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Clockwork Asylum | Rating | |
| A | |||
| Jak Koke | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Shadowrun: The Dragon Heart Saga | 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 | ||
Ryan Mercury has been charged with bringing the powerful magical artifact known as the Dragon Heart to the metaplanes and giving it to Thayla - whomever that might be. There's one problem, though: he lost it. The super-cyborg called Burnout ripped it away from him just before plunging a few hundred feet off a helicopter into Hell's Canyon. And amazingly, Burnout lived, if you can call itthat. And the cyborg isn't about to let Ryan have the Heart back. One of them is going to have to die.
Clockwork Asylum is a much, much better book than was its predecessor. Or at least, more palatable. Ryan is not the cruel, paranoid bastard that he became thanks to Roxburough's magics, and Burnout is no longer permanently either in a killing rage or a drugged-up haze to calm that rage. Both of them are more well-rounded, more human characters. It is easy to epathize and cheer for either party - even Burnout.
The plot also no longer relies on coincidence and bad luck to drive the conflict. Both Ryan and Burnout are extremely capable individuals, and what the cyborg lacks in smarts is ably covered by the aid of the spirit Lethe. Both, then, have matching intelligence and will. They also have roughly equal magic and firepower at their disposal. And they use it. A lot. These pages are chock full of firefights and small-unit tactics as they play a game of cat and mouse, neither sure in which role they are cast.
As a result, the story is very fast paced. There is action almost everywhere, and where there is none it is clearly building. All this, and there's still Dunkelzahn's assassination to unravel, and perhaps a bonus mystery as well regarding one of this setting's defining events. It all makes this an excellent sequel to Stranger Souls and a good addition to the series as a whole.
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