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Black Madonna | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Carl Sargent and Marc Gascoigne | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Shadowrun | Never Deal with a Dragon, Choose Your Enemies Carefully, Find Your Own Truth, 2XS, Changeling, Never Trust an Elf, Into the Shadows, Streets of Blood, Shadowplay, Night's Pawn, Striper Assassin, Lone Wolf, Fade to Black, Nosferatu, Burning Bright, Who Hunts the Hunter, House of the Sun, Worlds Without End, Just Compensation, Black Madonna, Preying for Keeps, Dead Air, The Lucifer Deck, Steel Rain, Shadowboxer, Headhunters, Stranger Souls, Clockwork Assylum, Beyond the Pale, Blood Sport, Technobabel, Wolf and Raven, Psychotrope, The Terminus Experiment, Run Hard, Die Fast, Crossroads, The Forever Drug, Ragnarock, Tails You Lose, The Burning Time, Born to Run, Poison Agendas, Fallen Angels, Drops of Corruption, Aftershock, A Fistful of Data | ||
When Renraku's mainframes are crashed at precisely midnight, with no warning or sign of system intrusion, the megacorp knows it has a very special foe. When it happens again two hours later, with ever system on high alert, it's heart attack time. They hire Michael Sutherland, one of the best deckers on the planet, to find those responsible. Michael, in turn, brings in his friends Gerraint, Serrin, and Kristan. They have only a bit more than a week to track him down, whoever he is. They have only one enigmatic picture left behind as a clue. Faillure meansRenraku will have to pay twenty billion nuyen or have their systems shut down for good. And, needless to say, the corp isn't all that enthusiastic about either of those options.
The authors seem to enjoy making their charaters dance a merry jig to someone else's tune, and that's no different here. Unlike their earlier books, however, in which this state of affairs is revealed very late in the game, this time they know it for the entire second half of the book. And I must say I can't tell which I liked less. Is it better for them to do it all genuinely only to find, once it's too late to do anything about it, that all their effort and noble mortives furthered a scheme that they knew nothing about and would have shunned if they had? Or is it better to know they are pawns, that people are deliberately leaving clues and messages, yet be unable to figure things out, shortcut the path being laid at their feet, and do something other than be led by the nose? Hard decision, there.
I also couldn't figure out what the point of having Kristen along was. Michael is the decker, with lots of information-gathering potential at his fingertips. Serrin is the mage, and thus able to provide support and analysis on the occult front. Gerraint is a British noble with lots of material resources and contacts in high society. Streak is an elf they pick up early in the adventure; he serves as hired gun, tough guy, and contact with the more mercenary aspects of the gig. And Kristen... likes to play tourist. Um, yeah. Okay, so she has pluck, and she can use a gun, and she does make a few suggestions and observations that help things along. But the pluck isn't any good without any real skills, and although she can and will use a weapon she's not chromed and she's not wired. She's just not at Streak's level without those aids, and she has nothing to compete or even assist with the other characters in their own specialties. As for the suggestions and observations, others could have made them just as easily. She's not protrayed as the genius, after all; nobody looks to her for directions on what to do next, where to go. The authors should have make Serrin leave her at home. If he arrives alone, then the argument about how she wants to come would be off screen, and her stubborn streak would thus be easily and plausibly overcome. She was a fifth wheel for the entire book.
Lastly, the conclusion was a bit of a disappointment. After being led such a merry chase, when they finally encounter the hacker it's just nothing much. It's also very confusing in some respects. The religious tie-in and why it's so so important, I just do not get.
The book isn't a total loss, though, not by any means. The team worked farly well, and the interactions between the characters was interesting, even fun. It helps to have read Streets of Blood and
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