This pays off in a way that I feel is the highlight of the book. She desperately wants to be free and the good guy but is still fairly naive due to being programmed to trust her superiors as well as believe in her society's propaganda. Nephilim is a fantastic character and one of the more likable heroines I've encountered in the genre. Anna introduces the darker elements one at a time so that it takes awhile to understand just how fully messed up the society is. It just requires you to have your news edited, to never disobey your superiors, engage in no religion, and ignore the perversities of the society like legalized child trafficking. You are provided a job, security, and all the sex as well as mindless entertainment you could want. Olympias City is a dystopia in the vein of Brave New World versus 1984, focused more on bread and circuses versus direct oppression.

However, totalitarianism turns out to be harder to escape than it sounds. Assisted by a nerdy computer programmer named Finwick, she manages to buy herself some genuine freedom and explores it with a young rebel named Jake.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, she is damaged during one of her battles and starts to question her role as a government cleaner. Nephilim is one of the best of the Guardian Angels, soon to be promoted to their Archangel ranks that answer only to the mysterious Metatron. they are created from children taken from the dregs of society or its outcasts then upgraded into unfeeling weapons that eliminate all dissidents. Olympias City is run by one and survives due to the efforts of a cybernetic assassins called the Guardian Angels. The premise is that in the distant future, humanity has mostly destroyed itself with the survivors living in arcologies run by various megacorporations. A lesson that she learns multiple times with increasing bitterness.

It also incorporates the journey of its heroine from being a pawn of a corrupt system to being her own woman, finding out along the way that you can't trust anyone even if they seem to be the good guys. It is a story that draws on dystopian science fiction tropes as well as puts the author's own spin on the subject. BEHIND BLUE EYES by Anna Mocikat is a independent cyberpunk novel.

Behind Blue Eyes by Anna Mocikat