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Ache
#1 Best-Seller in Cyberpunk
With the advent of nanotech, happiness is just a brain hack. But if you can hack your brain, who else can?
In the energy-scarce landscape of the former US, society has turned to mood-altering nanomachines to augment its grim reality. Like many, Lance Mireles walks the line between use and abuse, running shady side jobs to feed his habit while keeping up appearances with his younger brother. Pushing his luck once too often, he ends up on the wrong side of the law, disowned from his family, and exiled to the anarchy outside the city gates.
Determined to turn his life around, Lance follows clues to an isolated commune with a mysterious source of nanomachines. It looks like a second chance—until he traces their source back to a danger looming over his family, and the secret reason for the city’s nanotech dependence. As things at home fall apart, Lance turns to the outlaw community for help—but to earn their trust he first has to overcome the roots of his addiction.
First Place, Colorado Gold Writing Contest
First Place, Zebulon Writing Contest
“a great action/adventure read that also has quite a bit of depth” --Alex Grove, author of False Idols
"Great characters, fast-moving plot, vivid settings. Really enjoyed this!" --Kyle Massa, author of Sightings
"Could not put this down! An action packed dystopian novel about technology, addiction, and family. This frightening world seems all too plausible." --Amazon Reviewer
“This story will keep you riveted till the end then beg for more.” --Sheila J, Amazon Reviewer
With the advent of nanotech, happiness is just a brain hack. But if you can hack your brain, who else can?
In the energy-scarce landscape of the former US, society has turned to mood-altering nanomachines to augment its grim reality. Like many, Lance Mireles walks the line between use and abuse, running shady side jobs to feed his habit while keeping up appearances with his younger brother. Pushing his luck once too often, he ends up on the wrong side of the law, disowned from his family, and exiled to the anarchy outside the city gates.
Determined to turn his life around, Lance follows clues to an isolated commune with a mysterious source of nanomachines. It looks like a second chance—until he traces their source back to a danger looming over his family, and the secret reason for the city’s nanotech dependence. As things at home fall apart, Lance turns to the outlaw community for help—but to earn their trust he first has to overcome the roots of his addiction.
First Place, Colorado Gold Writing Contest
First Place, Zebulon Writing Contest
“a great action/adventure read that also has quite a bit of depth” --Alex Grove, author of False Idols
"Great characters, fast-moving plot, vivid settings. Really enjoyed this!" --Kyle Massa, author of Sightings
"Could not put this down! An action packed dystopian novel about technology, addiction, and family. This frightening world seems all too plausible." --Amazon Reviewer
“This story will keep you riveted till the end then beg for more.” --Sheila J, Amazon Reviewer
299 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 25, 2017
7 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Kelvin Myers
2 books1 followerLevi Jacobs was born in North Dakota and grew up in Japan and Uganda, so he was bound to have a speculative take on modern life. Currently marketing his epic fantasy series The Resonant Saga and at work on three more, he runs a small fruit company to pay the bills.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 19, 2018
This cyberpunk novel started with a great premice, with nanomachines as a "legal" drug. The characters were interesting and the writing solid. However, at the middle mark it kinda lost me. Even though the plot twists were interesting, they felt a bit cartoony to me, I was expecting something more nuanced.
It was a good book and you may enjoy it if you like YA dystopias (even though it is not one) or a cosier version of cyberpunk.
I received this book for free by the author for review purposes
It was a good book and you may enjoy it if you like YA dystopias (even though it is not one) or a cosier version of cyberpunk.
I received this book for free by the author for review purposes
May 25, 2018
This book takes you chapter by chapter, through the view of the different characters in the book, in their separate parts of the story of the future they live in. Nanotech is now being used to such a high extent, from mood alteration, body augmentation and rules every aspect of people’s lives. Some ‘fry’ their nanos to get a high, too much, and are labelled as ‘burners’.
Lance is one of these, he steals and does whatever he can to get his next fix, but ends up caught and banished from the city, never allowed to return. He gets a shock when he sees what is outside in the wastelands. He finally ends up in a commune and everything is not as simple as he might think.
Another pair of characters are Mari, a teenager trying to keep up with others at high school, but not having the same level of nanos as others and Andro, a male teenager in some of her classes, who belongs to a small group of people that don’t use nanotech at all. His family stopped using when his older brother got addicted. Mari finds out something unusual about the main company supplying most of the tech and upgrades people in the city use. Andro is the only one in her class to believe her.
Eli is a nanotech designer, in charge of a team trying to get test some new tech that can destroy unwanted nanos. If he can get this to work he should then be able to do a personal project of his own, which would help his family. But his boss has a very different idea! This leads to a massive change for the people of Huron and danger for any who oppose him.
A great read, mixing the effects of addiction on normal people and how if we rely on drugs and tech to take over our lives and how we interact with others. A tale of caution for where we might be heading! My favourite parts are with Lance in the commune and how he tries to make up for his past and become useful to others. Then with the battle for the city.
Well worth picking up, which I have done. It’s an exciting view on the near future. I also received an ARC copy of the book from Hidden Gems and I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.
