36 Streets

Set one hundred years into the future, China has invaded Vietnam and is twenty years into a heavy handed occupation. Lin, born in Vietnam but adopted and raised in Australia, has returned and works within a chaotic insurgency. She's a gang member and Bao, the powerful gang leader, is training her for leadership in battle.

I came to this book from the world of Gibson's Sprawl books, but whereas in Gibson the brutalism is in the overall environment (images of the Blade Runner movie), the brutalism in 36 Streets is in the damage being inflicted by various enemies on each other. It's more like a Bruce Lee world of wounding, dismemberment, and murder.

Into that world Napper injects mind enhancement through sophisticated software, future-tech body repair and modification, and a darkly envisaged computer game that is undermining a nation's trust in itself.

Lin has been hired by the developer of the computer game to find whoever murdered his business partner but as she delves deeper into the game and the people around it she finds herself bouncing between her gang, its street rival, the Viet Minh resistance, and the Chinese occupying forces.

Lin picks up a DNA fragment from Molly Millions, and there's a polite nod to 'tears in rain'. As I understand it the book was part of Napper's PhD thesis on cyberpunk and referencing his source worlds is fitting, and done respectfully.