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Technobabel | Rating | |
| B | |||
| Stephen Kenson | |||
| 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 | ||
Renraku has been a AAA corporation for years. But recently Renraku's market share has been growing in enormous leaps and bounds, cutting into other corps' profits. Now Fuchi is taking the matter before the Corporate Court, claiming that Renraku is stealing their secrets instead of making them from their own research. The case could result in severe sanctions against Renraku - if Fuchi can prove its case. And meanwhile, a decker awakens in an Boston alleyway with no memory of who he is. His knowledge will be critical to the case - but in whose favor?
This book is almost unique in the series. Few others give such an intimate look at the dealings in the uppermost tier of the megacorps. A few have brushed against them, and sseveral show the middle ranks, but this one goes into detail at a level we rarely see. Just getting a peek at Renraku's board meetings is intriguing, but there is also the Corporate Court itself. The entity was introduced in Findley's Shadowplay, but there it was just a faceless, monolithic entity passing judgement from on high. Here we get a first-hand look at the goings-on in Zurich Orbital.
This is primarily a story of intrigue. Thrusts and counterthrusts in the game of corporate dominance, to be sure, but also an even larger field of play. Fuschi and Renraku are not the only players, either, not by a long shot. Other corps and influential entities will have their input as well. And there is always Babel to consider.
Yet it includes a generous portion of mystery, as well. Exactly what is Babel's role in this little feud? What is his real identity? Is he an agent for Fuchi or Renraku, or will the loss of his memory shatter all his loyalties and allegiences? And what would he do then? The possibilities are intriguing.
Babel's segments are among the more interesting of the book, particularly in the first half. For one thing, they are written in first-person present tense. It's an odd choice, but a wise one. It gives the text an immediacy and familiarity that the rest of the book lacks. Readers wil instantly identify with him. It makes sense in another way, as well, one that is revealed halfway through.
The book does have a few flaws, unfortunately. The entire plot depends on the idea that it is necessary for regular deckers to use a cyberdeck to access the Matrix and interpret the computer imagery. But in one scene of Choose Your Enemies Carefully, Dodger does exactly that. He called it "running naked," and while it was described as something for the very skilled, it was hardly unknown. Personally, I like the explanations here better, and Dodger's feat is easily ignored. But it is an irritating conflict.
I was also a bit dismayed bt rhe author's choice to mix Babel's segments with the others. At least at first. Normally this sort of thing isn't a problem at all; it lets the reader jump between several plot threads happening simultaneously. But these threads aren't happening at the same time. They can't be. Babel's account talks of days and weeks passing, but events in the Corporate Court take place over a few hours. At first I thought this was a grievous error on Kenson's part, but eventually the explanation was revealed and it became an example of truly clever writing.
So both of these problems are, in fact, not really problems at all. But one other is not. I found the ending extremely irritating. Check that; it poissed me off. The last two chapters rewrite important details of Black Madonna It twists at least two things in that novel so that what we thought had happened, what we'd been told had happened, wasn't really what was going on. Worse, it entirely negates all the changes to the Shadowrun setting that book set in motion, or at least allowed. After Technobabel, Black Madonna might as well never have happened. Instead of letting the setting evolve and change like the real world, everything returns to the status quo.
By and large, the book is good. Perhaps even excellent, a few niggling details aside. But the ending hurts the book terribly. Worse, in my opinion, it hurts the setting as a whole. While I respect Kenson's writing ability, I feel he made some very bad choices, there.
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