Never Deal with a Dragon : Book Review
“Never deal with a Dragon” is the first in the Secrets of Power Trilogy. Someone once described Shadowrun as “Lord of the Rings” crossed with Neuromancer. I don’t think that’s far off the mark.
This novel builds upon the Shadowrun RPG, having the awakened world (orcs, trolls, elves, magic etc) thrust into a dystopic society of shadowrunners doing dirty work for Megacorps to survive. This story has all the raw ingredients, large japanese megacorp installing datajacks in their employees for better information manipulation, deckers, illegal workers (shadowrunners) and a bit of grit.
Summary:
Sam is a faithful Renraku employee who has a newly installed datajack. He awakes from this surgery to find his superiors have reassigned him to a different area, which is considered a demotion, and that his sister has undergone “The Change”. The Japanese culture are not tolerant to those who change to their new metatype (read mythical culture like elf, orc etc) and Renraku seemed to be hiding her from Sam.
Renraku are seemingly evasive on his requests to commuicate with this sister, a brush with some shadowrunners starts playing on his mind about how else he might be able to find her. But it doesn’t stop there, there are magicians, Dragons, Street Samurai, Artificial Intelligence, the Matrix and more.
Comments:
I consider this stuff kind of pulpy but an entertaining read, probably worth it just from escapism value and if your not familiar with Shadowrun RPG this will give you a fairly good idea.
Rating: 6.5/10