SCION: a young member of a rich and famous family.
From the publisher: My job, when you think about it, isn’t so different from a lot of people’s.
The more old-fashioned crowd do still get hung up on the ‘killing people’ part of it, I guess, but that’s a them problem: it’s been perfectly legal to take out lifers for ages. Besides, once ultrawealthy morons realised they had a way to live forever – limited resources be damned – there was only ever going to be one genuinely practical deterrent.
So, sure, I have to deal with a tonne of boring planning. Inconvenient hours. Some pretty awkward face-to-face interactions. And like most of us, I’m really only clocking in to try and crawl out from beneath my debts. But someone’s got to do it.
Luckily, my genetic compatibilities make me really, really good at doing it.
Still. This next job . . . I don’t know. It’s something I haven’t had to deal with in years. Kind of the opposite of my regular duties. Strange, that it got thrown my way.
I’m sure it’ll all go totally fine though.
Azure is an assassin/bodyguard for hire. Adapted with functions known as ‘revs’ Azure combines these with his superior cognitive abilities (‘cogs’) to be one of the best. His latest mission is to keep a little old lady alive for two weeks. In return she will give Azure access to covert data about an event in his past that has remained a mystery to him.
It should be straightforward – the mysterious lady lives in a super swish super expensive underground bunker, with many of the latest mod cons – EMP zones, secret tunnels, presence sensors, explosives, not to mention a variety of bioengineered animals that respond to her spoken instructions. (The one named Richard is particularly memorable.)
But as an attempt on her life is made with the first few hours of Azure being with her, it soon becomes apparent that this assignment is not the walk in the park Azure was hoping for.
And then things get more complicated…
Think Ghost in the Shell/Akira meets Blade Runner here. (The cover of my copy makes this also clear.) The book is set in cyberpunk central, filled with huge and loud urban machinery, crowded city streets and technology everywhere, with mega-corporations all competing against each other. Azure himself is indentured to the Keres, an arrangement that has kept him pretty busy up to this point.
Scion is a relatively short novel, but it is tight and refined, with precise prose that often makes the story feel as if it is more. Told in the first person, Azure is initially your taciturn, no-nonsense, let’s-get-the-job done sort of character that you would expect.
To this we get some dark and cynical humour added which lightens things up a touch – much needed with all of the dramatic and visceral elements going on at the same time. It reminded me a lot of the sort of tone Jim Butcher has in the Harry Dresden series – except that Azure is quite definitely a killer.
As I expected, as the plot progresses Azure gets to know about his enigmatic benefactor, things become more complex and more convoluted. Why has he been especially chosen for this assignment? Why are people determined to kill this old lady?
By the end the situation has become much bigger in scope that it first would appear to have been. There’s some surprising twists along the way, which I didn’t expect, leading to an effective, if rather gory, conclusion.
All well and good, then. The only negative I have about it is the rather open ending, which gives the impression that there could be more of this setting in the future. Why can’t anyone just end a story in one shot, these days?
Nevertheless, Scion is a superior piece of action-filled, cyberpunk prose. The fact that it was quite difficult to put down once it got going is a good sign. If you like your manga, but in prose, you’ll love this one.
© 2026 Mark Yon
Hardback | Gollancz
SCION by James Islington
September 2026 | 240 pages
ISBN: 978 139 9641 869
