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The Forever Drug | Rating | |
| D | |||
| Lisa Smedman | |||
| 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 | ||
Romulus is an "irregular asset" for Lone Star, which is a decidedly mixed blessing. It means he can go off and do as he likes, and his time is his own, but it also means he's pain on commission, and his nonhuman status means he gets only the most degrading cases to solve. It also means he's looked down on by real cops. But a chance encounter might change all that. Romulus has a real case to close regarding paranormal creature smuggling, and a real mystery to solve to boot involving a woman with amnesia. Just who is Jane, and what is her past? And who is trying to kidnap her?
In some ways, this book is perfectly fine. The mystery unfolds well, and Romulus' motivations for solving this case make sense, as well. Further, it is an interesting enigma, one that readers will want to learn the answer to just as much as the main character does. Smedman also included a fine display of the prejudice and interracial hatreds that supposedly fill the Shadowrun setting but somehow rarely get adequate space in the books.
But in most other ways, the book isn't as good. Nowhere near it, in fact. First is Romulus himself. He is essentially a werewolf, bbut he acts more like a big dong. He doesn't run with other werewolves, as similar specimens do in Striper Assassin; he doesn't even know of any others. He considers Lone Star his pack, but if that's the case he's definitely the omega. All in all, his mind is simply too human to pull the inhuman act off. About the full extent of his mental differences is a tendancy to use canine-related analagies, like, "My thoughts were whirling faster than a puppy chasing its tail." I wouldn't mid the puppy references, but to use them so often, and have them be the only expression of an inhuman mindset, became grating. It's like Smedman has no concept of variety.
The plot has some problems as well. It depends heavily on the immortality of some elves, but this is a secret that was revealed to readers earlier in the series. Two books center around it, in fact, and several touch upon it. So The Forever Drug neither offers no surprises in that regard, nor does it have anything new. Also, while the mystery unfolds without any great leaps of logic, it does rely a bit much on coincidence. The encounter that started Romulus on this matter was pure chance - he was nearby - and that's fine. Coincidence happens every now and then. But there are at least three such serendipitous moments in the course of the book, such as when he loses track of someone and then, while he's trying to figure out how to track them down, he sees his suspect on the news, which gives him a location to start searching. One is fine, two is pushing it, but three just shatters any suspension of disbelief that remained.
I could have take any of this, and merely considered it a flawed novel. But this book isn't just flawed, it's absolutely ruined because of how the author ended it. The epilogue entirely negates everything that happened in these pages. It just suddenly doesn't matter, and it might as well literally never have happened. So if nothing matters, why did I waste all my time reading it?
There are a few good things about this book, but they are essentially incidental. Negation is an absolute crime, in my eyes, and Smedman pulls it on the reader to such a degree that it would be a felony. This is a story that just should not have been written, because at the end everything is exactly as it was, as far as Romulus is concerned, except that a few days have passed. He doesn't learn, he doesn't grow, and his status in life is exactly the same. He neither goes forward nor back. But having been written, I suggest you avoid reading it. If you do, prepare to be a bit upset at the end.
You've been warned.
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