The imagined city at the heart of the story is Tabula Rasa, sometimes stylized as Tabula Ra$a, a chaotic urban sprawl erected in the Utah desert by the combined wealth and reckless ambition of the hyper-elite. The premise of this urban environment is that it exists outside the rules and regulations of the wider nation, a supposed blank slate for unrestrained excess, criminal enterprise, and new forms of social order. In practice the world David Wong creates is a lawless cyberpunk-inspired nightmare that owes less to grounded speculation than to cartoon exaggeration. Where the earlier John and Dave tales could lean on cosmic horror’s irrationality as an excuse for nonsense, the more earthbound setting of this book exposes every fragile seam in the design. The city is filled with super-powered enforcers, larger-than-life villains, and throngs of spectators whose appetite for violent spectacle mirrors the worst instincts of digital culture. Yet despite its potential, the society never feels plausible.
The mechanics of wealth distribution, infrastructure, political influence, and cultural development are absent or sketched with a childlike brush. Readers may attempt to interpret themes of classism, voyeurism, or desensitization to brutality in the constant flood of imagery, but the clumsy handling of those motifs renders the exercise hollow. At best, the book gestures toward a satire of online culture and the inequalities of late capitalism; at worst, it merely parades garish caricatures across a stage where nothing rings true. In this way the city becomes both a stage and a problem: it allows for bombastic action but undercuts any claim to relevance, leaving the narrative stranded in a halfway place between comic absurdity and attempted realism. For those familiar with speculative fiction that grounds its excesses in carefully wrought social textures, this vision of Tabula Rasa may appear painfully thin, and it sets the tone for the frustrations that follow in character development and plot construction.
Central to the events is Zoey Ashe, suddenly thrust into the violent arena of Tabula Rasa as the unexpected heir to her estranged father’s fortune. She is painted as both out of her depth and subject to endless humiliations, injuries, and indignities. The attempt at relatability lies in her self-deprecating voice, her constant awareness of her shortcomings, and her sarcastic observations of the world around her. Unfortunately, the balance between inept everywoman and functional protagonist is mishandled. Zoey too often feels less like a rounded person and more like a placeholder audience surrogate, stumbling through grotesque scenarios with little agency. Around her swirl figures are defined almost entirely by their excess: gangsters with powers or costumes, suave operatives in their titular suits, grotesque villains reveling in cruelty. None of them evoke empathy or even fascination beyond surface spectacle. In a genre that often thrives on morally gray yet compelling figures, these characters appear as hollow sketches stretched into speaking roles.
One of the most striking difficulties of the novel lies in its unstable tone. The John and Dave trilogy thrived on a volatile mix of absurd comedy and genuine dread, unified by the surreal logic of their universe. Here, the oscillation is between tame absurdity and graphic cruelty, a gap too wide to bridge smoothly. The humor often rests on shallow irreverence, with gags that fail to land because the surrounding world never provides the coherence needed for contrast. Meanwhile, the violence escalates in frequency and intensity, culminating in extended sequences of humiliation, torture, and degradation directed primarily at the protagonist. The main antagonist Molech embodies this escalation, serving as a grotesque emblem of sadism whose constant threats of sexual violence, dismemberment, and spectacle define the climax of the narrative. While one might argue that this portrayal is meant to expose the audience’s desensitization to violent imagery in a culture dominated by streaming and social feeds, the execution feels indulgent rather than incisive. The supposed satire of voyeurism is overwhelmed by the sheer nastiness of the content. Readers may defend this extremity as artistic freedom, yet the lingering effect is one of discomfort without revelation, suffering without purpose. The jarring transitions between offhand jokes and horrific cruelty create a tonal whiplash that destabilizes the reading experience not in a productive, thought-provoking way but in a confused and alienating manner.
