peteg's blog - noise - books - 2026 05 14 FondaLee TheLastContractOfIsako

Fonda Lee: The Last Contract of Isako. (2026)

Thu, May 14, 2026./noise/books | Link

Kindle. I thought I'd find out what the kids are reading these days. Billed by Amal El-Mohtar as "cyberpunk samurai in space" but actually tedious corporate sci-fi (says one of the more accurate reviews at Goodreads). The book is between 50% and 100% too long: so flabby, so much tendentious, concussive repetition in the small and the large, many chapters and excess colour that add nothing but show the author, so in love with her own voice, aims to stifle any independent thought about her constructions. Coercive reader control! The world building is dodgy and incoherent and everything is recycled and dumber than it needed to be. I couldn't tell if I was supposed to trust the omniscient narrator; the retconning in the third part showed the author didn't have a firm grasp of her project. I read the whole damn thing hoping there'd be something to it but no, it's a Sphinx without a secret. Hats off to the marketing team.