Lance is one of these, he steals and does whatever he can to get his next fix, but ends up caught and banished from the city, never allowed to return. He gets a shock when he sees what is outside in the wastelands. He finally ends up in a commune and everything is not as simple as he might think.
Another pair of characters are Mari, a teenager trying to keep up with others at high school, but not having the same level of nanos as others and Andro, a male teenager in some of her classes, who belongs to a small group of people that don’t use nanotech at all. His family stopped using when his older brother got addicted. Mari finds out something unusual about the main company supplying most of the tech and upgrades people in the city use. Andro is the only one in her class to believe her.
Eli is a nanotech designer, in charge of a team trying to get test some new tech that can destroy unwanted nanos. If he can get this to work he should then be able to do a personal project of his own, which would help his family. But his boss has a very different idea! This leads to a massive change for the people of Huron and danger for any who oppose him.
A great read, mixing the effects of addiction on normal people and how if we rely on drugs and tech to take over our lives and how we interact with others. A tale of caution for where we might be heading! My favourite parts are with Lance in the commune and how he tries to make up for his past and become useful to others. Then with the battle for the city.
Well worth picking up, which I have done. It’s an exciting view on the near future. I also received an ARC copy of the book from Hidden Gems and I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.
August 13, 2021
Ache is a creepy and easy-to-read allegory and warning about social media and other technology dependence, with a good dose of zombie apocalypse thrown in.
I started reading this book while waiting in line for my second corona vaccine shot, and then while sitting in the waiting room after my shot to see if I exploded or turned into a 5G signal tower or whatever the vaccine is supposed to do to you. I didn’t – I’m fine, really I am, hold your phone up next to me and see – but just for context, this was a memorable book for me before I even really started. And the story’s subject matter, accordingly, took on even greater significance.
Ache started out a little rocky, but it’s difficult to put my finger on precisely how it was challenging. The introduction of Lance, and then Mari, in respective point of view chapters (more about this later), was … okay, Lance was heavily glazed with the tough guy cyberpunk noir brush, and Mari was all about prettiness and the sexy schoolgirl stuff her friends were into wearing … but. But! It got over that initial characterisation and “grew out of” those tropes. If there’s any way of saying that without sounding just irretrievably condescending, please let me know. I’m just saying, the opening made me go “hmm, what is this.” But then it passed.
The introduction of the characters, and the sheer gulf between Lance and Mari in particular, left me with a lasting impression that Lance was a lot older than he in fact was. So much so that later on, when he was revealed to be twenty, it was really quite disorienting. Still, this could be careless reading as well as the style of the character introductions. I’m just saying, it was funny.
Speaking of something that could have been my fault or the result of a bit of dodgy editing, this was the exact thought rambling through my head at one point around mid-book:
Why is Ricardo’s nickname Al? Wait, who the fuck is Alfonzo? Did they change names?
It seemed as though Mari’s douchebag brother’s name got changed at some point in the drafting process, but search-replace didn’t catch all the instances and the result was a scattering of Als and a couple of Alfonzos that were confusing. The need for editors strikes again. But oh well. For the most part, the character interactions were clean and emotionally powerful. Simple where they needed to be simple, and with enough complexity to make them believable.
The themes of brotherly and father / son redemption through the story were nice, giving Lance’s character arc a really good base. This did make Mari’s and Ricardo’s arc a little lacking in contrast, but maybe that’s also important? We don’t always get the redemption and reconciliation we expect from our characters. Life doesn’t wrap up in a perfect happy ending. Especially life in a cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi book.
I liked the chapter structure. The switching point of view approach is a good one for keeping a story moving along and giving us solid investment in each thread. And I was even pleasantly caught by surprise a few times as the threads joined up and revealed that this guy was related to this character, and so on. They were simple, but effective and enjoyable. And the use of nicknames and shortenings, while occasionally a bit confusing (“Al“), was an interesting way of keeping the reader from seeing the connections straight away. And, while the ultimate fate of the book’s villain is a bit tucked-away in the final rush of dénouement, this is part one of a series so we can’t wrap up everything.
So what else have we got?
Sex-o-meter
There wasn’t much sex here, hormonal school drama and frontier town prostitution notwithstanding. The story was actually stronger for it because aside from teenagers being horny under literally any circumstances, which we do see here, the events of Ache just aren’t conducive to sex. I give it three-quarters of a honky tonk piano and a single swinging saloon door out of a possible Wild West brothel.
Gore-o-meter
There are plenty of lovingly-described fights here (pretty good ones, too!), and there’s a whole lot of really thought-provoking psychological and sociological exploration of human weakness, but it’s not what you’d call gore. Again, this story isn’t the sort of story that needs it. Two flesh-gobbets out of a possible five.
WTF-o-meter
There wasn’t a whole lot of WTF in this story either! It was as all-too-plausible as any good cyberpunk should be. My main point of contention was actually lampshaded in the story – if you could use nanotech to control people so utterly, find a way to make them infectious to infiltrate people against their will, make nanos that destroy competing companys’ nanos, and you could also just kill people with guns, why bother making killer nanotech? I might have missed it but I really don’t see why it was wanted by the antagonist. It was literal overkill. Aside from the ultimate ‘playing God’ element of it, I suppose. All the other elements should have been enough. Make EMP-proofing a target. I don’t know. I’ll give Ache seventeen thousand melting clock faces out of a possible elephant with really, really long legs.
