I'm kinda in the middle of this novel at the moment...now, I love the concept of it, and the fact that it's an all-metahuman team, and I don't want to bash the people who wrote it, but to be honest...I've got a lot of gripes about this one. For starters, it's a short book, but I still haven't finished it. Why? Because it's so hard to get into. Something about the writing style just doesn't draw me in the way Drops of Corruption, or the Kenson trilogy did. The action is detailed, but for some reason those details don't seem to flow...it feels more like I'm reading a list of things that happened rather than a story sometimes.

Also, while the story features an all-meta cast, it still feels like it's from a human perspective. Yes, the author is human, but the point of fiction writing is to make me believe in the protagonists. As it is, they all seem to be fairly flat as characters. They all pepper their dialogue with the same cliched bits of whatever "ethnic" heritage they have...the elves toss in a bit of gaelic, the dwarf cop tosses in a ridiculous amount of yiddish (he calls damn near everyong "boychik"...who does that?), and you always know when they're slipping into whatever "native tongue" they're supposed to be using, because it's in italics. The result reads as though the characters themselves are emphasizing everytime they call someone "boychik" or "tad". It's an incredibly irritating way to talk. Speaking of which, everyone, especially the ork, has a habit of repeating exclamations three times. "vut vut vut", "frag frag frag", "drek drek drek", "totalled totalled totalled"...it's a minor thing, but it's starting to get on my nerves as I read the story. And they do it constantly. I don't need to read "vut, vut, vut!" everytime the ork might be thinking it. And if she's going to whine about her van being trashed, she can do it without saying "totalled" like a billion times in the space of three pages.

Yes, it's good to see the lingo at work in fiction, but nobody talks like that. I'm from California. I, and many people I know, will throw in "like" into conversation. But we don't like, do it like, all the time, you know? It's like, we're not like going to talk like this because, like, that would be like totally annoying and we'd all like start totally like killing each other.

It's funny, since I almost skipped the new SR novels after the Kenson trilogy, because 7 bucks for such thin novels seemed like a rip-off, but the synopsis on the back of Aftershock convinced me to check out both books...as it was, I figured Aftershock would be the better of the two. After reading Drops of Corruption though, I found mysef pleasantly surprised (seriously, kudos to the author, if he's on here). The characters were likeable, they came off as believable characters, and there was still a flavor of Shadowrun in the book. Even though it was a very magic-centered story, the non-magical characters had their moments to shine, and everybody seemed more or less interesting.

But back to Aftershock. Again, I don't want to insult the authors at all; I appreciate the time and effort that went into writing this book. I'm a writer myself, and if you have a novel in stores, you're already way ahead of me career-wise. But as a reader, specifically a reader who really wanted to like this story (I love heist stories), I found this book to basically work against itself. What appears so far to be an excellent plot is being hamstrung by minor style issues that, in my opinion, could have been mitigated by more careful editing. There are also some spelling errors that the editor missed, but that's to be expected.

So, did anyone else read this? What did you think?

Haven't read it, haven't seen it, avoinding it like the mother in law now. thanks!

I agree, Aftershock left me a little flat as well. On the other hand I just finished A Fistful of Data and I was very impressed. The plot was definately Shadowrun-ny, but not typical, if you know what I mean. The way the author (Stephan Dedman) depicts accidents, mistakes and random chance screwing up even the best of intentions and good will was very interesting.

Agreed , I liked Drops very much. I only read the first two of Kenson's because, well, it wasn't so much the "beginner" feel of it, I jsut didn't care about the characters. I've read books before that I didn't really like the writing stlye or plot, just because of an interesting character. Those characters I jsut didn't care for. As you said, the cliched past I could do without as well. At least the main character didn't have amnesia, or was secretly a dragon or something. Well, not that I know of anyways. Never read the third one.

I was interested in FF of Data just from the title (not the cover, so that's ok ). Glad to hear that it's looking good.

