The RIB: Catch and Kill by Craig Schaefer
Catch and Kill is Craig Schaefer's new book. It's a cyberpunk and magic heist story, which will be familiar to fans of Shadowrun. Set in the future of the author's First Story universe (the home of the Daniel Faust and Harmony Black books), magic has been revealed openly to the world. Now people can study magic at university, enhance operas with magic or use magic for special security. But it's still a gritty, noir world. Large corporations rule everything and people still have to hustle to get by.
Enter our protagonist, Emily Yeats, who's a witch with a tight crew of friends, each with their own specialization. They focus on penetration testing - breaking into corporate buildings and testing their security protocols for payment. But after Emily is stiffed out of a contract by a jealous rival, she crosses a line and accepts a 'black' contract, doing an illegal heist to get some blackmail-worthy data off her client's corporate rival. Of course, everything goes wrong and Emily and her team have to survive by quick thinking and improvised plans.
Emily's a likeable protagonist, who focuses on honouring her bargains with her spirits rather than binding them for power. There's some dripped-in references to her back story, which might get picked up in future books. There's a good balance of character development versus action pieces, which is always tricky in these books, but Schaefer handles everything brilliantly.
Highlights include the various spirit beings, each with their own strong personalities and motivations, the assassin's sports betting site (which reminds me of John Wick's assassin gig economy), and heist story style reversals. I really enjoyed Emily's relationship with her 'spider' patron. And Emily's team is fun; there's a grizzled veteran, an intelligent robot that pretends to be a drone, and a woman determined to upgrade herself into a catgirl with surgery. (In fact, I found them fair more engaging than Harmony Black's team!)
My only critique is that the villain and his ultimate plan are rather mundane, and everything is wrapped very quickly at the end. This book didn't blow me away like Sworn to the Night (my favourite Schaefer book), but it's snappy, fast and enjoyable. And because it's the first in a series, it'll be good to see how Emily and her crew develop across the planned trilogy. Recommended.