When the dust settles, what remains is a narrative that promised flash but delivered fatigue. The world is a neon-soaked caricature without believable foundation, the characters are abrasive sketches without emotional resonance, and the tone veers from glib to grotesque without control. Readers seeking thematic substance may point to hints of commentary on inequality, voyeurism, or the vacuity of digital culture, yet each suggestion dissolves under scrutiny because the book lacks the structural seriousness to carry them. What could have been biting satire is instead shallow provocation. What could have been an exploration of power and spectacle is instead an indulgence in empty explosions. Compared to Wong’s earlier work, which drew vitality from the absurd yet chilling idea of cosmic horror filtered through slackers, this attempt at cyberpunk noir feels like a stumble. It is not that Wong is incapable—subsequent efforts would demonstrate his growth—but this experiment illustrates how fragile the balance of style and substance can be. The novel offers fireworks without framework, spectacle without significance. As a result, its reception is divided between those entertained by the sheer velocity of chaos and those, like the disillusioned critic, left wondering why the cruelty and silliness were worth enduring. The presence of a sequel suggests that some readers did connect with Zoey’s journey enough to warrant continuation, but for others the bar set by this volume is so low that promises of improvement cannot entice. Ultimately the work stands as an example of how excess can drown intention, how tonal instability can erode trust, and how a writer celebrated for quirky brilliance can falter when shifting ground from cosmic absurdism to cyberpunk parody. The book asks for laughter and gasps but too often earns sighs, leaving the question of purpose hanging unresolved.
The imagined future of Tabula Rasa
Tabula Rasa is introduced as a desert playground for the obscenely wealthy and the dangerously unrestrained, a city supposedly conceived as a fresh start beyond the control of government or conventional morality. Its name, translating to “blank slate,” already carries both promise and irony: promise, because it suggests a place where new social orders might emerge unencumbered by precedent, and irony, because the blankness is immediately scribbled over with the garish graffiti of corporate greed, criminal opportunism, and nihilistic indulgence. David Wong sets the stage in the Utah desert, a location already symbolic of emptiness and potential, where the wealthy have carved out an experiment in urban design that is equal parts Las Vegas, corporate tech enclave, and dystopian gladiator arena. Yet while the conceit is ripe with possibilities, the execution of this imagined space lacks the kind of coherence or grounding that makes speculative fiction settings come alive. A cyberpunk city usually thrives on the tension between the dazzling technological surface and the rotten social structures underneath, but Tabula Rasa seems constructed more as a toy box of tropes than a functioning society. This results in a world that reads less like an extrapolation of contemporary issues and more like a theme park ride designed for shock value.
The infrastructure of Tabula Rasa is never convincingly explained. Cities, even fantastical ones, need to have an internal logic for readers to suspend disbelief, but here that scaffolding is largely absent. We are told of skyscrapers, of lavish estates, of back alleys buzzing with the activity of criminals and thrill-seekers, but how this city sustains itself remains unclear. Who maintains the utilities? Who grows or imports the food? How do the lower classes survive, and why do they tolerate the absurdities inflicted upon them by the elite? Wong gestures vaguely at a massive wealth disparity, which would be believable given the founding premise, but the narrative never grounds this disparity in economic systems or daily struggles. The result is that Tabula Rasa feels like a stage set, a backdrop painted with neon colors and explosions, rather than a world readers can enter imaginatively. In cyberpunk tradition, cities like Gibson’s Chiba City or Stephenson’s corporate enclaves feel real because they are rooted in extrapolated technologies and political trends. Tabula Rasa by contrast is a cartoon sketch: recognizable in outline but hollow at the center.
