BOOK REVIEW | THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING | JON McGORAN

BOOK REVIEW | THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING | JON McGORAN

ABOUT THE BOOK

John Wick meets Johnny Mnemonic in a nail-biting cyberpunk technothriller about a courier on the run from his own Guild

 Corporations fall, gangsters are killed, but no-one messes with the Couriers Guild.

 When Armand Pierce first became a courier ten years ago, he had an attaché case connected to a titanium cuff grafted into the bones of his wrist, and took an oath: the delivery is everything. He can run, fight—kill, if he needs to—but the package gets where it’s going. It’s the Guild’s guarantee, and since the internet went down in the Cyber Wars, all business, legitimate or otherwise, depends on it. Otherwise, he dies.

 So Pierce knows he’s in deep trouble when he arrives at his latest destination to find his payload missing, his case mysteriously empty. Something strange is going on: something that’s already cost three couriers their lives and threatens to upend the global order. And Pierce had better get to the bottom of it, before the Guild, catches up to him.

REVIEW

The Price of Everything by Jon McGoran is a techno thriller set in a future where the internet has crashed and out of the ashes the great corporation of Uni Con has risen to dominate the world.

In a world where climate change is irreversibly affecting the planet, the 1% hold all the wealth and will do anything to maintain their domination.

In the midst of this, lives are devalued and the only way to make a living is to become a courier or to become a gangster.

Armand Pierce is a courier. When a shipment of money that he is transporting inextricably disappears he finds himself on the wrong side of the gangs and the Couriers Guild who extract recompense from failed deliveries by removing the hand of the courier.

In order to prove his innocence and his hand. Pierce attempts to find out the truth of the disappearing money. What he finds is a plot that will change the world and secrets he thought long dead.

The Price of Everything is a propulsive thriller that keeps the reader engaged until the very end, Pierce is a likeable character that you can’t help getting behind as he fights his way to the reason for his fortunes.

The background to the world that he lives in closely resembles our own, and tackles issues of climate change and corporate greed and how the two are inextricably linked.

The Price of Everything is an enjoyable cyberpunk thriller that had me turning the pages to the very end.