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House of the Sun | Rating | |
| A | |||
| 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 | ||
Dirk Montgomry is back and more annoyed than ever. He may have left Seattle, but Cheyenne apparently hasn't done much to calm him down. So he's understandable stressed when his past catches up to him at last. An old... business acquaintance has tracked him down. Dirk is to go off to the Kingdom of Hawai'i to deliver a message. That's all, that's it, no strings. Of course, this is Shadowrun. There are always strings, even if the client himself thinks there aren't.
A significant portion of the book is an infodump on the Kingdom og Hawai'i's history. All the way from 1893 to the middle of the twenty-first century. That part only takes six or seven pages - which is only an "only" because it's followed by a thirty page guided tour of Oahu and Honolulu. It does definitely help you get a feel for the setting and Dirk's guide, but thirty pages? It's a bit much.
Also a little much, sometimes, is Dirk's commentary. The story is in first person, and quite often there will be a bit of narration thelling what is happening, and then an aside by Dirk as he makes snide remarks about it. This happened in 2XS as well, but it's far more common this time around. It's more cynical this time, too. In places it gets very intrusive and I wanted to tell the narrator to shut up and just tell the story without all the damned asides.
Yet I still consider this an excellent book. In some ways it's even better than 2XS, because it avoids the film noir detective cliches. But it retains the good points. Figuring out just what is going on by whom for what reason is a pretty puzzle, and Findley takes Dirk through it step by step. Every clue is a progression, and even when matters take a sudden, unexpected turn - as should happen in any good story, especially a mystery, and happens several times here - it rarely comes out of absolutely nowhere. When explantions come, they make sense.
And, of course, there's Dirk. He's not as rounded or deep a character as he was last we saw him, but there's nothing personal about the case and he's in unfamiliar territory. There's little to draw any depths out, this time, and other than a few mentions here and there about his past it never is much of an issue.
Other than that overlong tour of Honolulu and a too-snarky narrator, there really is nothing here to complain about. And both of those have mitigating factors; the tour does provide a few hints for where Dirk can go while he's in trouble, and Dirk is just a snarky kind of guy. Good characters, a complex but understandable plot, a good mystery, a smash-bang climax that pus some Schwartzeneggar films to shame, it's all there. It's really too bad this was Findley's last novel - he died shortly after finishing it. I would have liked to see more of Dirk Montgomery. I'll just have to be satisfied with this, thout. It won't be hard - it's a good book.
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