The third one was good, better than Poison Agendas, IMO. It uses a *lot* of foreshadowing though, so much that the "villain" of the story is patently obvious to anyone from about the beginning of the book. But I honestly think this was intentional; the tension of the book is created because YOU know exactly who the bad guy is, but Kellan doesn't. People around her know who the villain is, but she doesn't. It's the book equivalent of watching a movie where you're screaming at the screen trying to get the dumbass with the flashlight to turn around, or maybe just run the hell out of the haunted house. The third book also finally explains the plot device of her amulet in a way that makes her seem much less "overpowered" as it were. And Lothan kinda "redeems" himself in her eyes, inasmuch as he does something that balances out holding out on her and the others in the first book. Ditto for Jackie Ozone, whose habit of playing both sides for Cross and her friends finally manages to save their bacon, rather than, say, nearly causing a terrorist attack on Seattle like it did in Poison Agendas.

Any word on whether there's a 6th book due out?

I actually read Aftershock and enjoyed it very much. More so than the Kenson intro-novels. Those just pissed me off. But back on subject. I think he had the orc decker/rigger cursing 3 times to emphasize her emotions/reaction to her various situations. If you spent 50k plus on your ride just to have it destroyed that same day, wouldn't you be a little pissed or distracted? I really liked the main character Hood but I didn't like the fact that he was an uber-archer troll of non-death. I understood after the ending but up until then it just erked me.

I'll have to re-read it as well as the new one but I can comment more after I re-read it.

Drops of Corruption was an excellent book. Definitely got you into the character and the story. I thought it was one of the best of the new book series. The tie in of Jackie Ozone with a more believable personality for a decker was pretty cool.

See, I understand wanting to emphasize Max's anger at having her ride wrecked on a milk run. She *should* be pissed off. But when all she does is mutter the same word over and over and over again, she comes off as more comical than pissed off. I couldn't take her anger seriously, and I can't get into any of the characters. The most interesting person is the elf adept, and he's about as cookie-cutter an adept as you'll find. I kind of feel like I'm reading the log of someone's game session.

Lemme just jump in quick to say this: I'm certain that each contributor to this thread is quite bright and extremely good looking. Sometimes you can just tell by the way people type, you know?

Thanks for the kind words about DoC!

Jason H.

How right you are!

JonC: Great, now I have to read the first one. Honestly I'm hoping that it redeems the first two and makes them better for having read the third. I may ask you for my $7 though if it doesn't.

Whiskey: What was it specifically that you liked about Aftershocks? I gotta say I'm one of those sad people that's very susceptible to advertising, good or bad. When the lady walks out of the bakery with a fresh loaf of frenchbread, I buy it. When the guy in the meat dpetsays over the comm that he's got "heck of a deal on shrimp" I buy shrimp. Did the plot work for you? Just click with the characters?

I'm not Whiskey, but what I liked about Aftershock was the pacing; the whole book takes place over something like a day or so, IIRC.

The runners are a bit A-Team, however, and that was almost too much at times.

The partial 4e-ization is kind of unintentionally amusing.

Overall, I thought it was okay. So far, I've liked Drops of Corruption the most of the new books. But I've been on a gritty/noirish reading kick lately.

I have enjoyed the new SR novels but they are not as good as the old ones. FF of Data is actually written in the SR3 world with deckers. It specifically states somewhere in the book that the date is in 2063 but the world is definetly SR3.

I mostly enjoyed the pacing of the book like coyote6 and the atmosphere. I mostly ignored the various language input just because it got rather annoying after awhile having to hear boychik and various splashes of gaelic or or'zet. I think the main reason I liked the book was because I just got done reading those stupid Kenson novels and it let a much better taste in my mouth post-read. The story was a little predictable, the characters one-sided, but at least the bad guy wasn't some evil, omnipotent megacorporation with gazillions of nuyen to spend on tracking down some plants. I liked how the author had the bad guy (if you call him that) be an actual person and not just some corporate stooge. He represented the other side of the streets, the legit side, and that's what I liked. I dislike novels where the bad guy (read mega-corp, magical cabal, etc.) is just a one-dimensional machine that must DESTROY THE RUNNERS AT ALL COSTS!!!!! It just jived better than those dumb Kenson books. God they sucked.

I've yet to read FFoD though. Looking forward to it.

Also, not to screw up how I judge Shadowrun novels but my 2 favorite, of the novels I've read so far, are Shadowboxer (I know, I know) and Headhunters. So, let that tell you something if you want