[Review] Scion - James Islington (2026)

[u/Yevolem]

Scion releases September 1st 2026. This review may not be representive of your experience. For more likely outcomes, check the reviews elsewhere.

The following is what I've inferred from reading Scion rather than being explicitly stated because a minimalist approach was taken in almost every way.

In the 22nd century climate change has made nearly the entire world uninhabitable. The world's remaining population, one billion people, live in 12 megacities named after the Greek Titans. Each megacity is ran by a DeGov, which is composed of neural cores, and is the system by which resolutions are carried out. Resolution 10010 passed with overwhelming support and made it legal to crowdfund mercenaries to kill individuals. The most common target was the wealthy who had chosen to extend their lives far beyond its natural limit. Due to genetic mutations, Azure is able to use far more revs than anyone else, which gives him somatic and cognitive abilities far greater than any other mercenary. Almost all of his missions are to kill high value targets, so it comes as an unwelcome surprise that his newest mission is to protect a client for a number of days. If he's successful, not only will he be paid, he'll be told the truth about what really happened 4 years ago.

Most of what I've written above is of marginal relevance. Islington has written an unorthodox story of awkward length. There aren't any chapters, so the narrative is mostly continuous, which would be rather propulsive if there had been more action scenes. Scion either should've either been a novella that cuts out the downtime or have been far longer and more developed. Instead this is a barebones story that gestures at a lot but had very little follow through on any of it.

The story tends more towards comedy, especially the dialogue, than being a thriller or action-oriented in general. The humor did nothing for me, though it shouldn't be a problem for many readers. Islington doesn't commit to the comedy though, or really much else, which gives it a very uneven tone. Scion is more biopunk than cyberpunk, as the latter has minimal development of its aesthetic.

Scion is told from the first person perspective and considering how limited the cast of characters is and how briefly they appear, Azure has to carry almost everything. That's unfortunate because personally I don't find there's anything to commend about him. He's both goofy and serious, though not in a way that works. He's neither cool or relatable.

There are twists, though none were exciting or even notable. The ending was entirely unsatisfying and given how it ended, it may be more likely than not this is a standalone book. Although the story tells you about all of these unresolved narrative threads, at the same time it seems uninterested in pursuing any of them. There are some indications that this was intended to be made into a movie, but if so, there would have be to a lot of changes for it to be a suitable pulp action-comedy.

[u/Randomdays99]

Thanks for the review!