Songs for the Lattice
Join the conversation! Readers are sharing their thoughts:
About the Story
In a neon-slick metropolis, a young repairer named Mira risks everything to recover her sister from a corporation that harvests people's memories and weaves them into a mood-control lattice. With a ragtag crew, an old shaman's key, and a stubborn song, Mira confronts the grid to reclaim what was stolen and help the city remember its own voice.
Chapters
Related Stories
Neon Faultline
Arin, a salvage operator, uncovers a sealed memory slab tied to a suppressed protest and his own missing months. With Sera, an ex-Helion engineer, he steals an authentication anchor and races to the Spindle Hub to push the slab’s contents into the city network before Helion’s quarantine update locks it away. They breach the hub, face betrayal and Nullweave countermeasures, and make a costly human tether to seed the memory stream. The broadcast succeeds in leaking fragments into implants, fracturing the corporation’s curated narrative. Arin wakes altered—carrying other people’s memories and gaps where his own life used to be—while the city begins to remember in messy, dangerous ways.
Neon Palimpsest — Chapter 1
In a neon-stripped sprawl where memory is currency, mnemonic restorer Mara Kest uncovers a sealed prototype fragment tying her past to a corporate archive. As the palimpsest’s guardian logic demands a living tether, Mara faces an impossible choice: become the living sentinel to allow citizens agency over their pasts or preserve the life she knew.
Neon Rift
A scavenger binds a living memory-core into his own mind to retrieve a missing brother and to stop a corporation’s attention-engine. Rain-slick alleys, tense bargains, and a fragile public charter set the stage as identity and memory converge inside a single, costly host.
Neon Lattice
In Neon Ark, a young data-weaver named Rhea fights to reclaim a stolen emergent mind—the Muse—and the stolen memories of her brother. Between rain-slick alleys, corporate cathedrals, and makeshift communities, she must choose whether to let memory become commodity or keep it wild.
Neon Residue
In a neon-drenched metropolis where a corporate affective network repurposes human feeling to stabilize the city, memory-diver Rae Calder retrieves a sealed imprint that carries a Pulse watermark and a personal connection to her missing sibling. The first chapter follows her discovery and the first tremors of danger.
Zero Signal
In a neon-drenched city where memory is currency, a diver sells forgettings until a recovered child's laugh and a registry etched beneath his skin bind him to a corporate archive. He and a ragged team confront the firm that reshapes minds; proof becomes a weapon and a choice that will blur self and system.
Other Stories by Dominic Frael
Ratings
Pretty neon, predictable core. The worldbuilding sparkles — Mira's jacket with neon along the seams, the three-eyed gutter cat Spark, even the wrist-node 'leaking like oil' are vivid little snapshots — but too often the book relies on stylish shorthand instead of actually building stakes. The central twist (memories threaded into a mood-control lattice) is creepily cool on paper, yet the mechanics around it never land. How does the shaman's key physically or metaphysically override corporate lattice architecture? Why does a night-shift at a corp café lead to an unremarked forced-harvest? Those gaps aren’t mysterious; they’re lazy. The ragtag crew and the 'stubborn song' that supposedly flips the grid fall into tired heist-and-magic clichés — think: motley team with one-liners, mystical McGuffin, song-as-plot-device — and the narrative treats them like plot bullets rather than earned moments. Pacing is a bigger offender. The opening luxuriates in detail (I loved the tiny sun metaphor for Tamsin's chip), then the middle dashes through planning and setup like it's late for a shift. The heist reads compressed; we get the cool beats but not the work to make them suspenseful. Emotional payoffs are therefore muffled — Mira's grief feels sketched, not felt in full texture. If you’re after atmosphere and a handful of sharp images, there’s fun here. But if you want a heist with internal logic and characters who grow instead of serving archetypes, this will frustrate. Fixes: set clearer tech rules, slow the middle so stakes can breathe, and give the secondary cast real flaws and motives — then the shining bits could actually mean something. 🙄
Songs for the Lattice has an arresting premise and some lush sensory writing, but it stumbles in execution. The central hook — a corporation weaving harvested memories into a mood-control lattice — is chilling and original, and the author uses small domestic moments (Mira’s cup of tea, the cramped tram-box apartment, neighbors leaving ghosts for repair) to humanize a high-concept plot. Yet several elements feel underexplained: how exactly does the shaman’s key interface with lattice tech? Why did a corp café night shift lead directly to forced memory-harvesting without so much as a noticed report? These are the sorts of logical gaps that pull me out of the story. Pacing is uneven too; the opening chapters luxuriate in detail while the midsection rushes through heist prep, making some emotional payoffs feel blunt rather than earned. On the plus side, Mira and her longing for Tamsin — especially that image of the empty chip-slot like a small sun — provide genuine emotional traction. I’d recommend tightening the middle, clarifying a few tech-magic mechanics, and giving secondary characters more room to breathe. Then it would be a much stronger, more coherent read.
