What do you think?
Rate this book
Shadowrun Novels #45
Aftershock
The year is 2063. Earth has been reborn, unleashing long-dormant magical forces across the globe. Megacorporations rule from on high, while organized crime syndicates rule the underworld. Sliding through the cracks are the shadowrunners - professionals who will do anything for a profit... and anything it takes to get the job done.
Breaking into a greenhouse to snatch a bunch of plants sounds like a milk run - and the troll known as Hood and his fellow shadowrunners have no problem taking on such an easy, lucrative assignment. Unfortunately for the runners, the greenhouse in question is owned by the Plantech Corporation - biotechnology specialists - and they're extremely protective of their unique agriculture.
After escaping by the skin of their teeth, the members of Hood's team feel justified in forcing their mysterious client to renegotiate their fee before delivering the goods. But when the shadowrunners arrive at the meeting, they find a dead body and a cadre of cops waiting to take them in. Someone has set them up - and Hood is determined to weed out what kinds of plants they really stole...
Breaking into a greenhouse to snatch a bunch of plants sounds like a milk run - and the troll known as Hood and his fellow shadowrunners have no problem taking on such an easy, lucrative assignment. Unfortunately for the runners, the greenhouse in question is owned by the Plantech Corporation - biotechnology specialists - and they're extremely protective of their unique agriculture.
After escaping by the skin of their teeth, the members of Hood's team feel justified in forcing their mysterious client to renegotiate their fee before delivering the goods. But when the shadowrunners arrive at the meeting, they find a dead body and a cadre of cops waiting to take them in. Someone has set them up - and Hood is determined to weed out what kinds of plants they really stole...
304 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 5, 2006
6 people are currently reading
171 people want to read
About the author
Jean Rabe
221 books156 followersWhen I am not writing, I toss tennis balls to my cadre of dogs. My house is filled with books and dogs, you can smell both when you walk in the front door. It's a good smell.
I have 36 published novels and am currently writing in the mystery genre. My latest mystery, The Dead of Winter, was a finalist for the Claymore Award and is the first in the Piper Blackwell series.
I live in a tiny town in the middle of Illinois that has a Dollar General, a pizza place with exceedingly slow service, a veterinarian (good thing, eh?), and train tracks...lots of train tracks.
I have 36 published novels and am currently writing in the mystery genre. My latest mystery, The Dead of Winter, was a finalist for the Claymore Award and is the first in the Piper Blackwell series.
I live in a tiny town in the middle of Illinois that has a Dollar General, a pizza place with exceedingly slow service, a veterinarian (good thing, eh?), and train tracks...lots of train tracks.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 18, 2023
TL;DR: If someone ends up making a movie from the Shadowrun-universe, it'll be this book. A non-stop action-adventure "thriller". Definitely worth a read if you're after some escapist fiction.
TL: Aftershock (and I'm not sure why it's called that, now that I come to think about it) is pure action film from the opening scenes! A mysterious gentleman arrives on a plane for...reasons...at which point we violently shuffle to a Mission Impossible-style heist in progress and meet the main protagonists of the story. Hood, Khase, Sindje and Max (troll, elf, elf and orc respectively) are a runner team, just embarking on a "milk run" plant-heist, but doing so in epic style.
Chapter One's subtitle is "9/17/2070, 2:50 a.m." (sigh, stupid date formats persist into the future apparently - Changeling or 2XS, and I think it's definitely one of the better Shadowrun tales I've read so far! I do wonder if I enjoyed it more just because of the pacing and the fact that it's publication date is contemporaneous to my general reading cohort though... Whatever! I gave it 4 because I did "really like it" (and because 3.5 isn't an option 😉)!
Oh, one more thing. This book has very clearly been OCR'd and did not get a proof-reading before release. There are horrific mistakes littered throughout. A Google Search for "i'lantech security men" yields one of many obvious errors, but they're mostly pretty easy to work out and get past without breaking the reading flow.
OK quit now if you've not read the book yet!
**Spoilerishness Beyond This Point**
I thought that I was reading the series in order, and I blindly copied down this list, and assumed that there was a good reason that I'd jumped over a significant portion of the books published between Changeling (published in 1992) and Aftershock (from 2006). I'm not sure what that reason might be, but there's one interesting plot theme that connects these list-neighbours, and possibly that's why I enjoyed Aftershock so much? It's really taking some of the meta-race-tropes and turning them on their heads and the characters of Hood and Peter Clarris have some very definite similarities, that I quite enjoyed (although as mentioned above, the attempts at portraying/hinting at Hood's intelligence are quite ham-fisted and disconnected enough from each other to not really help smooth that out.
The characters are the second major high-point for this book. The story is definitely a lot of fun, but it's peopled by a bunch of folks who all have (quite stereotypical) Reasons for doing what they do. Our intrepid Runners are an interesting bunch of action heroes (mostly only Hood is really fleshed out) but the supporting cast were mostly all quite fun too!
In every other book I've read so far Lone Star has just been the lowest-tier security service (the corp that replaced the government police) that deals with all the fallout from the internecine wars that the other corps participate in. This time around we get an eye into Lone Stars lowest-levels, joining Seattle beat-cops Seargent Jhones Redrock and Officer Simon Chays: a very Hollywood pairing of world-weary old-timer and wet-behind the ears noob, both with a secret to hide.
Likewise, the Plantech crew who are valiantly striving to retrieve their plants before their corp sinks beneath the machinating waves are given a good background veneer of why they're doing what they're doing. It's not super-complex, but I enjoyed the fact that there's not really any "baddie" per-se, just everyone trying to eke out their little piece of dystopia. Except Belver Serra. She, obviously, is a baddie. But she's such a terrible stereotypical Corrupt Corporate Executive that it's very hard to take her seriously, even when she's busy murderising people.
TL: Aftershock (and I'm not sure why it's called that, now that I come to think about it) is pure action film from the opening scenes! A mysterious gentleman arrives on a plane for...reasons...at which point we violently shuffle to a Mission Impossible-style heist in progress and meet the main protagonists of the story. Hood, Khase, Sindje and Max (troll, elf, elf and orc respectively) are a runner team, just embarking on a "milk run" plant-heist, but doing so in epic style.
Chapter One's subtitle is "9/17/2070, 2:50 a.m." (sigh, stupid date formats persist into the future apparently - Changeling or 2XS, and I think it's definitely one of the better Shadowrun tales I've read so far! I do wonder if I enjoyed it more just because of the pacing and the fact that it's publication date is contemporaneous to my general reading cohort though... Whatever! I gave it 4 because I did "really like it" (and because 3.5 isn't an option 😉)!
Oh, one more thing. This book has very clearly been OCR'd and did not get a proof-reading before release. There are horrific mistakes littered throughout. A Google Search for "i'lantech security men" yields one of many obvious errors, but they're mostly pretty easy to work out and get past without breaking the reading flow.
OK quit now if you've not read the book yet!
**Spoilerishness Beyond This Point**
I thought that I was reading the series in order, and I blindly copied down this list, and assumed that there was a good reason that I'd jumped over a significant portion of the books published between Changeling (published in 1992) and Aftershock (from 2006). I'm not sure what that reason might be, but there's one interesting plot theme that connects these list-neighbours, and possibly that's why I enjoyed Aftershock so much? It's really taking some of the meta-race-tropes and turning them on their heads and the characters of Hood and Peter Clarris have some very definite similarities, that I quite enjoyed (although as mentioned above, the attempts at portraying/hinting at Hood's intelligence are quite ham-fisted and disconnected enough from each other to not really help smooth that out.
The characters are the second major high-point for this book. The story is definitely a lot of fun, but it's peopled by a bunch of folks who all have (quite stereotypical) Reasons for doing what they do. Our intrepid Runners are an interesting bunch of action heroes (mostly only Hood is really fleshed out) but the supporting cast were mostly all quite fun too!
In every other book I've read so far Lone Star has just been the lowest-tier security service (the corp that replaced the government police) that deals with all the fallout from the internecine wars that the other corps participate in. This time around we get an eye into Lone Stars lowest-levels, joining Seattle beat-cops Seargent Jhones Redrock and Officer Simon Chays: a very Hollywood pairing of world-weary old-timer and wet-behind the ears noob, both with a secret to hide.
Likewise, the Plantech crew who are valiantly striving to retrieve their plants before their corp sinks beneath the machinating waves are given a good background veneer of why they're doing what they're doing. It's not super-complex, but I enjoyed the fact that there's not really any "baddie" per-se, just everyone trying to eke out their little piece of dystopia. Except Belver Serra. She, obviously, is a baddie. But she's such a terrible stereotypical Corrupt Corporate Executive that it's very hard to take her seriously, even when she's busy murderising people.
October 16, 2018
This is the fifth Shadowrun book in the WizKids line and to be frankly honest I was concerned for the first few chapters. It seemed too easy. Four "hotshot" Shadowrunners grab up a bunch of plants on a fraggin' milk run (to use Max's own words) and then they are just waiting to get a meeting with their Johnson to get paid.
Then the book goes off the rails wonderfully. The personality and desires of each of the four main characters (and a few sub characters to boot) gets revealed and from then on we are deeply vested in the outcome of the book. I personally loved Max's and Hood's characters but honestly could care less about the elves Khase and Sindje. But regardless of likes and dislikes, all four of them get a wonderfully complete arch for the reader to enjoy.
There were two really awesome things I thought this book did. One, a Shadowrun book has finally gave us an intimate subplot involving Lone Star in the form of one Sergeant Jhones Redrock. No longer are they just some plot vehicle to give chase to Shadowrunners and get beat up, now they have thoughts, feelings, and misgivings. A real story and one that I would really like to see make it into a main-plot for Shadowrun one of these days.
Second, I love the concept of throwing in an authentic retro Movie theater as a set piece for a good part of the book. Naturally I don't want to give anything away but coming from somebody who has often used film and theaters in his short stories, it always makes me smile. The references of actual movies is much appreciated and helps link the story to the real world.
I heartily recommend this book as probably my favorite in the Wizkids line. It's full of action from the outset and really delves into motivation and character in the middle before delivering a blistering finale. Be sure to pick this one up by whatever means necessary or else you might be saying "Frag Frag Frag" to yourself for the immediate future. Enjoy.
Then the book goes off the rails wonderfully. The personality and desires of each of the four main characters (and a few sub characters to boot) gets revealed and from then on we are deeply vested in the outcome of the book. I personally loved Max's and Hood's characters but honestly could care less about the elves Khase and Sindje. But regardless of likes and dislikes, all four of them get a wonderfully complete arch for the reader to enjoy.
There were two really awesome things I thought this book did. One, a Shadowrun book has finally gave us an intimate subplot involving Lone Star in the form of one Sergeant Jhones Redrock. No longer are they just some plot vehicle to give chase to Shadowrunners and get beat up, now they have thoughts, feelings, and misgivings. A real story and one that I would really like to see make it into a main-plot for Shadowrun one of these days.
Second, I love the concept of throwing in an authentic retro Movie theater as a set piece for a good part of the book. Naturally I don't want to give anything away but coming from somebody who has often used film and theaters in his short stories, it always makes me smile. The references of actual movies is much appreciated and helps link the story to the real world.
I heartily recommend this book as probably my favorite in the Wizkids line. It's full of action from the outset and really delves into motivation and character in the middle before delivering a blistering finale. Be sure to pick this one up by whatever means necessary or else you might be saying "Frag Frag Frag" to yourself for the immediate future. Enjoy.
January 4, 2014
one of the best Shadowrun novels ever!
June 29, 2014
Another great adventure in the 5th age... I really need to find the rest of this revamped novelisation of ShadowRun.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews