You will excuse me if I take Cain's review with a grain of salt. Maybe two.

It's not about a positive or negative review. I don't mind critical reviews--there's a useful nugget of truth in them usually. In this case, though, my past experience with the reviewer leads me to think he might be too attached to previous editions to be fair with the new books.

Ooh. Makes me want to run in Seattle.

That's why any setting I've ever wanted to write about was specific to places where I've actually lived for a while.

Well, considering that he has high praises for most of the book regardless of its edition, I think you're assuming something that's not there.

Or it could be sour grapes because Seattle was the one setting he didn't seem eager to gush over.

*shrugs*

See this? This is why I have no respect for the current crop of SR authors.

Pretty much.

And I'm sorry if no author had the sense to see that the Tir could function as a magic-based economy. Well, one did. But he died and somehow he is both the greatest thing ever for SR, and completely batshit insane and/or stupid.

I'll agree all past canon says they could slaughter any of their subjects they could get their hands on. But what would that accomplish? They don't want to be slave masters running around putting down rebellions, they want to guide and control a society of millions. That only works as long as everyone more or less agrees to play by your rules or you've got the solid backing of a minority with the majority of firepower and a willingness to use it.

The source material gave us a few points of increasing tension in the Tir timeline. There was minor unrest in Tir Tairngire; paranoid police state in Dunkelzahn; open and growing rebellion in SoNA. That's the society as a whole. As far as the princes themselves, they lost in succession Ehran, Oakforest, and Lofwyr, showing some serious lack of internal cohesion and joint purposes.

An overthrow of the autocracy isn't that unbelievable from those facts unless you assume the Princes wanted to and could have set up concentration camps and mass slaughter. And then the Tir becomes an elven third world shit hole. What price power then when you've got all of the time to disappear, pick a new identity, manipulate things from behind the scenes, or just start over in a new sphere like Ehran apparently did?

I figure a dozen immortal elves can rule a dozen square miles with an iron fist (and Iron Age development), no problem. Anything more requires a bit of cooperation from those they would seek to rule. Now, it may be that the specifics of the transition, when we get them, are entirely retarded. But the general path of the Tir and end result are not at all implausible.

(I'm mystified by the magical economy comment, btw. The main products of mages in Shadowrun are security (from mages!), theft, and magical good for mages. You've got your botique uses like healing and truth detection, but they can't do a damn thing for production of goods and can barely scratch necessary services. Base an economy on what is economically a fairly useless talent that only 1% have? Maybe the Africans can rise from poverty by basing their economy on tallness...)

That depends on how much importance you attach to a young nation with blatant racist policies, suicidal economic isolationist policies, and an un-elected junta for leaders. Within the leeway of canon (written from an IC perspective as it is), it's quite easy to say that the difference between Tir and a Third World nation is some good PR and pointy ears.

From that point of view, I don't think it's such a big deal to have Tir's junta abdicate. It's just par for the course.

Of course, if you prefer to put Tir up on a pedestal, YMMV.

The other authors probably read the parts of SR that said "magic is rare and 99% of the population can't use it." It's a poor economic policy to base an economy around something that only 1% of the population can utilize. Technology, OTOH, can be taught to anyone.

Read the conclusion:

I'm sorry, but even with his positive opinion of HK, I hardly see this conclusion as praise.

...meet the new boss

...same as the old boss

A plausible explanation for me, though I have my own take on the scene (no spoilers).

Those wacky elves, always up to something and where the TT is concerned, usually that something is no good.

No, it retconned an entirely new and huge deal into the Tir that there wasn't even the slightest inkling of before with the Rinelle. And it was complete bullshit.

Likewise, the Tir had more than 1% of their population magically-active.

The thing about IEs is that the other Immortals and their little dramas are more than enough to keep them in check. It's like Vampire:The Masquerade where the absurdly powerful vampires are too caught up in their own petty politics and infighting to reduce all humanity to being cattle.
IEs are, for the most part, characters out of a bad supernatural Soap Opera, like Passions. They've got epic romance, ancient rivalries, and mind boggling idiocy. That is, when they aren't being completely mysterious. The same is true of dragons, although they aren't quite as bad about it.

I'm not at all surprised that a government composed mostly of IEs and GDs would fall apart just like I wouldn't be at all surprised if a government composed mostly of Siamese fighting fish collapsed. What I am surprised at is the fact that that they were able to restrain themselves from killing each other. As it is, only their mortal proxies and pawns suffered permenant damage.

Page 108. "Hooks" number two. Don't blink, or you'll miss it.

How active, then? 30%? 50%? 100%? Are there enough magic users to fill in all the required positions of an magical economy competitive with a SR technological economy?

Well, the Tir was about 85% elven 15 years ago in game time, so it wouldn't be lesser races, but more probably lesser social ranks of elves. And even some of the higher ranks had reasons to be pissed off, like the prince (rank, not Council) whose son got screwed in the Rite of Progression for political reasons.

Of course, the supposed implausibility of a grassroots rebellions/massive social change depends on whether it was really grassroots. Since this is Shadowrun, I think we can obviously rule out the possibility of corporate/Aztechnology/Great Dragon/Tir Nan Og/unaffiliated IE involvement behind the scenes...