From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri May 28 12:48:01 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!nntp.primenet.com!newsfeed.cwix.com!18.181.0.26!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: "Aaron M. Renn" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Reviews: The Forever Drug by Lisa Smedman and Headhunters by Mel Odom Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 27 May 1999 23:57:19 -0400 Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Lines: 90 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2352 The Forever Drug, by Lisa Smedman Headhunters, by Mel Odom Review Copyright 1999 Aaron Renn I hate movie, TV, and RPG spinoff books as much as the next guy, but I've got to admit that Shadowrun is a secret pleasure. I picked up the first trilogy of novels set in this Fantasy/SF role playing universe not knowing they were for an RPG series. I thought the books (the Secrets of Power trilogy by Robert N. Charrette) were pretty good and soon I was hooked. The Shadowrun books - for an RPG tie-in series - have a lot to recommend. First is that the publisher hasn't saturated the market. There have only been 37 books in the series since 1990. This contrasts greatly with the infinitude of Star Wars and Star Trek books that seem to come out every month. You can keep up with the series without blowing your budget or precious reading time. The books are light fiction (Shadowrunners are basically mercenaries who go around blowing stuff up and the like), which everybody needs some of from time to time. Plus, there is always a healthy dose of mystery involved, oftimes with deep, dark secrets about the nature of the world revealed. The Shadowrun universe is a near future cyberpunk setting with magic thrown in. It lets me get my fantasy, cyberpunk, and military SF fix all at once. Unfortunately, all of the trend lines for this series seem to be going the wrong way. Books are coming out more frequently and are of generally lower quality. The most recent in the series - The Forever Drug by Lisa Smedman - exemplifies everything bad that has been happening to it. First, I noticed that the title was recycled from a 1995 book by Steve Perry. Interestingly enough, he is also an author of numerous media tie-in type books. Not a good sign. And the book was thin, weighing in at only 271 pages in large type. Unfortunately the content was also thin. The main character Romulus, a shape shifting wolf who does independent work for the local police, is trying to find a way to get himself officially onto the force. Lone Star, the private entity that holds the policing contract, refuses to hire non-humans. To accomplish his goal, he attempts to solve two mysteries. The two mysteries are barely related, dividing the story in half in a way that doesn't mesh well. One of the situations is so minor as to be completely unimportant. The other involves a couple big names in the Shadowrun universe, but is ultimately of no consequence either. The Forever Drug is by far the worst novel in the Shadowrun series and only hard core Shadowrun collectors/gamers will want to buy it. Lucky for me I also picked up another Shadowrun book this week - Headhunters by Mel Odom. This one was from 1997. I'd read it before but somehow lost the book. I figured since I was buying a replacement copy to keep my collection complete, I might as well re-read it. This story is much meatier. Jack Skater and his band of Shadowrunners are well known as a tough and professional outfit in Seattle. They're hired for an apparently simple run. The job is to extract a dead body from a funeral home and deliver it back to Mr. Johnson (that being the code name Shadowrunners use to refer to the person (usually anonymous) who hired them). The drek hits the fan fast as another group of well armed runners shows up looking for the same piece of meat. Skater's crew escapes with the body and they spend the rest of the book dodging the other runners and trying to figure out what's so important about this body. The secret this time actually means something and the story ties in indirectly with the assassination of President Dunkelzhan that occurs in Jake Koke's Dragon Heart Saga trilogy. There's a lot of action, a lot of familiar faces, an interesting mystery to be solved, and a number of personal dilemmas that must be resolved. For people who've never read a Shadowrun novel, this is a good pick as the first one to try. I just wish I could say better things to say about the way the series is going. %A Smedman, Lisa %T The Forever Drug %S Shadowrun %I New American Library/Roc Fantasy %D 1999-06 %G ISBN 0-451-45747-0 %P 271 pp. %O mass market paperback, US$5.99 C$7.99 %A Odom, Mel %T Headhunters %S Shadowrun %I New American Library/Roc Fantasy %D 1997-10 %G ISBN 0-451-45614-0 %P 293 pp. %O mass market paperback, US$5.99 C$7.99 -- Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/