One of the most glaring weaknesses in the design of Tabula Rasa is its treatment of law and order. Supposedly, this city exists in a gray zone outside the control of national or state governance, which could allow for compelling stories of competing authorities, emergent justice systems, or the raw negotiation of power between corporations, gangs, and citizens. Yet Wong presents this lawlessness as an excuse for spectacle rather than as a system with rules of its own. Super-powered enforcers roam the streets, larger-than-life villains commit acts of brutality in public, and the population seems to respond more like an audience at a sporting event than like people with lives on the line. This depiction might be intended as satire, mocking a culture desensitized to violence through endless digital feeds, but it fails to create a believable cause-and-effect chain. Why would normal people choose to live in a city where their lives are perpetually at risk, where the whims of wealthy sadists dictate daily reality, and where cruelty is celebrated rather than condemned? The answer the book provides is essentially silence. By refusing to engage with the mechanisms that would make this city possible, Wong undermines the plausibility of his own setting. What could have been a rich exploration of anarchic urbanism collapses into a shallow excuse for action sequences.
The culture of Tabula Rasa is framed around spectacle. The citizens, or perhaps more accurately the spectators, consume violence as entertainment, with every brutal encounter recorded, shared, and commented upon through a digital lens. Here, the author does touch on a recognizable theme: the amplification of human cruelty and voyeurism through technology. In an era where live streams can broadcast atrocities in real time, the notion of a city where the populace cheers for bloodshed is not entirely far-fetched. Yet again, the treatment lacks the sophistication that could make the satire bite. Instead of examining how social media platforms commodify human suffering, the novel presents an exaggerated version of digital voyeurism without much insight into its psychological or political roots. Citizens seem to exist purely as a chorus, reacting to the exploits of criminals and heroes alike, without individual motivations or consequences. This flattening of human behavior reduces the potential commentary to surface-level parody, robbing the setting of depth. Rather than holding up a mirror to our world, Tabula Rasa becomes a distorted funhouse reflection, too exaggerated to recognize and too shallow to illuminate.
The founding myth of Tabula Rasa, centered on its creation by entrepreneurs and criminals working hand in hand, could have served as fertile ground for exploring the blurred lines between corporate innovation and organized crime. In many ways, our current world already demonstrates how wealth and corruption intertwine, how corporate empires rise by exploiting legal loopholes and political influence. A city founded explicitly on such a merger could have been a brilliant stage for examining power, morality, and the costs of innovation. Yet the novel barely scratches at these ideas. Arthur Livingstone, Zoey’s father and one of the city’s architects, dies almost immediately, leaving behind fortune without context. The reader is given little sense of how these founders built the city, what compromises they made, or what vision they pursued beyond greed. Consequently, the city lacks a historical texture, the sense of accumulated decisions and legacies that shape real places. Without that, Tabula Rasa becomes not a living city but a shallow playground for costumed figures, its origin story as empty as its streets are chaotic.
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits
The thematic potential of Tabula Rasa lies in its name: the blank slate suggests possibility, reinvention, even utopia. But what Wong delivers is less a utopia or dystopia and more a nihilistic carnival. This choice in itself could have been interesting—after all, nihilism has its place in speculative fiction as a way of reflecting cultural despair—but to work, it must feel intentional and focused. Instead, the nihilism here feels accidental, a byproduct of underdeveloped ideas. The absence of believable institutions or social dynamics means that the city cannot even function as a critique of utopian ambition; it is simply a chaotic canvas for over-the-top events. This emptiness frustrates readers who come to science fiction expecting not only spectacle but also commentary. While Wong’s comedic voice once thrived on the clash between absurd humor and cosmic horror, it falters when transplanted into a setting that demands coherence. The blank slate is wasted because it is never truly written upon, leaving a setting that is flashy but meaningless.
Ultimately, the failure of Tabula Rasa as a setting undermines the entire narrative. A story that claims to explore issues of wealth disparity, violence as entertainment, and the corruption of power requires a stage that can sustain those themes. Instead, we are given a cardboard cutout of a city, painted in neon but collapsing under scrutiny. The imagined future of Tabula Rasa is neither convincing cyberpunk nor effective parody; it is a shallow pastiche that cannot bear the weight of the ideas it flirts with. For readers invested in worldbuilding as a foundation for plot and character, this deficiency is catastrophic. The city’s lack of realism strips the stakes from the story, because nothing feels grounded enough to matter. When violence erupts, it is spectacle without consequence; when characters posture, they do so against a backdrop too thin to give their gestures meaning. In this way, the imagined future of Tabula Rasa becomes the novel’s original sin, a foundational flaw that cascades into every other aspect of the book.
