Shadowrun: Never Deal with a Dragon

I never played the RPG, but I was always intrigued by it. Especially because it is so embedded in hacker culture.

So I decided to start with the novels to see what it's all about, since I don't plan to start with the game. I didn't have too many expectations.

The novel is decently written, with a fun but somehow unnecessarily convoluted plot. It is more or less exactly what I was expecting. What's not to like about a dystopian corporate-driven tech-world with magic?

I will read more of the novels, I'm pretty sure. It's fun.

After all these years, Shadowrun is still the perfect combination. Cyberpunk and fantasy, it can't get any better. Sure, some of the tech is a bit dated, even 30 years before the story is set. But still, these books will always be special to me.

In this first book of a trilogy, we see a Western salariman working for Japanese megacorp Renraku fall from grace and his transformation to a Shadowrunner who doesn't shy away from dealing with dragons. We get magic, tech, and glimpses into a world that has seen the appearance of magic and it's associated creatures (like the aforementioned dragons). If that sounds like your thing, give this book a try!

A decent intro to Shadowrun, but I was left wanting more. The book was also a little dense for my tastes in Genre fiction. Not a bad read, but this novel shows its age and the progression of the genre/setting and style.