Shadowrun: Shaken

By: Russell Zimmerman

Narrated by: Robert Austin James

Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

Down these dark streets…

Most folks see Puyallup as the worst Seattle’s got to offer; a tangled mess of metahumanity and greet, poverty and ghettoes, vice and corruption, where the crime is more organized than the government. They call it a Barrens, an armpit, a cesspool.

Jimmy Kincaid, though, calls it home. Walking the line between shadows and the desperate light, semi-legit like only a Puyallup brat and former cop can be, he insists Puyallup has a heart and a soul, that it’s a place of life, magic, and starving hope. A former combat mage, now as burnt out as his neighborhood, he does what he can to police the worst excesses of the crime-riddled city he loves.

In the darkness of the Seattle Sprawl, what’s one more murder? To Kincaid, it’s everything. He’s got a dead mentor, a hermetic group in need, and a mysterious file that might have been worth killing for. To unlock the data and get a little justice, he’ll face the worst the Sprawl has to offer, wading through blood, darkness, and a murderous web of lies.

It’s a good thing he’s got friends - in high and low places...

©2015 Topps, Inc. (P)2021 Topps, Inc.

Well written and well read

A friend suggested Shadowrun to me because I like Sci-fi and fantasy. Going into this book that's all I knew about the Shadowrun universe, that it was a mix of the two. I was not at all disappointed. The book blends the two genres together pretty seamlessly. The story is interesting and action packed with a neo-noir flavor that reminded me of Blade Runner with magic. Where this book really shines though is the performance of Robert James. He does an exquisite job handling the material. He gives the main character the same neo-noir pacing and cadence that the style of the writing calls for. His character voices are different and distinct from one another and he reads the dialogue with the same intensity that I would imagine the writer intended. I would say the narration was a 10 out of 10.

one of my favorites

I was blown away twice by this story. first time was when I read it. second time by the awesome performance by Mr. James. I look forward to hearing the rest of the Kincaid stories read by him.

Great Narration and introduction to this character

my first introduction to this character. It kept me gripped and the narrator was on point. He really helped with the immersion. Tren Sparks is okay, but he doesn't hold a candle to Mr. James

Jimmy Kinkaid baby! Woo hoo!

I love Jimmy Kinkaid. He's my favorite character. And the audible narrator has him nailed to the T!

Chef's kiss

Cyberpunk-fantasy-neonoir at its finest. Shadowrun, at its finest. The story is pire hardboiled, and the narration and sound design is excellent. I cant wait for more like it.

Well made all around

The narrator really put a lot into his performance. The writer understands the world and magic well.

Oh God it's so bad

Where do I begin... The story is basically a thousand cliches rolled up into one. The whole thing was completely childish and kind of made me embarrassed to be an adult who is a fan of Shadowrun. At every point in the book I was only listening to complete the book, not because I cared what happened. I would rank this book as the very worst Shadowrun story I have read or listened to (I've read perhaps 25 books). This is coupled with the worst narration ever.

PLOT: The plot is very slow and when it's picking up you can't really tell. I only knew the book was (finally) coming to a close (having never much heated up) because the audible player told me how much time was left. The author had some kind Satanic black magic larper background that shone through in every sentence, and there was a lot of boring technical stuff relating to the practice of magick that took away from the epic fantasy/action elements that I crave.

The main character is supremely overpowered. He is basically an elf who was once really strong magically, but had his magic power partially-stolen by a vampire. Yet in spite of this he managed with his own magick to create a helper spirit, who is a naked little girl who runs around his house cleaning up after him, but also has pretty much the power of a demigod. In spite of losing most of his power he's still a magickal powerhouse roughly on par with Dunkelzahn, defeating the greatest of wizards with ease, one way or another. He also is a former lone star employee and is still well-connected there to get help when he wants it. He has cyber-enhancements, a smartlink, etc. He spits in the face of both the Yakuza and the Italian mob all he wants, telling them to their faces to go **** themselves because they are in the city he grew up in and that makes him the boss somehow. He's a good samaritan who the whole city knows and looks up to because he is basically superman, cleaning up all the injustice in the city because he's just a great guy with enormous beefs to settle. BTL gang got some kid hooked? Time to wipe out an entire crew, no big deal.

The character is also part of some hermetic order of mages, but at the very same time he is contradictorily part of a shamanic tradition. His totem is Dog, but the character of Dog is basically a squeaky-voiced Italian gangster that sometimes turns into an angry monster, is full of rage and doesn't really want to help for some reason. I felt that the character of Dog was vastly different from that portrayed in other books.

Again, this character was himself just short of a God in terms of power, and the whole story was spent with him pretty much staying 100% above every bit of conflict that came his way. At the end there is the most minor of twists, but the character involved was such an ancillary character and the twist made so little difference to the story (and also was not in any way alluded to or led up to by the story) that it might as well not even have been inserted.


DIALOGUE: The absolute worst. Every once in a while the story pops into my head and I remember some embarrassingly-bad line of cliche dialog from the book, but as I write this I can't remember any examples. I will update this review when I remember some, but just know that the dialogue is bad.


NARRATION: This one really takes the cake. The narrator went for this kind of exciting, hard-boiled narration, but the story was not that interesting and the narrator would put a hard emphasis on phrases that were not meant to be emphasized, or on individual words that were not meant to be emphasized. Sometimes words were mispronounced or spoken in a way that made it seem like they were being read by AI rather than a human, though I don't know that any AI was involved. Certain characters' voices (various spirits, etc.) had sound effects with an echo that didn't really make sense and was honestly a bit jarring. I've never heard this in an audiobook, though there was a lot about how this book was presented that was unusual and "new", and I felt like it was a fail. In the way the cheap CGI leads to a crappy movie, this was a crappy book.


All in all I thought this audiobook was terrible even though I got it for free, and I was very glad when it was over and I could put it behind me. I only signed up to Audible to get Shadowrun books, but now I'm wondering if I should get something else because this latest book left a sour taste in my mouth. I wanted to give this 2 stars but I'm hard-pressed to say what, if anything, I actually enjoyed about it. If you're craving a good Shadowrun audiobook then I highly recommend Fire and Frost, also here on Audible, which was a great experience. The Legends of Power series is also not bad.

Not Impressed

While the book was somewhat entertaining, it was extremely depressing and disturbing. There was nothing fun or funny about it, not even the dialog. There was a lot not really explained in a fashion that made sense, like why a vampire drinking your blood caused you to lose your powers or why the main character got the implants and whatnot. There is a lot of talk of drug use and some alluding to sex trafficking. The sound effects were annoying but cool because it gave it a good feel but also made it hard to make out words. I actually liked the narrator which I appreciate his reading and making characters sound different so you cam distinguish between them. I don't think I can continue the series though, way too serious and depressing for me but if you're into the darker side of things give it a listen, if you're looking for fun, funny, and light don't do it.

I can't take this narration seriously

Overall the story is a pretty good romp through the sprawl, but the narration is so goofy that I have to stop every few chapters. I strongly suggest buying the actual book, and keeping an eye out for when they recast the audiobook.

The audible equivalent of watching paint dry.

We get it! The character has gene augmentation and cyberware. There's no need to tell of every few minutes.