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A Fistful of Data | Rating | |
| D | |||
| Stephen Dedman | |||
| 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 | ||
When a corporate extraction is pulled off right under the watchful eyes of the top security man known as Hatter, he knows there is only one thing that can let him keep his job: make a major score for his company. To this end he and his friend Hare track down old technology lost in the Night of Rage. But there's one problem: its probable location is in a warehouse filled with the destitute and the homeless. But The Hatter isn't going to let a bunch of riffraff keep him from his goal. But there are people who aren't about to let him stomp all over those who can't fight back. People who defend the powerless. And The Hatter is about to get very, very mad.
The first thing i noticed was that Hatter and Hare get the information that gets the whole scenario rolling practically handed to them. A secret that has eluded dedicated hunters for decades, they uncover in a week. And mostly off screen, between scenes, at that. It's a convenience for the story, sure, but it's too convenient, too easy, to be believable. Not if it stayed secret so long against so many others.
A major facet of the story is that of the squatters trying desperately to find or figure out just why Hatter wants the property so badly. They need to use all their skills and contacts, not to mention a bit of magic and good old-fashioned luck to crack this mystery. But to readers, it's no puzzle at all. We watched the antagonists not only planning their assault on the squatters, but also as they gather the the final details of their search and learn what makes the place worth having. Readers are watching the good guys struggle to puzzle out what they already know. It would have been far more satisfying for them to learn the truth alongside the mercenaries, not the bad guys.
I must admit that watching the antagonists work, tohugh, is strangely appealing. Hatter and Hare have a certain charm that makes my sympathetic towards their goal, if not their methods. If it wasn't for their obnoxious habit of shooting everyone that they employ after they're done with them, I might even consider the story to have no real villain, only opponents.
Dedman does do a few things well. All the major elements of a good Shadowrun story are present — magic, the Matrix, Machiavellian schemes, and lots and lots of guns — and they all get their chance to shine. It's even relatively balaced between them, something a lot of other books in the series neglect. I also appreciated how the situation gradually got worse and worse, escalating despite the best efforts of the troops and especially the captains on each side to keep the violence to a minimum. Impulsiveness, stubbornness, and pride won't let anyone just let it go. Mixed in with a few cases of poor communications and a thoroughly uncompromising Johnson, it turns what could have been a peaceable mass eviction into an urban disaster.
But even that ultimately falls short, because it never is a disaster. If you've ever seen a news report where police are trying to pry some armed and antagonistic folk out of their home, then you know what this story involves. There's some intermittent excitement as one side or the other makes its move, but it's mostly just a siege. And people sitting on either side of a wall, waiting for the other to make a mistake, doesnt exactly make for exciting reading. There's no drama and the tension never rises above tepid.
As if that's not bad enough, I just couldn't understand why this happened in the first place. The more the book goes on, the more of a Bastard Hatter proves himself, but he's supposed to at least be intelligent. Helping the squatters relocate could surely have been cheaper than hiring mercenaries to drive them out, and it would have avoiuded anyt inquiries as to why he wanted the property. There would be zereo unwanted attention, and it could even have been spun into positive PR for his company as a humanitarian gesture. Corporate types in Shadowrun stories are loathe to give up money, to be sure, but they can do a cost-benefit analysis as well as anybody else.
All in all, A Fistful of Data comes across to me as sloppy, lazy writing. Characters act against their supposed intelligence or interests in order to generate a plot, and Dedman makes several elementary errors throughout the course of the novel. Mistakes like gratuitous flashbacks and losing track of who is speaking in a conversation. The cast on each side of the standoff was abnormally large, as well; I had a hard time keeping track of who was on each side, as well as what their specialities and even their races were. But worst of all is how the story manages to reach a good simmer but never boils over, or even comes close. This is a slow, confusing volume, without even the redeming factor of changing the setting's rules like Dunkelzahn's death or the Chicago disaster did. As such, there's no real reason not to skip this one, and I heartily recommend you do so.
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