How did you like the Nyx Smith novels? I found that he's a very controversial author. You either hate or love him. I for one loved all his novels, the favorites being Fade to Black and Steel Rain, though the latter one feels like the ending was a bit rushed. I love his characters and how he uses and also expands the SR slang. Only Stackpole ever did anything similar.

And where/who is he? Is Nyx Smith a pseudonym for Bob Weller/Robert.C Weller? Did he write any other novels?

Did anybody read the following book? Does it even exist? (The description seems to fit for Fade to Black.)

Bust Out (Roc, 1994.)
A Shadowrun novel.
A group of friends team up to help a man escape a corporate contract that is tantamount to slavery.
(from this site)

Definitely Fisty's favorite author, Shadowrun or otherwise.

I don't like his novels. They're written in a style that I can't enjoy to read and the main characters of his books are uber-npcs with no personality and zero charisma.

That guys have charisma!

I fact, I really like the 80s movies.

I was thinking of Stryper. And Bandit simply sucks.

I'm not overly fond of Nyx Smith's books, and especially disliked Stryper Assassin. My favorite SR (and the other stuff he did) author is (was ) Nigel Findley.

I pretty much disliked anything with Stryper in it, but I was pretty surprised how much I liked Steel Rain.

Johnny--Bandit was a Grade SIX initiate. Rico ran a team of super mercs on a rampage through New Jersey. That can be rather uber compared to many protagonists of other SR books.
Nigel Findley is the man to read for good SR fiction. He'll be missed.

steel rain was a fun read, but she was definitely an uber-npc. Yadome-Jutsu against automatic weapons fire? please

Nigel Findley was my favorite, followed by whoever it was that wrote Nosferatu and Black Madonna.

I enjoy Stryper Assassin, although admitedly, I was fourteen years old and had never read or heard of Shadowrun before. I didn't even realize the novel was connected to the RPG I was introduced to years later until... years later.

I think I read the second one first and thought it was neat, but confusing. I'd have to reread it to say if it's a GOOD book, since initially I was caught up more on the universe of Shadowrun than anything. I believe I read the first one (where the cub is kidnapped? Or is that the second one?) and didn't think it was too bad. I think it takes a certain amount of raw testosterone to read, though.

The cub gets kidnapped in the second ook ("Who hunts the hunter" or something like that.)
In the first one, it is made. It's been too long to actually remember, but I think it involved graphic description of weresex.

What put me off the Stryper novels (especially the first one) is all that "badass tiger uberness".
"Ruthlessly, she put another bullet into the prey. That was the natural order of the world. She was the ruthless hunter, ruthlessly hunting the weak prey, because they are weak and no match for her primal, predatory ruthlessness. Another dead body falls to her feet, riddled with bullets from her ruthless primal submachine gun, manifesting her dominance over the weak prey. Did I mention she is totally ruthless and also super ice cold and a primal killing machine?!"
Kinda like that...

Please stop... it's "Striper", not "Stryper".

And Nosferatu and Black Madonna was written by Carl Sargent and Marc Gascoigne. I've just finished Nosferatu, and personally I was pleased when it was over, not one of the best SR novels IMO. Nigel Findley and Tom Dowd are my favourite SR authors.

Lars

Typing that "y" DID feel kind of awkward...

I personally didn't like the Striper books. I did like Bandit, but Striper herself always bugged me in much the same way Drizzt does.

The only books I really enjoyed reading were Mel Odom's Jack Skater books and Steve Kenson's Talon books. Neither were great writing, but they were enjoyable, and for the most part fit in with how I see Shadowrun in my head, and how I like to play Shadowrun.

I liked Into the Shadows. It was a good introduction to SR, and was something my original SR GM handed me when we started playing.

I liked Stackpole's Wolf and Raven stuff a lot too, though it really bares very little resemblance to SR in places. His Dark Conspiracy books were often closer in feel to SR than the W&R stories.

Beyond that, some of the other novels had neat characters or were ok, but none really stand out as "good". I kinda liked Jak Koke's first couple novels. Jason Hardy's novel was decent, though I really speed read through it, so I'll have to go back and digest it again to get a really good feel for it. Findlay's books were decent in places, but I've had trouble reading any of his work for a long time now.

