I walked into the used bookstore just down the street from dorm, my girlfriend clicking at my heels. We were on our way to see a movie, but we had some time, so she wanted to see what was in stock. She almost always came into stores like this, but I never saw her walk out with anything. Today, she did, but I was the most surprised when my Shadowrun fanboyness placed two novels in my hands.
The first of the novels, and the more significantly well written of the two was The Forever Drug. Lisa Smedman is a good writer, and I did enjoy this piece, but I must say, she was obviously a woman. I learned a while back that when writing a fiction piece, you can tell when a woman writes the part of a man and a man writes the part of a woman. There are certain word choices that a man would say and that a woman would say, for example "He daydreamed about touching her sumptuous rump" vs. "He thought about grabbing her ass." Which do you think is written by a woman? Okay, trick question because they were both written by me, but if you were to sit down with a female writer and see how she writes about love and sex and that sort of thing, you'll notice a distinct difference between her writing that of a man's.
Getting to the point, in Forever Drug, you can definitely tell that the story of this male is done from the point of view of a woman. There's just too many parts where he becomes a lot more emotional than I think most men would under the same duress. Besides that, they way he discribes how he feels about Jane falls back into that category that I already discussed.
Anyway, the books is a rollercoaster. At some points it's good and at others, it's highly heavy handed. It just seemed as though there was far too much information at points and then a long run of nothing. It's interesting to see what Smedman thought was important enough information to include in the story, but most of it seemed extrenuous. Meanwhile, we didn't get enough information about Rom's past to be able to piece together where he came from.
The ending to me was the probably the clencher. There were some parts near the end when I really got into it, and all the way up until Rom wakes up on the sidewalk, I was following the suspense, but then the last few pages had me very disappointed. I guess I don't like it when the obvious slaps a character in the face and they just walk by (like in romantic comedies when the girl tries to say "I love you" but the guy thinks she's going to say something else). That being the case, I wanted to rip my hair out, but I guess it was Smedman's way of making it seem like Rom ends just where he began.
So, overall it was entertaining, but not one of those books that you should really go out of your way to obtain. Plus, I don't think it won any awards, but it was definitely loads better than some of the other Shadowrun books out there (yes Nyx Smith, I'm looking at you).
Good luck and happy reading.
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