Cyberpunk. Urban Fantasy. The concept of mixing human flesh with cybernetic implants… and coating the whole reprehensible mess with industrial-grade magic. If you’re a fan of Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2077, Inception, and the less-salacious bits of the Anita Blake novels, and you prefer your fantasy with more bullets than romance, read on.
The Necrotek series is set in the year 2057, in an alt-history primarily based in the US, and the massive megalopolis known as Los Santuario, Texas.
This is a world where magic, demons, zombies, mutants, Hell, and ghosts exist… but your average asshole on the street? He just wants a coup of caffi while he reads through the morning news in his personal eye-based HUD. In a world where corporations control everything and sell you what they think you need, you get two choices:
Go with the flow, work your shitty little retail job, and buy some crap you don’t need… …or go drown in a digital nightmare of our own making.
So sit back, watch the Pyrobowl, get a skin-mod, amp your genes, go confess your sins at the Church of Angelic America, and then get a lap-dance from a human/demon crossbreed.
Just don’t get the attention of the demonic Pentaship… …because what’s the point of power, if you don’t abuse it?
~Joshua E. B. Smith, Author
Anthony Pierson: ex-husband, ex-Army Intelligence, ex-employed, and currently broke – and broken. The only things keeping him going are a crappy pension, a cybernetic arm, and an escort named Callie… plus a few “federally mandated” odd-jobs to line his pockets. Life couldn’t possibly be better, though his ex-wife is intent on making it worse.
When she shows up at his doorstep with a gun to her head and a story about her brutally murdered brother (a self-righteous Church of Angelic America pastor, at that), the idea of a peaceful weekend goes up in flames. With a bio-mechanical monster on the loose and a gang war brewing on the horizon, the city of Los Santuario is about to learn that Anthony’s history with black-ops means black-magic.
Necromancer’s Bullet by Joshua E. B. Smith is the first novel in the brand-new urban fantasy/cyberpunk series, NecroTek! Launching Summer 2023, Bullet is for fans of Shadowrun, Bright, Judge Dredd and maybe, just maybe, for fans who liked a little bit of Inception. A gore-streaked and foul-language run through the Neo-Corporate society of America circa 2067, it’ll hit you like a bullet to the chest.
“It was everything the Neo-American dream claimed to be. Violent sex. Passionate guns. Fast cars. Faster food. If you wanted it you could get it right here in Los Santuario and all you had to do was want it just bad enough to sell your soul. Maybe figuratively. Maybe literally. It depended on if the ghost you walked around with was worth anything to anyone.”
– Anthony Pierson, Federally Licensed Necromancer Los Santuario, Texas
– Anthony Pierson, Licensed Necromancer Los Santuario, Texas
In the early 1900s, the first of five Daemons arrived in the human world. The truth is? They’d always been there. The Daemons of Desire. Power. Avarice. War. Rot. They’d always existed just at the tip of your tongue. They’d always been watching, waiting. Magic had always been real, too. But there were just enough people with just enough power to make sure that magic users never rose above the whispered rumors behind closed doors and in fantasy fairy tales.
But then the Pentaship decided to abscond from Hell. And everything changed.
Magic was suddenly real. Demons were suddenly here. Mutations brought about by the misuse and sudden uncontrolled use of nth-based magic ran rampant. Society fractured. Society broke. But society found a lifeline in the middle of the upheaval:
Anthenium. Crystalized magic. The power to shape the world – the power to charge the world, right in the palm of your hand. Able to do anything from start a car to allow you to levitate, anthenium made magic possible for everyone. And anyone. What anthenium didn’t do, technology did.
It took humanity all of five minutes to go, “Wow, magic is real!” to go to, “Wow, I bet we can use this to power our toasters… and our bodies.”
And the Pentaship took full advantage of the ensuing scientific breakthroughs. The rise of neural-networking. The development of cybernetic modifications. The creation of magic-users as a class. As a spot, as a profession, as a show. As law enforcement.
As terrorism.
Society broke. But it didn’t crumble. On the backs of the Cult/ure Wars of the late 1990s, a new America took form. A new America, a new Europe, a new everything. A new world order run by Corp-Congloms to your face and street gangs to your back. In the city of Los Santuario, in a city ruled by demons and run on cybertech, the law is what you make of it. And dying?
Well, dying just isn’t the end anymore.
It’s just not a great start.
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