As noted in Tuesday’s blog, I’ve been meaning to do a proper review for Sakura: Intellectual Property. Here goes. First off, let’s get this out there: this is easily one of the favorite books that I’ve read in the past few years. It’s got everything. Action, tech, romance, heroics, heavy metal, and even some feels.
The story centers around Sakura, an android singer (vocaloid) with the most powerful processor ever created. Her sole purpose is to sing and entertain, at least until her core is hijacked by a new operating system, and her core functions subverted to turn her into the world’s most advanced assassin. The story centers around the actions that Sakura must take to try and fight her new programming, and to reveal the massive conspiracy beneath her very existence.
The novel was originally written by Zachary Hill of the Minimum Wage Historian blog before his untimely passing. Paul Genesse (The Iron Dragon series, others) and Patrick M. Tracy (The Crimson Pact, others) eventually picked up the torch to finish the novel. Oftentimes, when something like that happens, the result is a mess, and a clear problem of too many cooks in the kitchen, but in this case they were able to bring about a coherent, gripping story that remained true to Zach’s vision.
There was a big book bomb for this novel when it first released a couple of months ago, which is when I picked it up. It was definitely money well spent. Five stars, and highly recommended. It’s a rare novel that can both spellbind me with massive action sequences, yet still collect a lot of dust in the room. Sakura: Intellectual Property is one of those very rare novels. The only negative I could possibly think of would be that we won’t get any further works in this series.