Rereading the Secrets of Power trilogy a few years ago was... painful. I didn;t realize just how bad and hackneyed they were.

And the less said about anything Lisa Smedman wrote, the better

Oh, and Shadowboxer? Seriously, I want the 4 hours it took me to grind through that book back. I demand a refund.

Bull

They wrote novels?

Jason Hardy Drops of Corruption, I like it. Gives the raw feel that the 4th Ed wanted to bring to the world. Nigel's stuff was the best, and his characters a bit less uber than some of the rest. There were acoupla of others that I really liked, but I'd need to go through the shelf and look at them again.

Maybe I'll start rereading them since my collection is almost done. (yes, even the bad ones)

I put the Striper books on my SR-top list, right behind 2XS.

"Who hunts the huntress" has clear character motivations. Tikki is not only "leet" because of her abilities, but also acts like a super-intelligent animal. In that aspect she is much more interesting than any powerful human. Plus I like Bandit.

Sorry, here's a constructive post :

I like Tom Dowd, and I like Stackpole, mostly for the writing styles. They're fun. I also liked Lisa Smedman's books for her style. Not so much the content, as I didn't really much care about Romules the shaoe shifter, or the main character from Tails you Lose, but the story oer all was interesting, and the little details she puts in.

Skater and crew are my favorite SR crew, and I loved Hardy's Drops of Corruption, both for the obvious reason, and that it was just a cool and unique SR book, and trumpted all the other new ones. I also love Caroline Spector's books, especially Scars although it isn't exactly SR.

The ones I didn't mention I have nothing nice to say about. That's my 2 for what it's worth.

Nobody has mentioned Night's Pawn, which is my personal favorite.

My top 4 are Into the Shadows, 2XS, Shadowplay, and Burning Bright.

I hate Worlds Without End, everyone I have heard that likes it also likes Earthdawn, which I could care less about. I also dislike all the Sargent/Gasciogne novels.

Luckily, I am slow on my reading and still have the last 3 novels to read through, as well as 3 short stories here on dumpshock.

Dead Air is pretty good. It is not a traditional Shadowrun story in that the character are not Shadowrunners brought together by a Johnson for a run. But, be that as it may, it is a really good example of Shadowrun outside of that context, the sort of thing that might come up if you were to play characters from a different background-the sort of thing that they started having rules for in the later character supplements.

AFE

So since the thread already broadened into "which SR novels are good?", I have a question for the german members: Did you read any of the original german novels? Which ones did you like? I myself quite like Pesadillas by Maike Hallmann and it's followup Wiedergänger (engl: Revenant), but was quite underwhelmed with most of the others. I wonder if they will ever get translated into english...

How are the new line of english novels by Wizkids ? I read the first Kellan Colt novel in german and found it very dull. The others are still sitting on my bookrack unread.

There's nothing more charismatic than a mullet-donning, shotgun-wielding 'runner hopped up on machismo.

Yep, loved Fade to Black.

I managed to trudge my way through the Kellan Colt novels. Barely. They could have easily been combined into one novel, maybe 2 with a little more fluff. Those novels were basically there to introduce people to Shadowrun as well as sell Shadowrun Duels figurines. [Which is kinda odd since the figurines came out about a year or so before the novels and bombed so it doesn't make any sense] It was almost like an introductory course to Shadowrun novel writing but near the end it seemed to get better.

Of the new english SR novels, I would say Drops of Corruption was the best, followed by Fistful of Data (which was kinda corny) and then the Kellan Colt novels.

And contrary to Bull, I loved Shadowboxer. It was the first Shadowrun novel I read and I still re-read it occassionally just for the hell of it. I just loved the characters and the detail. I hated the plot and it took me about 5 times of reading through it to finally figure out WTF was up but I still enjoy it.

Night's Pawn was pretty good. The Forever Drug was strange. The Jack Slater books (Headhunters and Preying for Keeps, I think) were very good.

Thanks for the insight, update and brighten up the future.