Zoey Ashe is presented as the protagonist almost by accident, a young woman whose life up to the beginning of the novel is defined by ordinariness, detachment, and small personal struggles rather than grand ambition or heroic qualities. She is suddenly thrown into the bizarre reality of Tabula Rasa when she learns she is the illegitimate daughter and sole heir of Arthur Livingstone, one of the city’s powerful founders. This setup, while dramatic, is less about Zoey’s agency than about chance: she inherits a fortune, notoriety, and an entire army of enemies not because of her choices but because of her bloodline. As a character, Zoey is therefore defined by being out of her depth. She is constantly aware of her lack of preparation, reflecting in an almost meta way on her inadequacy as a heroine, noting her fear, her incompetence, and her likelihood of dying at any given moment. In theory, this could make her relatable, a protagonist who embodies the awkwardness and vulnerability many readers would feel if suddenly thrust into a hyperviolent cyberpunk arena. In practice, however, her incompetence is so exaggerated and her growth so inconsistently portrayed that she comes across more like a passive victim of events than as a fully realized character. She does not so much act as she is acted upon, enduring abuse and humiliation at levels that exhaust sympathy rather than cultivate admiration.
Around Zoey swirls a cast of characters who are less companions than caricatures. From the start, Wong signals that his narrative will populate itself with extremes: villains with grotesque flair, henchmen with stylized brutality, allies who exude an aura of cool detachment in their expensive suits. Each figure seems to be designed for surface impact rather than depth. The so-called fancy suits who surround Zoey in her new inheritance play the part of sleek operatives, yet their personalities rarely extend beyond stylized competence and sardonic banter. They embody a kind of narrative accessory: they are meant to look striking, to seem impressive, but they lack the inner contradictions that give memorable supporting characters life. When everyone around the protagonist is a swaggering stereotype, the reader finds little to hold onto. Even the villains, who might otherwise anchor the story with compelling menace, are more cartoon than credible. They embody cruelty as performance rather than as psychology, so their presence registers as spectacle rather than as threat. This hollowness infects the entire ensemble, making Tabula Rasa not only an unbelievable setting but also a stage on which unbelievable actors strut.
The humor itself often relies on irreverence, snark, and exaggeration, qualities that in Wong’s earlier works created a distinctive narrative voice. Here, however, the jokes land less effectively because the surrounding context lacks coherence. Jokes about incompetence or the absurdity of a situation require a believable baseline from which to deviate, but in Tabula Rasa, everything is already exaggerated to cartoonish levels. When every character is a caricature and every situation a spectacle, humor loses its contrast. Sarcastic commentary from Zoey reads less like witty observation and more like filler, as if the narrative knows it must include jokes but cannot find fertile ground for them. This results in comedy that feels obligatory rather than organic, a rhythm of quips and asides that rarely elicits more than a weary smile. The irreverent voice that once made Wong’s horror-comedies stand out becomes diluted, a background hum rather than a distinctive melody.
By contrast, the violence is stark, relentless, and often disturbingly graphic. Zoey, as the protagonist, becomes the primary target of this violence. Over the course of the story, she is beaten, humiliated, threatened with rape, and subjected to repeated acts of sadism. The central villain, Molech, embodies this cruelty with theatrical relish, his threats and actions escalating to levels that blur the line between depiction and indulgence. While violence can serve narrative purposes—raising stakes, demonstrating villainy, exploring human resilience—here it often feels gratuitous. The detailed emphasis on Zoey’s suffering risks fetishizing cruelty rather than critiquing it. Some readers might argue that this excess is purposeful, a reflection of the novel’s commentary on voyeuristic culture, but the lack of structural follow-through undermines that defense. When brutality is presented primarily for shock value, it ceases to illuminate and instead numbs.
