REVIEW: Ghost of the Neon God by T.R. Napper
Building upon his brutal cyberpunk vision of the future shown in Neon Leviathan and 36 Streets, T.R. Napper’s Ghost of the Neon God is an utterly haunting, lonely, and beautiful novella. I simply cannot put down Napper’s books and short stories, and before I get into this review more, I highly encourage you to pick up something, anything he’s written.
Jackson is the homeless son of an immigrant, eking out an existence squatting in under-construction towers in metro Melbourne, Australia, and talking shit with his mate Col to pass the time. They steal where they can, buy dope and food where possible, and stare at the neon glow of the buildings and streets, and the people below they share this cage with. When walking through a back alley, a foreign woman runs into Jackson as she flees for her life. His life is about to change. But first, he’ll steal that woman’s shoes.
From there the story takes off from its slow build baseline. Ghost of the Neon God is full of action and intrigue, rolling cynicism and snark, and is at times sad, and lonely, and beautifully introspective. Ghost of the Neon God of one of those books that is an actual experience you can lose yourself in as you peel back the layers of political and societal commentary, anger at a system that has failed the many to benefit the few, and the unrelenting nature of even the most trodden-down human spirit.
Once again, Napper’s understanding of poverty (derived from his time working in South East Asia) brings levels of harshness and grief and hope to his words that I just don’t think people without his experience are capable of. His vision of future Australia in Ghost of the Neon God is of towering neon soaked cities as beacons of post capitalism amongst the endless dry desert wastelands being plundered for the last scraps of their mineral wealth. People waste away under economic impoverishment and the control of immense foreign powers the Australian government cowers before. If you’ve ever wondered what a first world country would feel like if it became a third world country with slums and desperation and the rich looking down upon the poor, and the lack of hope to get out of your situation while you watched the wealthy whine about their hardships for sympathy… look no further. This novella will grab you by the scruff of your fucking soul and shove your nose in it. I still feel worked up even just thinking about Ghost of a Neon God, almost a week after finishing it.
That said, the more I think about Ghost of a Neon God, the more I like it. And I can’t stop thinking about it. Napper’s story—the heart strings he manages to pluck on every page; the anger he makes me feel at the unfairness of that world; the way he makes me think about where our society might be heading—puts him amongst my favourite writers. Do not miss this novella.
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