Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence

By: Rafal Kosik, Stefan Kielbasiewicz - translator

Narrated by: Cherami Leigh

This electrifying novel set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077 follows a group of strangers as they discover that the dangers of Night City are all too real.

In sparkling Night City, a ragtag group of strangers have just pulled off a heist, robbing a convoy transporting a mysterious container belonging to Militech. The only thing the group has in common is that they were blackmailed into participating in the heist—and they have no idea just how far their mysterious employer's reach goes, or the purpose of the artifact they stole.

This newly formed gang—composed of a veteran turned renegade, a sleeper agent for Militech, a computer nerd, a therapist, a ripperdoc, and a techie—must learn how to overcome their differences and work together, lest their secrets be unveiled before they can pull off the next deadly heist.

©2023 Rafal Kosik and Stefan Kielbasiewicz (P)2023 Orbit

A fitting Night City story

Slow start, but really began to pick up towards the back half! Fits perfectly into the world of Cyberpunk 2077 both with its references and with it writing. Night City isn't a place for happy endings. One negative would be that the characters and environments could've used more description. Beyond that, it's a great read for anyone like me who loves CD Projekt Red's world or even just the cyberpunk genre in general! Also Cherami Leigh was such a perfect narrator for the book. Who voice fits the world of Cyberpunk so perfectly and she was certainly a selling point of this book for me!

Exactly what I was hoping for.

I've been looking for modern cyberpunk books that balance story, technical voodoo, futuristic setting/world, gritty and interesting characters, and a good bit of the underworld/crime. This definitely checks all the boxes. I was worried it would be a half-assed book leaning too hard on the Cyberpunk 2077 name but I was very wrong. I've read all the cyberpunk classics and this book should be listed in any new "best cyberpunk novels" list. The narrator is awesome as well, which always helps. More like this, please!

Need more of this in world content!

I enjoyed the setting, and the story I do wish. However, the narrator had paused when changing scenes. Sometimes it was quite confusing when they were little to no spacing between what would be different paragraphs in the book.

Excellent with some minor quibbles

CYBERPUNK 2077: NO COINCIDENCE is the first novel set in the world of Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk setting. As a huge fan of the tabletop game, I always dreamed of writing my own entry into the dystopian world of Night City and was disappointed there never seemed to be any urge to do as TSR did to create novels set in the world. This has finally changed with the entry by Rafal Kosik. But can anyone truly capture the garish colors of a hyper-stylized city that is otherwise painted in black as well as red? Well, yes, this book does.

This is a heist book, first and foremost, with a focus on a crew rather than an individual protagonist like V in Cyberpunk 2077. This is probably the best way to experience Night City and one of the failures of the video game since, for the most part, you operate solo with the rare exception of the Relic heist in the first Act of the game. The characters are archetypal but not necessarily stereotypical and the way they bounce off one another reminds me of how quite a few of my Cyberpunk parties were not terribly social with one another. The best of Night City’s gangs are Chooms for life, but these are rare as an honest corpo.

Basically, there’s a former member of the NUSAA (New United States Army), a stripper with a child needing a vital operation to cure her disability (which is not something that one can survive with in Night City), a middle-aged woman who has a lot of money but no thrills, a hacker (sorry, netrunner) who still lives with his mother, a borged out hedonist, and a ripper doc who just wants to upgrade his clientele to sleazy versus ultra sleazy.

This book is a curious mixture of deep characterization and incredibly tense action that doesn’t always completely jive together. A lot of books which open with a huge epic gunfight set the readers to believing that this will be a fast-paced quick read. Instead, this is one of those books you should take the time to savor and soak in the atmosphere. A lot of attention is made to how soul-crushing Zor’s job at demolition is, how slimy Aya finds her job as a stripper (while noting other people don’t seem to mind it), and how even a talented lover is boring when Melina has no emotional connection to the guy whatsoever.