The combination of tame humor and extreme violence produces tonal whiplash. One moment the reader is nudged to laugh at Zoey’s self-deprecating quip; the next, the narrative plunges into a description of her torment. This oscillation does not produce the rich mixture of emotions that horror-comedy can achieve when well executed; instead, it alienates. The humor feels inappropriate in the shadow of cruelty, and the cruelty feels overbearing in the aftermath of a weak joke. Rather than deepening one another, the two elements cancel each other out, leaving the reader caught in a liminal space where neither laughter nor horror feels satisfying. The effect is not a productive destabilization but an exhausting dissonance. A book that cannot decide whether it wants to be parody, satire, or grim dystopia risks failing at all three, and this instability is the clearest mark of that failure.
The specific use of rape threats exemplifies the problem. These are not casual throwaway lines but repeated motifs, emphasized in ways that linger disturbingly. Including such threats in a narrative is always a delicate decision, requiring thoughtful framing to avoid slipping into exploitation. In this novel, the threats do not contribute meaningfully to character development, thematic exploration, or social critique. Instead, they seem designed to amplify Molech’s depravity, but in doing so they also reveal the narrative’s clumsiness. Rather than highlighting the protagonist’s resilience or interrogating the culture of desensitization, these threats come across as cheap ways to make the villain seem more terrifying. Yet because they are repeated so often and juxtaposed with otherwise flippant humor, they leave a sour taste, one that undermines the novel’s ability to be either funny or thrilling. What should be horrific becomes tiresome, and what should be comic becomes tasteless.
One could argue that the violence and humor are meant to reflect the culture of Tabula Rasa itself, a society that consumes brutality as entertainment and mocks everything with irony. If so, then the book might be attempting to replicate the disorienting effect of living in such a culture. Yet even granting this charitable interpretation, the execution falls short. Satire requires precision, a balance between exaggeration and recognition that makes the target clear. Here, the excess is so extreme and the focus so diffuse that the target is obscured. Are we meant to laugh at the absurdity of the violence, to recoil from it, or to reflect on our own consumption of it? The narrative never clarifies, and so the reader is left adrift. The instability of tone is not a deliberate artistic choice but a symptom of uncertainty, a narrative that does not know what it wants to be.
This instability has consequences beyond the immediate reading experience. It undermines the novel’s capacity to explore themes seriously. When violence is rendered cartoonish by juxtaposition with weak humor, its potential to provoke reflection evaporates. When humor is drowned in cruelty, its potential to offer relief or commentary vanishes. The result is a book that oscillates without synthesis, exhausting rather than engaging. For readers accustomed to the rich possibilities of horror-comedy or satirical dystopia, this represents not just a missed opportunity but a fundamental misunderstanding of tone as a literary tool. A novel can be absurd and horrifying, funny and dark, but it must integrate these elements into a coherent whole. Futuristic Violence & Fancy Suits does not achieve this integration, leaving its shifting tones as another mark of its failure.
The shifting tones of violence and humor
One of the greatest challenges of any narrative that blends comedy and darkness is to maintain equilibrium so that the two forces complement rather than cancel each other out. In the John and Dave trilogy, Wong had managed to discover a strange alchemy in which absurd humor and existential horror were inseparable, both springing from the same deranged universe of interdimensional parasites, body horror, and unreliable narration. Readers could laugh at one moment and shiver the next because both emotions were generated from the same source of surreal unpredictability. In Futuristic Violence & Fancy Suits, however, the environment is more grounded, structured as a cyberpunk parody with familiar human villains, technology that echoes current trends, and social systems meant to mirror our own. In such a context, humor and cruelty do not share a natural origin. The humor arises from sarcastic commentary, irreverent banter, and exaggerated character quirks, while the cruelty manifests in sadistic violence, threats of torture, and depictions of humiliation. Instead of complementing one another, these tonal elements pull the story in opposite directions, leaving the reader in a state of discomfort that feels less like the productive disorientation of horror-comedy and more like narrative incoherence.
