Shadowrun: Never Deal with a Dragon by Robert N. Charrette review

    NEVER DEAL WITH A DRAGON by Robert N. Charrette is the first Shadowrun novel and the first volume of the Secrets of Power trilogy. It is our first introduction to Shadowrun from the literary side of things and if you’ve never played the game, Shadowrun is a cyberpunk fantasy where magic returned to the Earth in 2012. Huge chunks of humanity were mutated into races like elves, dwarves, orcs, and trolls. If that sounds silly, it is. If that sounds awesome, it is. If you’re a person who loves “pure” cyberpunk and hate the sound of that, well, this isn’t the book for you.

    The premise is that Sam Verner is a white male human heterosexual religious protagonist, which is not a criticism but just a note that it’s somewhat noticeable in Shadowrun (as well as cyberpunk in general), that works as a programmer for the Japanese Renraku megacorp. His life is reasonably okay until his sister is transformed into an Ork and he immediately finds himself shunned by polite society. His wee gets worse as he’s sent to Seattle and the plane is hijacked by a group of Shadowrunners that he ends up accidentally befriending.

    I like the book’s mixture of magic and cyberpunk elements by never winking at the reader or commenting on how strange it is. By playing it straight, the book’s weirder elements have a chance to shine. Sam Verner is a guy who was raised by a fundamentalist who refused to acknowledge magic and tried to shield his children as much as possible from it. However, magic (and chaos) proceeds to find Sam even when he’s trying to live as lawful and orderly a world as possible.

    The depiction of Shadowrunners in the book is also interesting as we get to see them do some pretty awful things but show each other loyalty that you wouldn’t expect from hardened criminals. It felt very much like a tabletop RPG in that once you were accepted as a member of the “player characters” that they would go to elaborate lengths for one another.

    I like how the various plots and counter-plots in the book build up like a game of Vampire: The Masquerade. There’s several separate corporate conspiracies going on simultaneously with Sam Verner suspected to be at the bottom of them, ironically, because everyone believes no one can be as squeaky clean as him. This includes a plot by Mr. Drake who, shock of shocks, is actually a dragon. If I had any complaints, I would say that I didn’t like the handling of Sam Verner’s girlfriend who seems to exist solely to give him someone to avenge.

    This is a pretty entertaining book from beginning to end as I came to like all of the characters with Sally Tsung, Dodger, Ghost, and Ms. Crenshaw that are a great deal more interesting than the somewhat naive Sam Verner. There’s a lot of use of the signature characters from the 1st Edition Shadowrun sourcebook and I like when tabletop games take that attitude. The cross-pollination of tabletop games with the fiction is well done throughout the book.

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