Nothing says futuristic noir quite like a trench coat, a fedora, and enough neon glow to power Times Square for a week. Unity Storm is clearly aiming for Blade Runner chic, but lands squarely in Sci-Fi Mystery Mad Libs, where every design trope is cranked up to maximum and coherence is left to die behind the crime tape.
Let’s start with the title. UNITY has a kind of cyberpunk boldness, but that oversized U looks like it’s about to eat the rest of the letters alive. Then comes STORM, glowing orange like the word itself is overheating. Together, the fonts are supposed to scream “sci-fi intensity,” but they just argue with each other like mismatched neon signs outside a dive bar.
Now, let’s address the most unintentionally hilarious part of the cover: the crime scene tape. It’s big. It’s bold. It’s red. It’s also apparently the single most important character in this novella, because it takes up half the cover and overshadows everything else. But here’s the kicker: the crime tape blocks off the street where the flying cars are casually zipping around. That’s right—apparently the futuristic police don’t care if you drive through their taped-off murder investigation as long as your car hovers. Safety first, pedestrians.
And speaking of our main man: the trench-coated detective, standing dramatically in the rain-soaked neon. He should be oozing mystery, but instead he looks like a stock image of “Detective Halloween Costume #3” pasted into an AI-generated cityscape. His pose? Stiff. His lighting? Inexplicably glowing like a human lava lamp. His vibe? Discount noir action figure.
The background doesn’t help. Cyberpunk skyscrapers, neon signs, and then… complete nonsense. “2090 Cats Lab.” “FOR GAME.” “CENSE.” These aren’t futuristic corporations—they’re gibberish pulled from the AI Random Billboard Generator. Blade Runner had Coca-Cola. Unity Storm has “Cats Lab.” One of these feels less ominous.
And finally, the lighting. Everything glows. The coat glows. The smoke glows. The crime tape glows. The air glows. It’s less a gritty future and more a neon rave hosted by Photoshop filters.
In the end, Unity Storm desperately wants to immerse you in a sci-fi noir world, but instead it traps you in a crime scene of bad design, complete with glowing hazards, nonsense signage, and a detective who looks like he’s already thinking about quitting this novella to find better work.