The humor is perhaps the weaker of the two forces in this particular novel. Wong’s jokes often rely on a self-aware, internet-influenced voice: snarky asides, mock-serious exaggerations, and deliberate undercutting of tension with flippant remarks. This style, which once felt fresh in John Dies at the End, begins to show its limitations here. Humor works best against a backdrop of order; absurdity is funniest when it disrupts a world that otherwise makes sense. Tabula Rasa, however, is already so exaggerated that absurd humor barely registers. If every character is a caricature and every setting is outlandish, then sarcastic quips lose their sharpness. When Zoey remarks on her incompetence or the ridiculousness of her circumstances, the joke often falls flat because the baseline reality is already absurd. Rather than offering contrast, her commentary merely restates the obvious. What was once biting irreverence now feels like filler, a continuous stream of snark that rarely provokes laughter or insight. The result is comedy drained of vitality, its effectiveness dulled by the chaotic world it inhabits.
By contrast, the violence is rendered with an intensity that borders on indulgence. The novel revels in depictions of brutality: characters are beaten, mutilated, and humiliated in ways that are not only graphic but also extended over long sequences. The protagonist herself becomes a frequent target, subjected to pain, terror, and threats that escalate with grim persistence. Molech, the primary antagonist, embodies this fixation on cruelty. He is not merely a villain but a sadistic performer, continually inventing new ways to torment Zoey and those around her. His obsession with threats of sexual violence in particular casts a long, uncomfortable shadow across the narrative. While violence can certainly serve as a tool to illuminate character resilience, highlight villainy, or critique social norms, here it often feels disconnected from larger thematic concerns. Instead of serving the story, it becomes the story: a relentless parade of degradation that numbs rather than enlightens. The violence overshadows the humor, leaving little room for levity, but when the humor does resurface, it undermines the seriousness of the cruelty. The two elements sabotage each other, creating a reading experience that is exhausting rather than engaging.
The result of this imbalance is tonal whiplash. A scene may begin with Zoey’s sardonic musings about her inadequacy, shift abruptly into graphic descriptions of her being brutalized, and then conclude with another half-hearted quip. The effect is not the roller coaster of emotions that horror-comedy thrives on but a disjointed sequence that leaves the reader unsure how to respond. Should we laugh, recoil, or dismiss the entire episode as parody? The novel provides no guidance, and the cumulative effect is alienation. Instead of being drawn deeper into the narrative, the reader feels pushed away, uncertain of the stakes and suspicious of the author’s intentions. The humor loses credibility when paired with cruelty, and the cruelty feels exploitative when framed by humor. Neither achieves its potential, and the oscillation between them becomes a structural flaw that undermines the novel’s ambitions.
The specific use of rape threats is the most troubling manifestation of this tonal instability. Such threats carry immense weight in any narrative, demanding careful treatment to avoid trivialization or exploitation. In Futuristic Violence & Fancy Suits, however, these threats are repeated with disturbing frequency, often deployed as shorthand for villainy. Molech’s fixation on threatening Zoey with sexual violence is meant to amplify his depravity, but the sheer repetition and detail risk turning horror into fetish. Without thoughtful framing or meaningful consequence, these threats become not commentary but spectacle. Worse, they are juxtaposed with the novel’s attempts at humor, creating a grotesque clash in which the most serious forms of violence are placed alongside jokes that trivialize the surrounding context. The result is not satire but incoherence. Readers who might otherwise defend the presence of such content as part of a critique of voyeurism or desensitization are left with little evidence that this was the author’s intent. Instead, the threats appear as gratuitous shock tactics, undermining the novel’s credibility and leaving a sour aftertaste.
