After the incredible, immersive experience that was his 2020 short story anthology Neon Leviathan, T.R. Napper returns with 36 Streets, a full-length novel in the same setting that delivers mystery, action, compelling questions and heart-wrenching emotion. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia and comfortable with neither heritage, Lin ‘the Silent One’ Vu is a brutally efficient gangster living and working in the dangerous streets of Hanoi’s Old Quarter. When her boss tasks her with investigating a murder at the request of a strange, rich Englishman, Lin has the opportunity to put her skills to a different use to normal. As her investigation proceeds though, the secrets she uncovers force her to confront her own painful past, and consider anew her place within the thirty-six streets.
Lin is the classic cyberpunk outsider – troubled, angry, violent, increasingly dependent on artificial stimulants and with a self-damaging tendency to push people away. She’s not necessarily a likeable protagonist, but she has a livewire presence that makes her utterly compelling, and her sense of discomfort with the world in which she lives gives her a fascinating perspective. Whether she’s hustling for narcotics, arguing with her sister, beating the living daylights out of someone, being beaten black and blue herself, hunting down answers, dwelling on her pain, she’s the kind of character you don’t want to look away from even for a moment. Through her eyes the thiry-six streets come to vibrant, violent, thrilling life – a setting so real that you can almost feel the heat sweating off the streets.
For all that this is essentially a murder mystery, the core of the story is really an exploration of the thirty-six streets, and through them Hanoi, Vietnam, and the power dynamic between Vietnam and China in this alternate but entirely believable future. Napper’s world building is slick and cool but also gritty and grounded and utterly immersive, with surprisingly subtle tech adding interest without dominating, and clever uses of linguistic idiosyncrasies which help reinforce Lin’s dual-outsider nature as someone comfortable with neither aspect of her heritage. The Kandel-Yu machine that played such a big part in Neon Leviathan takes a back seat here, but in its place the virtual reality game Fat Victory allows Napper to tackle similar themes of memory and identity, and through them complex politics, propaganda, and Vietnam’s relationship with its history of war, conquest and pain.
It’s a book that’s rich in texture and detail, full of complex themes but told in such an engaging, accessible way and populated by such compelling characters that it’s simply impossible to put down. Napper consistently finds the right balance between flair and accessibility, dipping in and out of a choppy, noirish descriptive style that’s remarkably effective, but using it sparingly and to great effect, never letting style dominate over substance. It’s not always an easy book in terms of its content, from Lin’s brutally violent lifestyle to its believably bleak sense of time and place, but that’s as it should be – it’s a book with points to make and absolutely no intention of pulling any blows. Whether as a standalone story or as an extension of Neon Leviathan, this is speculative fiction at its brutal, honest best – call it cyberpunk, call it sci-fi, whatever you call it this is just a great book.
Many thanks to T.R. Napper and Titan Books for sending me a review copy of 36 Streets in exchange for my honest opinions.
Check out my review of Neon Leviathan here.
Check out my interviews with T.R. Napper discussing 36 Streets and Neon Leviathan:
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