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Shadowplay | Rating | |
| B | |||
| Nigel Findley | |||
| 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 | ||
Mix a mysteriously mysteriously encrypted file, a retired decker, and a gang-banger who thinks he might be a shaman, and you have yourself an interesting little story. But when every single corporation and country in North America wants to get their hands on that file, you've got yourself a corp war. Global economic ruin, riots, even nuclear war loom on the horizon unless things settle down. More importantly, Sly and Falcon, the decker and ganger in question, need to find a way to rid themselves of this file before they find themselves dead.
I rather enjoyed this book. It introduces a few concepts to the Shadowrun universe, such as the Corporate Court, and the plot is large-scale. What happens here has the potential for serious consequences down the line in the series. It still has the personal "trying to stay alive through this mess" element that most Shadowrun books have, but unlike a lot of them it has a much greater element as well.
I also appreciated how Findley began the book. Sly and Falcon know each other not at all. The characters are entirely seperate for a hundred pages before their stories finally merge. Each had their own story to tell, and neither felt incomplete. When they came together, they meshed beautifully into something new.
Findley's earlier book in the series, 2XS, is referenced, but with care. The author is never overbearing about it. Suerdad's isn't the only seedy dive in the Seattle 'plex that runners sometimes take their business, and Argent isn't the only top-notch shadowrunner in the city. But both are referenced enough to help tie the stories together, helping make the universe seem just that little bit larger and more realistic.
On the other hand, this didn't feel much like that other story by Findley. It just has a whole other attitude than did 2XS. It's more serious, without the wry comments or the feel of an old-style detective novel. I suppose that's a credit to the author, in that he can write so differently, but dammit, I liked that attitude!
The change by no means makes this a bad book. I found myself unable to consider it a great one, however. And not just because of the change in tone. It relies just a little too much on coincidence in places to help move things along. They run across a rival while just walking the street, and help comes just when it is needed most for no real reason at all. Additionally, while it is exceptional in that the plot has potential for enormous consequences, but it is exceptional in no other way than that. It was good, and it fits in well with the rest of the sries. I enjoyed it. But in the end it was just a book.
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