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Burning Bright | Rating | |
| A | |||
| Tom Dowd | |||
| 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 | ||
Kyle Teller's something of an oddity: an amerind mage. And he knows his business. So it isn't any big deal when he's hired to find a missing boy. Even if the missing boy happens heir to a fortune and a media empire. But this is no ordinary runaway, or even a kidnapping. Teller's investigations threaten to unleash a monstrous force upon all Chicago. If it gets loose, the city might become entirely uninhabitable.
At least, by humans.
I found Burning Bright to be one of the better books in the Shadowrun universe. Its gradual escalation of the presented threat is classic, while avoiding the cliches of 2XS. Kyle is also one of the more appealing protagonists. He's a bit more rounded than some of the past heroes. His personal history isn't as detailed as some, but he seems like a person, not some set of attributes and skills necessary to take on the challenge in front of him. There's also plenty of action as the adversary is revealed, and the last third of the book sets a whole new tone for a Shadowrun book.
If there's one thing that irritates me, it's that Dowd went out of his way to explain certain things about magic. But this is the fifteenth book in the series. Readers should know by now how things work. Those who play the game know even more. True, most of these novels are independant of each other, so it's conceivable that someone can pick up this novel to read first. Even so, this is irritatingly blatant explanation of simple matters.
All right, two irritating things. The other is that events as... momentous as the ones in these pages should have had a greater effect on the setting as a whole. But future books rarely even mention what happened here, much less get affected by it. It's not Dowd's fault, I shouldn't think, but this is the best place to voice this particular complaint.
This book, I'm given to understand, makes understanding certain Shadowrun sourcebooks, such as Bug City, much easier. I wouldn't know, since I've only browsed a few and that wasn't among them, and I've never actually played. But I certainly can see how it could be, so those who do might want to keep an out out for this. Even if you're just reading the novels, though, as I am, Burning Bright makes for very good, intense reading.
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