Let's make a review.
Shadows in Focus: Sioux Nation is a PDF product of 39 pages, written by a single author, Kenneth "Tzeentch" Peters.
It covers geography, climate, some magical sites, transportation, main cities (three really short sections on Cheyenne, Billings, and Rapid City), local culture, government, law enforcement, armed forces, corporation and the underworld of the Sioux nation. It covers everything that was previously covered in the dozen of pages of
Native American Nations volume 1 and
Shadows of North America. As each had a different approach as to how to cover a country, basically half of the book are "only" updates. After twenty five years, that has to be expected with Shadowrun, but the fact shouldn't be overlooked: if you already have those books,
SF:SN will feel a tad short in some departments.
Moreover, I had the feeling the author gave varied levels of fuck. There were things he clearly wanted to write on the Sioux Nation, and others were he paid little more than lip service. I'm glad to finally get the list of the government bureaus, but I was kinda disappointed not to see the name of a single incumbent politician to use as a NPC (overall, the number of NPC is fairly low, most of them returning from other sourcebooks).
As far as I can tell, what he really wanted to write was about the Sioux culture, regarding the military, firearms, or Howling Coyote legacy as a founding father (I'm not sure if it's a mistake, but the fact he hailed from the Ute tribe is never mentioned). The Game Information also features a novel idea, with a lengthy section on how to give each PC archetype a local flavor.
It also sneaks some retcon, like distancing itself from the old tribal breakdown to suggest it is more a matter of administrative registering than actual lineage (at least that's how I understood it, but it also happens to be an idea I tossed around, so maybe there's a confirmation bias). It is also stated the Sioux hasn't ratified the Business Recognition Accords (as a result of
this discussion I think - I do have a different interpretation of what the BRA imply, and what refusing to ratify them should imply, like the Corporate not granting a license to mint physical nuyen for instance). If it wasn't for Ares, MCT running a prison from
SOTA:2064 and some mentions of Shiawase, there would be nothing to remind you the Big Ten are a thing.
SF:SN aims to make the Sioux nation a stand-alone usable setting, something location background sometimes forget to do (Shadowrun had in the past a thing for dedicating entire sourcebooks to country with paranoid totalitarian governments with over-the-top security forces that were essentially unplayable). And so it tries hard to justify it by distancing itself from the default Seattle setting, with the scenery, with the culture, with the local players. As I said above, Cheyenne got ascended to a 3 million metropolitan area, seemingly to make it a respectable location for shadowrunners to work (but maybe the new Cheyenne PDF does give a more elaborate explanation). By the way, the book completely omit the fact Cheyenne was the seat of the Sovereign Tribal Council of the NAN.
As I pointed out previously, there are a few mistakes, including some proper nouns who were replaced by a software or something I think ("Lone Star" instead of "Lone Eagle", "Aberdeen" instead of "Abilene").
Overall, a good sourcebook. Even more so for those who don't have the
NAN and
SoNA SB. But to use it to play only an adventure or two in the Sioux and support the NAN ex-military background of a player-character would be underusing the product. But on the other hand, I have yet to found what overarching theme could be the basis for a full campaign.