What is Space Punks 3: Shadows of the Past?
Review
SPACE PUNKS 3: SHADOWS OF THE PAST is the, appropriately enough, third volume of the Space Punks series by Anna Mocikat. It’s very much like Cowboy Bebop meets Cyberpunk 2077. If that’s an odd combination to imagine, just imagine a bunch of cyborg mercenaries in their cool spaceship going out and doing fantastic adventures. There’s been a robot war akin to Terminator where humanity was almost wiped out by a bunch of androids that destroyed the Earth and has left humanity wandering around the solar system colonies (and a few wormhole granted ones) with a ruthless military dictatorship in charge.
If you’re familiar with Anna Mocikat’s BEHIND BLUE EYES series, you generally have an idea of how this book series goes. There’s a lot of very sexy people, a lot of sexual innuendo but little on the page, a lot of graphic violence, and some interesting philosophical points about humanity. For example, one of the main characters, Nightingale, has lived his entire life as a hedonistic killer but a near-death experience as well as his realization he wants to only be with his long-time girlfriend causes him to question the meaning of life–much to his girlfriend, Aztec,’s chagrin.
This volume follows up the events of the previous and sees our heroes trapped on Mars with the Legion chasing them down. We get a lot of insight into the military dictatorship in charge of humanity since the conflict with the robots and they’re generally a complete bunch of scumbags. One particular triggering character (and I mean that in the non-pejorative, quite literal) sense is Lucien who keeps a woman prisoner with an explosive in her head so he can regularly sexually extort her. Yeah, it’s that kind of book. It’s very R-rated but everything happens offscreen so I’d say this is about 80s levels of R-rated.
The actual plot is less the point in Space Punks than the characterization. It’s less about the protagonists of the Nephilim having any specific goal and more about traveling with them as we get into their mindsets. Space Punks really feels more like an ongoing serial than a chronicle. There is plot, don’t get me wrong, but it is far more interested in world-building and understanding the thought processes of all these various badass cyborgs, both men as well as women. This is an ensemble piece and benefits from it.
In conclusion, if you liked the first two then you will probably like this. I do hope that Lucien’s prisoner gets her own development and revenge, though I somewhat doubt that is what’s planned. I like the characters and I like the world. The series has recently gotten a Kickstarter to do a comic book and I hope they raise the money to be able to adapt the first book’s adventures.