I wanted to love this more than I did. There are flashes of brilliance — Spark the three-eyed cat is a highlight, and the wrist-node leaking memories like oil is a great image — but the plot leans on a lot of familiar cyberpunk tropes without subverting them. The ragtag crew? Check. The corp harvesting memories? Check. The mystical shaman’s key that conveniently opens a route into the big bad lattice? Uh-huh. Feels a bit like pulling out familiar parts from a genre toolbox and gluing them together. Pacing drags in the middle, and a couple of character beats (the crew’s backstories) get only the skim treatment, which left their sacrifices less affecting. Still, the writing has pulse, and the final confrontation has a couple of memorable lines, so not a total loss. If you want gritty mood and a strong central relationship, this will do — but don’t expect anything wildly new. 😕
Concise, atmospheric, and quietly fierce. The author wastes no words painting K-Line: neon, ozone, and the smell of fried algae populate every page. Mira is believable — practical hands, a broken apartment-turned-home on the side of a tram — and the missing-chip detail (that slot like a small sun) is a neat emotional anchor. I appreciated the restraint in the magic: the shaman’s key and the stubborn song are suggestive rather than explained to death, which suits the mood. Few books this short capture both the mechanics of a heist and the tenderness of sisterhood as cleanly as this one.
Songs for the Lattice nails worldbuilding and tone. The K-Line is rendered with compact, efficient detail: gardens grown from gutters, stacked rooms behind corrugated metal, drone-banners flickering across the lower decks. Those details give the setting weight without slowing the plot. The protagonist’s trade — repairing neuroplugs and stitching ghosts — is a clever mechanism for exposition: the wrist-node leaking like oil is a vivid image that explains both tech and stakes. The crew dynamics are familiar heist fare but handled with affection; I especially liked the scene where Mira’s knowledge of nicking doorlocks (learned from Tamsin at age ten) becomes indispensable during the break-in. Stylistically, the prose balances grit and lyricism nicely — solder and rain beside stubborn songs and shamanic keys. My only quibble is a couple of transitions that feel rushed near the final act, but overall this is a tight, evocative cyberpunk heist with real heart.
I was hooked from the first line — Mira with her crooked pockets, neon bleeding along the seams, felt like a friend I already knew. The book is a small, fierce love letter to memory and the people who refuse to let the city forget. That scene where Mira sits with the empty slot where Tamsin’s chip used to rest and replays old recordings of her laugh? I cried. The writing makes the smell of solder and rain practically tactile, and Spark the three-eyed cat is the perfect little companion to balance the grief. I loved the shaman’s key as a counterpoint to the corporate coldness — mystical and tactile against the lattice’s glossy control. The heist beats are tense and inventive, and the idea of weaving memories into a mood-control grid is creepily brilliant. By the time Mira starts singing back at the grid, cheering the city to remember itself, I was cheering with her. A beautiful, human cyberpunk story. 🙂