Some defenders might argue that the tonal chaos is deliberate, a reflection of the culture of Tabula Rasa itself. After all, this is a city where citizens consume violence as entertainment, where irony and brutality intermingle in the collective psyche. Perhaps the narrative’s jarring blend of jokes and cruelty is meant to replicate the disorienting experience of living in such a place. While this interpretation is charitable, it ultimately fails to account for the lack of precision in execution. Effective satire requires clarity: the audience must recognize the target and understand the exaggeration. Here, the excess is so overwhelming and the focus so diffuse that no clear target emerges. Are we meant to laugh at the absurdity of violence, recoil from its extremity, or reflect on our own consumption of spectacle? The novel never makes this clear, leaving readers stranded in ambiguity. What could have been biting satire becomes instead an undisciplined collage, gesturing vaguely toward critique but never landing a definitive blow.
The broader consequence of this tonal instability is that it erodes the novel’s ability to convey meaning. Humor that does not land becomes tiresome, violence that lacks purpose becomes numbing, and the oscillation between the two creates a hollow rhythm that never coalesces into coherence. A novel that cannot decide whether it wants to be parody, satire, or grim dystopia ends up failing at all three. In Futuristic Violence & Fancy Suits, the shifting tones of violence and humor do not enrich one another; they cancel one another out. The book becomes a cacophony of voices, none of which harmonize, leaving the reader not with insight or catharsis but with fatigue. What might have been a daring experiment in genre blending instead illustrates the risks of tonal mismanagement. Without a guiding principle to bind humor and cruelty into a unified whole, the narrative becomes fragmented, its ambitions drowned in its own excesses.
If we step back and compare Wong’s tonal experiment to the tradition of dark satire, the shortcomings become even clearer. Writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk, or even Douglas Adams demonstrate that humor can coexist with brutality when both are filtered through a distinct worldview. Vonnegut’s gallows humor in Slaughterhouse-Five works precisely because it emerges from a consistent philosophy of fatalism and absurdity; the comedy does not trivialize the tragedy but underscores the senselessness of war. Palahniuk’s grotesque violence often sits alongside deadpan narration, yet the reader perceives an intent to critique consumerism, masculinity, or the cult of self-destruction. Wong’s project in Futuristic Violence & Fancy Suits lacks that coherence. His humor is internet-age snark, his violence is cyberpunk spectacle, but no unified worldview ties them together. Consequently, the reader experiences the collision of two tones without the intellectual framework that would allow them to be read as commentary. What is missing is not cleverness but discipline: the sense that behind the shifting tones lies an authorial vision with something to say.
Another dimension worth scrutinizing is how the imbalance between humor and violence shapes the reader’s relationship to the protagonist. Zoey’s perspective is written with a steady stream of self-deprecation and sardonic commentary, meant to humanize her and provide a comedic counterpoint to the exaggerated world around her. But when this voice collides with depictions of her suffering, the effect is jarring. A quip about being overwhelmed or unqualified cannot soften the impact of repeated humiliation, torture, and threats. Instead of finding Zoey relatable, readers may begin to see her as trapped in a cruel joke orchestrated by the narrative itself. Her comedic asides, meant to signal resilience, risk becoming evidence of authorial callousness, as if her suffering exists primarily to generate ironic contrast. The intended humor backfires, making her ordeal feel less like a character arc and more like a sadistic running gag. In this sense, the tonal problem does not merely weaken the novel’s entertainment value; it actively sabotages the empathy between reader and protagonist.
This sabotage extends to the supporting cast, who are likewise caught between parody and menace. The “Fancy Suits” themselves, intended as slick and witty, oscillate uneasily between comic exaggerations of corporate villains and ruthless enforcers who mete out cruelty without hesitation. Their banter is too shallow to generate genuine amusement, yet their violent capabilities are too extreme to ignore. As a result, they fail to occupy either role convincingly: they are neither the charming rogues of a caper nor the terrifying overlords of a dystopia. Instead, they become tonal artifacts, trapped in a limbo where jokes cannot land and threats cannot chill. This failure is particularly damaging because the novel’s premise relies on the Suits as a central force of both spectacle and social order. If their mixture of humor and menace does not convince, then the entire scaffolding of Tabula Rasa collapses further, leaving only empty gestures in its place.
