The Forever Drug (Shadowrun, No 37)

Rating:
Summary: Good Plot. Needed better writing & better char. portrayals.
Review: I enjoy reading about Shadowrun Novels that take place in cities other than Seattle (though Seattle is VERY exciting!). I felt the general idea of this novel is a good one and was captivated by it. I also was curious to see how a Wolf Shapeshifter could possibly be integrated into a structured organization like Lone Star.

The main character had a lot of potential and so did some of the secondary characters (like Dass), and I was saddened at the end when the main character suffered the same 'memory loss' as the woman he was trying to help and was so loyal to. That was really good.

Lofwyr showing up at the end actually DID seem plausible to me in the sense that what Mareth'riel and Romulus were involved in was very secretive and involved some VERY powerful individuals. And the tie-in to Tir Tarngire makes Lofwyr's involvement more plausable since he is a Prince of Tir Tairngire. Lisa Smedman did do a good job in conveying Romulus' loayalty to Mareth'riel - which added to the tragedy of the ending, for me at least.

What the book lacked was a good flow in writing - the mechanics. It was comparable to riding in a lurching car with the driver learning how to drive stick-shift and failing miserably! Very distracting. There were many ways Lisa Smedman could have re-worded her sentences to make them flow better and incorporate the characters' discriptions, attitudes and perceptions into the flow of the book in a more effective and interesting manner.

Also, the main character, Romulous, was WAY too tame. He was supposed to be a WOLF SHAPESHIFTER, not a German Shephard Shapeshifter! His situations and behavior were SO watered down, they simply weren't believable! I would figure that he would have had a MUCH harder time assimilating into (meta)human society to get to his current status as it is portrayed in this novel. Also, that Lone Star would have had to excercise more control over him to keep him in check.

And, enough with the 'frig'! It's clearly frag. I kept trying to convince myself that it was an accent-thing for that partof the UCAS, but I didn't believe me. It came off like a typo, or like an editor who had tried to invent new Shadowrun jargon. In either case, it simply didn't work for me.

By and large, despite the drawbacks of this novel, I liked it and I'd like to see a continuation with the main character because he has a lot of potential for further development, but these future books need to be written in a MUCH better fashion to do justice to the events and the characters.

Rating:
Summary: Most annoying Shadowrun novel I've read.
Review: I started out realy enjoying this book despite it being centred around yet another LoneStar Cop Romulus is a good character stuggeling to do the right thing evan though he over matched be just about everyone in the book. The Story moves you along Ok despite some obvious "why don't they just" On the whole until the ending its a good lite read not in the same league a any of Lisa Smedmans work but fun The real Problem I have with this book is ending it does not have one and unless this is the stangest lead to a sequal I have ever seen I cant imagine what happened.

Rating:
Summary: A nice try
Review: I started out realy enjoying this book despite it being centred around yet another LoneStar Cop Romulus is a good character stuggeling to do the right thing evan though he over matched be just about everyone in the book. The Story moves you along Ok despite some obvious "why don't they just" On the whole until the ending its a good lite read not in the same league a any of Lisa Smedmans work but fun The real Problem I have with this book is ending it does not have one and unless this is the stangest lead to a sequal I have ever seen I cant imagine what happened.

Rating:
Summary: Most annoying Shadowrun novel I've read.
Review: To start off, I was wrong. I read the previous reader's reviews for this book before picking it up. I had a couple of Smedman's previous SR novels (The Lucifer Deck & Psychotrope), and found them enjoyable enough (if not great works of literature). My initial intention was to read the book, then point out it's good points - believing that Smedman probably was being unfairly/overly criticized for this one. But, having read the novel now, I must admit the previous reviewers were correct. This is a bad book, its substance overwhelmed by the writer's need to score political points unrelated to the storyline.

"A reader from USA" is correct about the main character. To give credit where credit is due, Smedman was trying to capture the mindset of an "inhuman" character, and make it unlike the outlook of (meta)humanity. But this effort largely fails (I'm not sure Lisa Smedman has ever had a dog - her Cat Shamam in The Lucifer Deck is more plausably feline than her Canine Romulus).

In addition to some minor, but highly distracting annoyances, the novel's ending is in my opinion weakened by two things: one, the introduction of a un-entertaining "terrorism" subplot involving an Amerindian takover of Prince Edward Island, which serves no apparant purpose to the plotline and is just an expression of her antipathies. The other is an appearance by the Great Dragon Lofwyr which I must say is the most inept, heavyhanded use of this re-occuring SR character that I've seen. I guess his role is to provide the nessissary backstory explaination that Smedman could not weave into the storyline because she spent too much time on the wholely unrelated P.E.I. sidestory/distraction - the ending could have been much stronger had she kept her idiosyncratic preferences in check. Note to Mike Mulvihill: next time please, please let Lisa set her novel somewhere in the NAN - she'll clearly be much happier that way, and thus the story will be more enjoyable for the readers as well. It's about time something get set in Ute or Sioux anyhow.