And so it was that I found myself listening to it on my way to and from work over about week.
Only after I started the book and then after my initial curiosity was further curioused-up, did I realise it’s the second entry in a series named after the titular character: Zoey Ashe. But no matter, because the authors do a nice job of giving us just enough back-story sprinkled into conversation and such that we get the gist of the past and I felt no compulsion to read the first book – that is other than the fact that this book being enjoyable enough, one would go back to read the prequel (which it now is for me…).
The book itself is a somewhat dystopic, punk sci-fi in my view. I say this not to type-cast it but it’s a story set in a near-ish future Earth where we decided it was too much effort to colonise new planets so we just built new city-states here on Earth in random locations that operated outside any other country – literally creating new countries here. This is a bizarre enough idea (but believable) and it’s funnier still that the founders of these were seemingly not governments or countries but people and collective entities. So it is that we find ourselves in Tabula Raza, a city founded largely by Zoey’s now-dead absentee father who had some epiphany in his final days and left everything to the daughter he had abandoned from birth and didn’t know.
The result is chaotic to say the least as Zoey seems unsteady in her life and newfound riches and power and place of influence in the whole city. She has to contend with power-plays from the outside and potentially from the inside with her father former right-hand, Will Blackwater, being the biggest question mark since many assumed he would take over and are convinced he wants to oust poor Zoey to do just that. She is surrounded by an interesting team aside from Will that includes the mysterious Echo Ling, Andre who can get you almost anything from… somewhere, Bud who is just a Texan-y bro, Wu who is her unflappable and mysterious bodyguard, Carlton the butler and of course, her beloved cat, Stink-Machine.
Together they try to navigate each other and the madness that is Tabula Raza as a group of online trolls decide to incite violence and hate toward Zoey and behind the scene and behind the group, there is the likely hand of one of the many enemies that her father had in the city. Power games, mystery, some violence, confusion, absurd moments, creative thinking and more than a little luck are what come into play over the course of events that unfold – starting with Zoey trying to stop a rampaging cyborg-guy who is holding a cuddle-brothel she owns hostage because he loves the girl he frequents but feels he isn’t loved back. From there, whatever Zoey does, it all keeps repeatedly going to hell and she begins to doubt and question everything even more than she did at the start and she might have some hard choices to make before it all ends – assuming she can stay alive through it and make it to her Halloween party.
All in all, this was a genuinely surprising read for me, because as I said at the start, I expected very little except some entertainment. Never having read anything by David Wong, I had no precedent.
But the author turned out to be more than just another writer trying to do shock value or going for pushing random out-there ideas just to seem different or some such.
I think in fact one of the biggest strengths of this narrative is that the fast pace, gripping events and fun characters kept you engaged and like some of the best kinds of sci-fi, it was able to draw more parallels to or be allegorical of and so on, with respect to the world we know – all without shoving any kind of heavy-handed social commentary down my throat throughout. Any messages or ideas of the like that emerged, came organically over the course of the story and made sense IN the context of said story and felt like they belonged; if you happen to find something in the real world that it reminds you of, that’s your choice to see it that way, it didn’t feel like a lesson the author was trying to teach me through the story. It just happened and left it to me to interpret or venture guesses.
The character of Zoey, her cohort and even the people she’s up against, are all developed quite well in the middle of all the madness I described above. And make no mistake, there’s a lot of stuff – I genuinely thought the book was ending at certain points but not only did it carry on, it didn’t feel like the author was dragging it out. The story had a life of it’s own that ebbed and flowed and quite frankly, it kept me on my toes a fair bit along the way and especially right at the end. Mr. Wong certainly has a skill with adding in little twists and for me it definitely paid off because it gave me one of the most fun little stories I’ve read in a bit.
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