Equally telling is the novel’s approach to pacing. Humor and violence not only occupy different tonal registers but also demand different narrative rhythms. Humor thrives on timing, on brevity, on the well-placed interruption or the sudden shift in expectation. Violence, especially when described in detail, requires buildup, weight, and a slower tempo to convey gravity. By alternating these rhythms without harmony, Wong disrupts the narrative flow. Scenes that might have built tension are derailed by clumsy jokes; moments that might have allowed for comic release are buried under prolonged brutality. The novel lurches forward like a machine with mismatched gears, unable to find a smooth rhythm. This lack of pacing discipline magnifies the tonal clash, making the book feel longer and more disjointed than it truly is. Readers are not carried along by momentum but repeatedly jolted out of immersion by incompatible narrative beats.
When reaching the final pages of Futuristic Violence & Fancy Suits, one cannot help but feel that the most pressing question is not whether the story entertains, but why it was told in this particular way. Every novel carries with it an implicit statement of purpose, even if the author never articulates it directly. Sometimes that purpose is to amuse, sometimes to unsettle, sometimes to prod readers into rethinking their assumptions. In Wong’s earlier works, the purpose was clearer: to fuse irreverent comedy with cosmic horror in a way that lampooned genre conventions while also meditating on the smallness of human life against incomprehensible forces. In this book, however, the purpose is muddled. The narrative gestures toward satire of wealth, social media, and desensitization to violence, but these gestures lack follow-through. The humor is too shallow to sustain satire, the violence too gratuitous to become critique, and the characters too inconsistent to embody meaning. What remains is a shell of spectacle, a series of explosions and humiliations that may briefly amuse but never truly resonate.
Conclusion
The protagonist Zoey exemplifies this problem. Her journey is structured like a coming-of-age tale: the reluctant heir who must discover her strength and claim her place in a corrupt world. Yet this arc never coalesces into conviction because the narrative undermines her at every turn. Instead of growing, she survives. Instead of gaining clarity, she stumbles forward. The conclusion offers token gestures toward empowerment, but they ring hollow after hundreds of pages in which she has been battered, mocked, and minimized. Purpose in storytelling often arises from the transformation of its central figure, but Zoey’s transformation is superficial, leaving the reader wondering whether there was ever a deeper intent behind her suffering. Was she meant to represent resilience in the face of cruelty, or was she simply a convenient punching bag for a parade of grotesque set pieces? The novel never answers, and so its ending feels less like closure than exhaustion.
The antagonists likewise reveal the absence of purpose. Molech, despite being given ample page time, is not so much a character as a collection of sadistic impulses. His role is clear—to embody cruelty and excess—but he is never tethered to a larger thematic framework. A villain of this type could have been used to expose the hollowness of a society built on voyeurism, or to demonstrate how power thrives on spectacle. Instead, he becomes little more than a caricature, his repeated threats losing potency with every repetition. The Fancy Suits, meanwhile, are too slick to terrify and too shallow to amuse, failing to serve as a coherent counterweight to Zoey’s struggle. Purpose requires that villains reflect the world they inhabit and the themes the author wishes to explore. Here, they are stage props, not mirrors, further evidence of a novel adrift without a guiding principle. Its sequel may indeed correct some of these missteps, but the memory of the first leaves doubts that linger.
In the end, purpose is the compass that guides both author and reader. Without it, stories become wandering journeys, dazzling perhaps in moments but ultimately lost. Futuristic Violence & Fancy Suits is a reminder that even a writer with proven talent can falter when purpose is obscured by indulgence. The humor does not illuminate, the violence does not challenge, the characters do not endure, and the world does not resonate. What is left is noise—loud, chaotic, and forgettable. And perhaps the harshest judgment one can pass on a novel is not that it shocks or offends, but that after all its spectacle, it leaves behind nothing but emptiness.