My Final Verdict
Ache was a worrying and insightful look at not-too-distant future technological advancements and the risks inherent in mob mentality and human inability to self-police, in every sense of the term. The characters felt real and the stakes kept me coming back to see what would happen next. Ultimately it was a satisfying read. A very solid three stars on the Amazon / Goodreads scale. Thanks for a fun read!
I started reading this book while waiting in line for my second corona vaccine shot, and then while sitting in the waiting room after my shot to see if I exploded or turned into a 5G signal tower or whatever the vaccine is supposed to do to you. I didn’t – I’m fine, really I am, hold your phone up next to me and see – but just for context, this was a memorable book for me before I even really started. And the story’s subject matter, accordingly, took on even greater significance.
Ache started out a little rocky, but it’s difficult to put my finger on precisely how it was challenging. The introduction of Lance, and then Mari, in respective point of view chapters (more about this later), was … okay, Lance was heavily glazed with the tough guy cyberpunk noir brush, and Mari was all about prettiness and the sexy schoolgirl stuff her friends were into wearing … but. But! It got over that initial characterisation and “grew out of” those tropes. If there’s any way of saying that without sounding just irretrievably condescending, please let me know. I’m just saying, the opening made me go “hmm, what is this.” But then it passed.
The introduction of the characters, and the sheer gulf between Lance and Mari in particular, left me with a lasting impression that Lance was a lot older than he in fact was. So much so that later on, when he was revealed to be twenty, it was really quite disorienting. Still, this could be careless reading as well as the style of the character introductions. I’m just saying, it was funny.
Speaking of something that could have been my fault or the result of a bit of dodgy editing, this was the exact thought rambling through my head at one point around mid-book:
Why is Ricardo’s nickname Al? Wait, who the fuck is Alfonzo? Did they change names?
It seemed as though Mari’s douchebag brother’s name got changed at some point in the drafting process, but search-replace didn’t catch all the instances and the result was a scattering of Als and a couple of Alfonzos that were confusing. The need for editors strikes again. But oh well. For the most part, the character interactions were clean and emotionally powerful. Simple where they needed to be simple, and with enough complexity to make them believable.
The themes of brotherly and father / son redemption through the story were nice, giving Lance’s character arc a really good base. This did make Mari’s and Ricardo’s arc a little lacking in contrast, but maybe that’s also important? We don’t always get the redemption and reconciliation we expect from our characters. Life doesn’t wrap up in a perfect happy ending. Especially life in a cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi book.
I liked the chapter structure. The switching point of view approach is a good one for keeping a story moving along and giving us solid investment in each thread. And I was even pleasantly caught by surprise a few times as the threads joined up and revealed that this guy was related to this character, and so on. They were simple, but effective and enjoyable. And the use of nicknames and shortenings, while occasionally a bit confusing (“Al“), was an interesting way of keeping the reader from seeing the connections straight away. And, while the ultimate fate of the book’s villain is a bit tucked-away in the final rush of dénouement, this is part one of a series so we can’t wrap up everything.
So what else have we got?
Sex-o-meter
There wasn’t much sex here, hormonal school drama and frontier town prostitution notwithstanding. The story was actually stronger for it because aside from teenagers being horny under literally any circumstances, which we do see here, the events of Ache just aren’t conducive to sex. I give it three-quarters of a honky tonk piano and a single swinging saloon door out of a possible Wild West brothel.
Gore-o-meter
There are plenty of lovingly-described fights here (pretty good ones, too!), and there’s a whole lot of really thought-provoking psychological and sociological exploration of human weakness, but it’s not what you’d call gore. Again, this story isn’t the sort of story that needs it. Two flesh-gobbets out of a possible five.
WTF-o-meter
There wasn’t a whole lot of WTF in this story either! It was as all-too-plausible as any good cyberpunk should be. My main point of contention was actually lampshaded in the story – if you could use nanotech to control people so utterly, find a way to make them infectious to infiltrate people against their will, make nanos that destroy competing companys’ nanos, and you could also just kill people with guns, why bother making killer nanotech? I might have missed it but I really don’t see why it was wanted by the antagonist. It was literal overkill. Aside from the ultimate ‘playing God’ element of it, I suppose. All the other elements should have been enough. Make EMP-proofing a target. I don’t know. I’ll give Ache seventeen thousand melting clock faces out of a possible elephant with really, really long legs.
My Final Verdict
Ache was a worrying and insightful look at not-too-distant future technological advancements and the risks inherent in mob mentality and human inability to self-police, in every sense of the term. The characters felt real and the stakes kept me coming back to see what would happen next. Ultimately it was a satisfying read. A very solid three stars on the Amazon / Goodreads scale. Thanks for a fun read!
March 20, 2022
Excellent read. I enjoyed the premise and the characters and development. Look forward to a second book.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews