| From: | "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | shall I call this a review of Just Compensation? |
| Date: | Sat, 20 Jan 1996 10:29:19 +0100 |
local bookstores here had since House Of The Sun came out.
It's written by Robert Charrette and will set you back US$4.99, which
seems to mean that [economics observation mode on] a dollar in a bookstore
is worth about half what a bank pays for it... [EOM off]
At any rate the book is well-written, a lot better than, for example, Bug
City was IMHO. I didn't find the plot to be not too transparent or
predictable, although there is the "coincidence" issue that bothers me a
lot with fiction -- you know, when a lot of people either happen to be in
the same place at the same time every time, or when all kinds of unlikely
people know each other without any apparent connections. The first of
these doesn't really happen all that much in the book (just once, really),
but the second seems to dominate a large part of the end of the story.
Now, if you haven't read it yet and don't want any spoilers, I'd advise
hitting the "next message" button at this point.
You can still turn back if you want...
Still with me? Okay, here goes...
Like a good number of previous SR books, it's about a shadowrunner-wannabe
getting involved in something that goes way over his head, all the way up
to the top management of the UCAS, in fact.
The novel is set in mid to late August 2055, and has nothing to do with
Bug City, at least not directly. The main character works for Telestrian
Industries East (yep, a subsidiary of the Tir Tairngire corp) and gets in
a bit of trouble when some shadowrunners drop in on his test drive of a
new vehicle they're designing. From one thing comes another and he's
forced to fake his own death before getting involved in a wide-ranging
conspiracy involving Telestrian, a general in the UCAS Army, the governor
of North Virginia (which wants to join the CAS), CAS Marines, his
half-brother (who's a Major in the UCAS Army), the aforementioned
shadowrunners, a UCAS Army mage, and the Compensation Army.
This last thing is something that has a good deal of impact on anyone
running a game in Washington DC, seeing that it's basically a mass of
people camping in a shantytown outside the city. They've come there to get
the compensation they were promised when the NAN were formed and they had
to leave their homes.
The UCAS Army general I mentioned (a man by the name of Trahn) wants to
get the Army back to the kind of organization it was about 50 years
earlier, and tries to take advantage of the crisis in DC to do this. Most
of the Army is camped outside Chicago when he makes his move; lots of
civilians get killed because of his plans, but is not something he worries
about. Most of the Army is not exactly pleased with having to work with
continuing cutbacks on their budget, magicians, metahumans, and anything
else the Sixth World has brought up.
Due to machinations by the general and the CAS Marines (who want to stir
up a riot in DC because this will distract the UCAS Army, so the CAS Army
can move into North Virginia), riots break out in late August, just after
Bug City happens...
In the end, however, everything lands on its feet and the UCAS is saved
from the power-mad General Trahn by the main character, the half-brother,
and the shadowrunners, when the General makes a last-ditch attempt to
overthrow the government.
All this doesn't really seem to be a coherent summary of the plot, does
it? Oh well, I think it will give us some things to discuss, won't it? :)
--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
So wasteful. So foolish.
-> NERPS Project Leader & Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
-> The Character Mortuary: http://huizen.dds.nl/~mortuary/mortuary.html <-
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