A dazzling futurescape filled with holograms and hovstreets, a heroine transformed by savage coyotes of cyborg legend, and a overarching battle for freedom and personal liberty: welcome to the Midwestern dystopia of The 18th Shadow series. Elements of this sci-fi epic indulge readers’ fantasy for technology, telepathy, and all that goes with futuristic societies, while other threads of the story revolve around all-too-realistic plot points like a misguided war on drugs, the fight to decriminalize substances deemed illicit by a puritanical government and, of course, a Romeo-and-Juliet love story across the human-cyborg divide.