Welcome to the world of 20507 February 2012tWell this is the first of the Shadowrun novels, and not surprisingly, the first one that I will review. There were a few of them written, and I did read some of them, however, as I have said previously, in these later stages of my life the role-playing game spinoffs novels have ceased to impress me, and the Shadowrun books are no exception. They tend to be poorly written and rushed and their only real purpose is not only to continue to make money from successful product, but to also give some atmosphere to the role playing world in which the novel is set. The major catch with that is that a lot of GMs may like the world, but will change aspects to suit their own style, which means that when one reads the novel, the aspects that that particular GM dislikes and cause it to be a little jarring at times.tI will not go into details of these particular novels, but will rather explore aspects of the Shadowrun world as I visit each of the novels that I have read. For this one I will give an overview of the roleplaying world. Shadowrun is set on Earth beginning in the year 2050 (aligning with 1990, the year that the system was first released - Shadowrun is always 60 years ahead of the year in which a supplement is published). This world is a vastly different place to the world that we known, and a simple definition would be 'Cyberpunk meets Dungeons and Dragons'. The world is a world of the dark future (see Blade Runner, or Neuromancer for an idea of what the world of the Dark Future would look like, though there are a lot of other books and films that could do the same job) where governments have become impotent and the corporations have risen to positions of great power.tMuch has changed since our world though, and there is a reasonable time line outlining the events that brought about these changes. The most important change is that magic has re-entered the world, and along with magicians we also have magical beasts, diseases, and new races into which a minority of humans have metamorphed (or goblinised as Shadowrun calls it). Discrimination has moved away from skin colour to simply looking different, and it turns out that orks and trolls, the more uglier of the goblinoids, tend to find themselves at the bottom of the social pile. Along with all of this, dragons have also made another appearance (as the title of the book suggests), which is not surprising because one cannot have a science-fantasy would without dragons.tThe idea of the game is that magic is not a new thing, but rather a reawakened reality. For some reason magic left the world centuries ago (most likely because all of the practitioners were killed off) and the magical forces went into remission (and creatures such as dragons went into hibernation). However, in the early 21st Century the Native Americans rose up against their oppression, and in a desperate battle, one Native American released a reign of destruction on the American forces. This pretty much turned the tables and the United States was forced to break up, and much of the West was handed back to the Indians, while the east was split into UCAS (the United Canadian and American States) and the CAS (the Confederated American States).tMost of the action is set in Seattle (I wondered why it was not set in Los Angeles, but I guess the developers may have been more familiar with Seattle), which is an independent city state (governed by the UCAS) that is surrounded by Native American Nations. I suspect that they develop Seattle this way as a means to create a frontier city, sort of like the Wild West meets Cyberpunk.tOne of the things that I did not like about this book is that the Shadowrunning team that the protagonist encounters turns out to be the team that was used in the rule books as an example of how to create various types of characters. This I found to be very corny - it just did not sit all that well with me. To an extent it made it appear that they were trying to push the marketing aspect of the game a bit too much.
This was the first of the full Shadowrun novels in print (with only Into the Shadows, a collection of shorts preceding it), set in the dark future of 2050, filled with high technology and ancient magic. Orcs, Dwarves, Trolls and Elves now walk the street along cybernetic mercenaries, street shamans and dragons. Corporations and even older conspiracies run the world from their isolated splendor while the streets destroy millions of lives.It covers the induction of Samuel Verner into the shadowy underside of life in 2050. When he awakes from a routine datajack implantation, he finds that he's been demoted to the floundering Renraku Arcology project in Seattle, all on account of his sister who has goblinized. Goblinization - the magical and spontaneous (amd painful) transformation of a human into either an orc or a troll - is frowned on by the ultra-conservative Renraku corporation, and as a result Sam finds himself punished for it. As a former rising star, this doesn't sit well with him, and he begins investigating the fate of his sister and eventually defects from his parent corp and sets out on the path to become a shadowrunner, one of the men and women who are willing to get their hands dirty for corporations in exchange for nuyen, the currency of the future.It's good for what it is, editing and errors aside (it's a RPG novel so I cut it some slack), and it's a great primer for the world of the Shadowrun game.
What do You think about Never Deal With A Dragon (1990)?
Since getting into pen and paper role playing games several years ago, Shadowrun has been my favorite and I had the most success with the game.I always found the setting and cyberpunk theme very cool and interesting so I looked into the Shadowrun novels that they released many moons ago and this was sort of the first book. Not the first Shadowrun book I read though.At the beginning I hit my first hurdle and that is the long prologue. At least long in the sense that there are very few breaks and it roughly 50 pages. There is some action but not all that much. In fact it takes a bit for this book to get going, but when it does it only lets up and stumbles in a few places.This book follows the exploits of Samuel Verner and his wish to find his sister all the while conflicting with his sense of loyalty to the company he works for. This is just a small part of what actually happens but it is done well enough to get you to where the action picks up. It has a very satisfying tense finale and it does chronicle Sam's change from corporate drone to shadowrunner. His fellow runners are not too well developed except for one. The book does tend to drag in some places, but the finale really helps tie things together.
—Jared
Sweet Jesus, this was a hard one to get through. I love the world of Shadowrun. LOVE. But this book read like the author took a glance at a rules book, skimmed the classes for the key facts about them all, then went about creating the most non-dimensional characters he possibly could. The worldbuilding was amazing and immerse... The characters had me shaking my head. There were several points where I felt like I was supposed to empathize with big, bad events... But I just never cared enough about them. And I never understood anyone's motivations, let alone Sam who is the theoretical main character. One of the many villains, Crenshaw, never made a damn bit of sense to me. Why did she hate Sam so much? We know her from the moment she meets him and it never makes any sense. And don't get me started on those dragons. Not one of them had an actual reason to be in this book.By the time we get to the climactic finale battle-royale, I have no idea what anyone's motivations are, the plot focus is hanging my a thread, and I really couldn't care less if they all got taken out by one of the many dragons that make an appearance.
—Killian
One day at work, I had a craving for a salad. Events conspired to keep me from going out to get one until well after an hour past my usual lunchtime. By then, I was so ravenous as to be almost beyond rational thought. I went to the salad bar across the street and loaded my big plastic bowl with every single ingredient from the bar that, individually, I enjoyed having in a salad. It was several forkfulls in that my hunger abated enough to permit me to process the input from my taste buds. That input was not good: even though I liked each flavor in and of itself, the combination created a riotous, aberrant gestalt resulting in a thoroughly unsatisfying experience I soldiered through out of sheer stubborness.Categorical discrepancies notwithstanding, the only difference between that salad and this book is that I would have given the salad two stars for at least serving its most basic purpose of providing nutritive sustenance.
—Eli
