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Find Your Own Truth | Rating | |
| B | |||
| Robert N. Charrette | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Shadowrun: Secrets of Power | 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 | ||
Sam has found his sister, Janice, but is horriefied by what exactly she has become. She, meanwhile, has become more than a little bitter at her change and her experiences after it, and blames Sam for abandoning her when she needed him most. Sam is determined not to let her down once again. He has embraced his shamanic nature in order to find a cure for her condition. But when a promising possibility does nothing more than set loose a force of deception and evil upon the world, he must chose what takes precedence. Helping his familiy, or undoing the wrongs he unwittingly perpetrated.
is determined to find a cure meanwhile at the end of the last book, but he couldn't hold on. Now he's keeping track of her as she looks for meaning in her shattered life. Sam, meanwhile, needs to find some meaning in his own, as his magical abilities grow stronger.
This novel is nearly the opposite of Never Deal With a Dragon in some ways. Whereas that book focused primarily on the sixth world's technology, with enough magic to make readers familiar with the concept, not Charrette uses technology as little as possible. The plot is all about the magical and mystical elements of the setting.
And it is done darn well, too. Given Sam's samanic magic, it should come as no surprise that most of the magic that is actually shown is far different from the typical fantasy wizard's. Hermetic magic, as it is known in Shadowrun, is almost absent. Most spells here are cast with songs, dances, and chants. There are vision quests and cryptic advice that nevertheless makes some sort of sense. It all goes a long way to giving the magic the Native American feel that Charrette wanted, as well as an air of mystery and mysticism that manages to avoi becoming merely confusing.
There is only one real flaw to the book, in my opinion. Things about Sam's past, and Janice's, that they had repressed or forgotten sudden;y come to light. They are clearly important, not just filler material, but their significance is not explained and there are far too few clues for a reader to deduce the meaning. Why is Grandmother and Loftwyr so interested in Sam years before the events in Never Deal With a Dragon? What is the "line that must be extinguished"? There is, perhaps, an answer in a later book in the setting, but it is well down the road, and Sam or even Charrette isn't involved with that story, so it is less than clear. It is left as a dangling plot thread that is never tied off for the remainder of the book - or, indeed, for the entirety of the series to date, at least in regard to Sam. As such, it's a bit unsatisfying and arguably unneccesary addition to the story.
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