Shadowrun: The Complete Frame Job

Shadowrun Novels #63

by John Helfers, Dylan Birtolo, Brooke Chang

FIVE RUNNERS. ONE JOB.

And a Whole Lot of Trouble...

It should have been a simple walk in the corp. Stroll into a mid-level corporation disguised as a nameless mid-level manager in a suit, deliver an unknown data package to an isolated network, and stroll out again.

But nothing is ever simple in the shadows.

Now five shadowrunners are on the run themselves. Framed by their employer, the mysterious Mr. Johnson, and marked for termination by every hired cop, corp security man, and shadowrunner in Seattle, the team must find out who set them up, why they did it, and figure out how to deliver their payback—without getting killed in the process.

The Complete Frame Job is the collected six-novella story set in the gritty, dark future, magic-and-machine world of Shadowrun.

Genres: Fiction

418 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 20, 2019

Reviews

[Oliver Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was never going to be an easy book to write. The idea is great—a novella for each of the starting characters in the new edition. Then tie them all together into one over-arching story. And the price of the collected novels makes this well worth a look.

There's a lot of good here. Characterisation, storyline, plot, writing, nuance.

So why not 5 stars?

The starter characters are designed to appeal to different people. The ninja, the mage, the tank and so forth. But it also means that some of them may not be your cup of tea. Someone who enjoys playing a sneaky ninja may not want to read a whole novella about a huge troll.

The writers have *really* tried. The "huge troll" has an interesting back-story that makes him more than just a "HULK SMASH!" character.

I still recommend it, but if you really only like to play one kind of character, you might be better off reading that part of the novel and skipping to the final chapter where everyone comes together to conclude the story.

[Brian Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

The intro to this book explains that it follows the pre-generated characters from the new boxed set for 6th edition Shadowrun RPG.
Even without knowing the game, the story moves at a decent pace, with each character getting their own short story (all written by different authors) set in the context of an overall story arc.
It's not bad, as far as tie-in fiction goes, introducing the hybrid fantasy/sci-fi world of Shadowrun, where orcs, trolls, dwarfs etc mix it up with magic and cyberspace hacking skills.

[M.A. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as I'd hoped it would be.