First of all, I liked it. For a book-for-hire, there was a surprisingly deep plot and character development. The prose wasn't so great, though. First rule of writing an RPG novel: do not explicitly mention the game mechanics.

I just had a question about the plot, something that went right over my head. Near the end, why did Belver tell Jhones to go to the theatre? I understand that Belver didn't know Jhones wasn't loyal to her anymore, but why did she bother? Her security team was already ordered to retrieve the plants, and they probably could have handled it with or without Jhones. That plot hole bothers the crap out of me.

Ok, now I'm left hanging. What did the author say that brought game mechanics into the story? I'm stunned.

Woah! Was it like, "she fired her Ares Predator at the ork gangbanger resulting in 5P damage before rolling to her feet with a successful Gymnastics test"? That would be hilarious! And awful.

Well, the story felt extremely loyal to the rules. No character did anything that a Shadowrun character couldn't or wouldn't normally do. It made the fight scenes feel like the authors were rolling the dice to see what happened. And there were a lot of lines like:

"The adept jumped on the security guard, kicked him to the ground, then used conservation of momentum to propel himself into the air."
"The mage cast a stun bolt. An electric-blue ball flew out, knocking out everybody in a 10 meter radius."
"She wished the ork had taken stun damage instead of physical damage, because then she'd only need a stim pack instead of using her mana on a Heal spell."

Yes, the book made explicit references to numerous spells, and to stun and physical damage. And two professional authors worked on this.

If stuff like this doesn't make you vomit, then I'd recommend the book for a rainy afternoon.

The spell references aren't so bad but, yuck, the rest of that is. If it wasn't real it would sound like a spoof on a role-playing tie-in novel.

They could have been directed to treat it that way by the line developer. Hard to imagine it wasn't proscribed, unless the authors were somehow long-time SR players.

Spell names aren't so bad. Guns are named after all, why not spells?

Mr. Johnson: "I call her Matilda."

As for the rest... Yeah, with you guys. Good book despite that. Hopefully get some good stuff out of the new books coming up!

1 & 2...eh, I can stretch my belief for those descriptions. #3? Wowza. I hope that wasn't the line developer telling them to do such a thing

Th next book, A Fistful of Data is worse from the perspective of game mechanics being pretty bare. Out of curiosity, are there even cell-phones by this point in the continuity or have they been completely replaced by Commlinks? When exactly are these novels suppoused to be set? Could they even make use of cyber decks in the current set of novels?

Most D&D books don't have spell names. It's just, "He took out a pinch of bat guano and mumbled a few words. Suddenly, the bad guy's face was on fire." I think it's a little more natural than, "He cast a Fireball spell." Maybe it's just me.

All the recent novels take place sometime between 2063 and 2070. And no, nobody would use a cell phone. I don't think they'd even work anymore. I don't think cyber decks would work either, since the Matrix 1.0 is dead.

A commlink is little more than a souped-up cellphone. Why wouldn't anyone be using one, and why wouldn't anyone still use an old slang term for it? "Cellphone" rolls off the tongue a lot easier than "commlink" does.

The six Fanpro novels were the first ones I read in the SR universe (after picking up 4e a few years back). Books 1-4 (Born to Run, Poison Agendas, Fallen Angels and Drops of Corruption), and 6 (Fistful of Data) all take place in 2063 during 3ed, and 5 (Aftershock) for some reason takes place in 2070.

From what I heard, these novels were a mis-mash of characters and plotlines that aren't canon because they were promoting the Shadowrun: Duels game. The characters in the first 3 were described as the archetypes that show up in the color character section in the 3ed core book (ie; Troll mage, Covert Ops specialist, etc.). The 4th novel kind of takes a character or 2 and throws them into a new lot, and the last two really have nothing to do with the first 4 or the Duels game anymore.

As far as what I thought, books 1-3 were decent at painting a picture of the SR world for anyone who was too lazy to read life on the edge in the core book, and introduced the different elements of Shadowrunning, magic, and the matrix like they would to a child because the main character was a total noob. The 4th book was ho hum in my opinion but the end was good with the showdown in an abandoned suburban neighborhood. 5 was probably the closest to the game, and you're definitely right, it seems the authors meant it that way. A pet peeve of mine though is when players or authors mention 20th century pop culture in 2070 though as a cop out to provide detail into a character without actually coming up with something new. One of the players in my first game kept using direct anime references to series he was watching at the time like they'd be relevant 70 years in the future. It' be like one of us making references to Buster Keaton's movies like everybody knew what they were.

The sixth book wasn't bad, and I think the most well written. I liked the whole street level style and the playing on morals. It inspired me to try and create a gang level campaign that bombed horribly.

Hmmm, I don't remember it being that bad. But then again I tend to read too fast and sometimes just skim over paragraphs that seem to not have major story impact.
Definetly going to have to re-read it just to find those lines and see how bad it actually was lol.


Overall I liked the Fanpro books, I would say they're decent, but not the best I've read. For good reads I go back to my Original SR novels.

Cant wait for the new novels to start hitting the shelves though, I so want to see how they turn out.

Thanks for the heads up, I know what I'll be avoiding like the fragging plague. I threw out my copy of "Born to Run" or whatever that book was called after reading it (this coming from a bibliophile). If anyone needs me, I'll be reading my beat-up copy of Fade to Black with my friend Jack Daniels.

I'm still hunting for "Shadowplay", the first book I read for Shadowrun.

Very glad to hear the old books are being reprinted! If I read the chat right, that is.

That's just a question of the "show don't tell" rule of good writing. I'm a big fan of this rule, ask anybody whose adventure I've proofread. =i)

Perhaps they were responding to a reaction by many of the SR fiction readers that the stories weren't canon RAW enough. The Shadowrun Supplemental panned a lot of books because the characters did things that were downright silly.

I usually detest licensed property tie-in novels and Aftershock seems like a good example why. However, I'm curious enough about Catalyst's upcoming slate of in-canon novels to give the first one a shot. I'm hoping they'll answer some setting update questions I have.