There are some scenes that I felt were a little too stereotypical. Aya turning to stripping and crime because of her sick child before being rescued from an unruly customer by Zor is something that feels a bit too on the nose but doesn’t distract too much from the way Night City is portrayed. Rafal Kosik manages to get the hyper-stylized nature of cyberpunk. There are fantastic toys everywhere but everyone is as miserable as before because they’re only for those people who can afford them. Indeed, people are poorer than ever because the people who make said toys have continued to squeeze a populace that’s apathetic to their own misery.

I also appreciate how unsympathetic our protagonists are while simultaneously being very relatable. Aya is aware that when she kills people on her Edgerunner missions, they’re effectively innocents and she’s doing it for money rather than any cause. There’s no Johnny Silverhand, “Fight the Power!” motivation. She and Zor are the least scummy of their group but they’re not blind to the fact being an Edgerunner means you’re a killer for hire. The only difference between them and the psychopathic heroes of Grand Theft Auto is the possibility of cybernetic upgrades.

I’m a big fan of the Expanded Universe that CD_Projekt Red has been creating for some time now. I think this is the one with the most artistic merit (and a lot of them are fantastic). This is a hard-R rating grimdark sort of story and all the better for it. You just know things are going to go to hell before they get better (if they ever do). Still, don’t rush this read. You need to soak in the rainy alleys and smell of garbage before the guy next to you is gunned down in an explosion of blood under a neon sign.

My only issue is not with Cherami Leah's performance, which is excellent, but the fact that the scene transitions are really-really short and sometimes its difficult to tell when a new perspective begins.

Pretty good story but kind of hard to follow.

The author doesn't give a clear indication where the narration is going. For example, I found myself following a pair of characters then somewhere along the way, we are now with Maelstrom. I've had to rewind several times to figure out when it changed over. They don't like to write which character is currently talking either.

It helps to play the vanila game so the reader/listener could familliarize themselves of the settings. Overall though, it's an OK story. Doesn't really leave a lasting impression the way the game or Edgerunners did.

A Preem BD Experience in Audible

Any Cyberpunk fan will love this.

Great story, immerses you in night city, and read by the voice of Female V herself.

F*#kin' Nova read.

Enjoy the BD, Choom!

Felt like a true Cyberpunk 2077 experience

It very well encompasses the feeling of the Cyberpunk world. I very much enjoyed this book. Definitely a read I'd recommend to my chooms.

Good story and voice acting

Starts a little rough but voice actor is incredibly good. Need some knowledge of back story too.

So now I what V does in her off time

Great book, excellent narrator! Loved hearing the actor who voiced female V (Cherami Leigh) narrate this book. Unlike many other voice actors, you can tell she’s fully vested in the atmosphere and presence of cyberpunk, and the narratives swirling about Night City.
Overall this story was rich and compelling enough of its own, but as a player of the Cyberpunk 2077 video game, I felt the plot paralleled maybe a little too closely with certain story arcs of the game. Not to say it’s a recycling of the effort for the game’s main plot line because the story of the game is such a strong one. My argument here is that Night City is such a large, dynamic place that there should be other stories within Night City that don’t center around a street level of vice and intrigue. I’d like to hear stories about the tension between the various corpos like Biotechnica, Arasaka, Mili-tech, and others.

True to the Game, Tough Things Hide a Good Story

So kudos to Cherami who probably did the best with what she was given. This is probably the first audio book that I ALMOST bought the actual book with to read alongside because the story at times is VERY hard to follow. Scenes transition very badly if they transition at all and if you're not paying attention, you'll get confused when all of a sudden different characters are being named or start talking.

The narrator does well to take different voices and try to sound different between the characters when she's reading for different people. Again I gotta give credit to the reader and just assume that this is just down to the producer and the writer not making things smooth for the reader and then making it hard to follow for the listener.

The story itself is true to the setting. It's a story set in Night City where good endings just don't exist... The characters are good and would've been easier to grasp if things were easier to follow. Overall it would've been a great experience and it was entertaining but was just really hard to follow.