Cafe Noir

"After the ruinous Brand Wars, Krater's Koffee is the most powerful corporate superpower in this polluted, privatized, brutalized, and thoroughly GMO'd consumer-capitalist culture...Krater refined how to give the teeming masses their coffee fixes via vapor-inhalers--to the point that drinking liquid in an old fashioned mug is considered a dangerous, rebellious act sometimes enjoyed in underground competitions...In this dystopia, barista Argo Jones is a lifelong Krater employee and true believer, having been sponsored out of childhood poverty by the company and given Krater's cybernetic implants and combat training to work the front line as a coffee tech/server. But when his franchise is devastated by a lethal product contamination, management orders Jones into the chaotic streets--where average folk are bombarded by holographic commercials and neuro-implant ad blockers are a necessity--in order to draw out the subversives thought responsible...In this nightmare society, cat meat is a fast-food staple, intelligent (and insulting) seagulls are employed as couriers, and actors are lab-grown in vats...Don't be surprised if this bitter brew keeps you up all night." --Kirkus Reviews