Cyberpunk is one of those genres that one wouldn’t expect to have good crossover range, but much to the discerning reader’s surprise, like a fine wine, it pairs surprisingly well with genres like fantasy — especially high fantasy, mixing cyberpunk’s gritty, high-tech-low-life aesthetic with ancient magic, monsters and deep lore.  With a skilled writer’s hand, these two great tastes end up tasting surprisingly great together, like Reese’s peanut butter cups.  To see how well these two mix, just look at the success of the tabletop gaming world of Shadowrun: one of the first IPs to gain wide notoriety for such a crossover. 

In the case of A Witch’s Sin, the first of the Neon Ghosts series, such a skilled writer has given the world a tasty treat.  The premiere outing of enthusiastic BookTuber, Daniel B. Greene, known for an eclectic variety of book reviews, author interviews, literature commentaries, listicles and the like, I, being a fan of his channel, was especially eager to bite into this work and so, kept my knowledge of the story itself to a minimum to experience what I was getting into, to the fullest. 

What I found was a combined seamless crossover into dark fantasy, interwoven with commentaries on the effects of technology on privacy, its effects on our outlook of freedom, and the abuses thereof, in addition to a sobering example of how one my either die a hero or live long enough to see themselves become the villain.

Keeping with the bleak milieu of many books in the aforementioned primary genre, A Witch’s Sin starts off as heavily cyberpunk fare that takes place centuries into the future, after the haze, an environmental crisis of unknown origin, has coated the Earth in a toxic miasma lethal to all surface life. This forces the remnants of the human race to build tower-like megastructures high into the sky, each with hundreds of floors each floor the size of entire cities.  Inside the structures, humanity survives in a striated society, with the rich living far above the haze in the luxurious upper levels and the poor relegated to the near-ground levels, where ventilation is not efficient enough to fully keep out the haze. 

Oh, yes. And vampires exist. Now, after having developed a blood substitute that curbs their ravenous thirst (or at least the worst of it), they just want to be treated like normal people. 

Humanity, in addition to their reluctant vampire cousins, now exist in a tenuous peace in a claustrophobic world of steel, neon, and endless virtual ads that even intrude upon one’s sleep, most never seeing the sun or a clear sky, reserved for the highest levels. In this future world, quality law enforcement is only as good as one’s money, and Taya Mint, an apprentice enforcer with a painful past and issues with trauma, is trying to earn her badge just to be able to afford adblocking software for her implants. But despite the rough life she is training for, Taya is a woman of principle — principles that, during what begins as a missing person case for a sweet old lady, puts her in the middle of a war against the megastructure’s most powerful and elite, and thrusts her into a world she never knew existed, gaining her a vampire companion and the attention of a witch with labyrinthine ulterior motives. Driven to solve this case by any means necessary, Taya jumps down a rabbit hole of intrigue, pain, and magic deeper and more powerful than she could have ever imagined in an odyssey that will call her to give up a great deal more than she may be ready to give, in what may be a Faustian bargain for revenge.

As stated earlier, the story paints a decidedly bleak version of the future, with humanity relegated to massive tin cans, and the intrusive ads that Taya is exposed to on a daily basis raise questions about how far is too far for companies to intrude upon one’s life with advertisements. But on a lighter note, Taya’s incessant use of varying levels of violence to shoo or swat away the ubiquitous ad drones, in addition to the effect their constant pelting with ads has on her subconscious reaches near-running gag levels at times. Also, the use of glow effects on cybernetics, in addition to their various uses in combat are something that Greene uses to high effectiveness in the story’s many and brutal brawls that often leave Taya nearly dead.

The cast is stellar, enhanced by how Taya affects those around her, dealing with the tragic death of her fiancé, and past abuse by her mother, leading her to question whether or not becoming an enforcer is something she really wants to do. One standout role, in fact, belongs to her best friend Juno, who is a steadfast Rock of Gibraltar: always trying to bring happiness into Taya’s life despite her scars of past pain, she is source of endless joy and positivity … until she isn’t. And when Taya runs into the reluctant vampire Oscar and the witch Jordan, the characterization is taken to a whole other level with their machinations and the life-changing effect they have on her as Taya digs deeper into her case and is further consumed with her desire for revenge with a shocking conflagration and an ending that certainly hints at a great deal more coming down the pipe, especially after the massive changes that Taya goes through, both for the better and worse. 

A Witch’s Sin weaves a tale that keeps the reader wondering what will happen next, with deeply emotional impact in every decision that Taya makes, both good and bad, keeping any reader wondering just how far this protagonist will go to satisfy her desire for justice. I believe that each respective reader will come away with a different outlook on how things end and begin for Taya in the story’s denouement, but will certainly be wanting more after the closing. Altogether this first volume of Neon Ghosts makes it a series that I believe that sci-fi aficionados should pick up immediately and keep on their radar.

I give this book an 8/10; I highly recommended it.