So far the best and most helpful setting product for Shadowrun 5th edition. This little booklet tells you what every Shadowrun team not content to stay at home needs to know.. HOW TO GET PEOPLE ACROSS BORDERS! Most of it ties to the default setting of Seattle, but it is easily usable for any part of the world with very general rules and examples. The 30 pages are divided into 5 sections. The first is what seems to be an obligatory short story for 5th edition, fortunately this one is better than most and deserves inclusion. If gives you the perspective from a Coyote of what its like to illegally transport Shadowrunners across borders. Second is a Shadowtalk section from the perspective of Shadowrunners on what its like to hire coyotoes, how much to expect to pay, how one finds them, makes a deal, etcetera. Third you have a section with actual rules or example guards at a border crossing and the categories are given not by specific border but by its difficulty. This gives you a way of making your particular border crossing whatever difficulty you feel is appropriate with a quick turn of the page. 4th you have a nice cross selection of different examples coyotes from parts of the world. The last part is a short little example scenario of a coyote run to fetch a person in the Salish-Shidhe Council and smuggle them into Seattle. The reason for smuggling them was that they have an absolutely ludicrous piece of cyberware. This was the only part of the book that made me go Ughh. In my game I intend to just do a quick swap for illegal nanoware and carry on with the mission as written.

Overall the book is well written, contained few errors you'll notice on your first read through, and was very usable for a Gamemaster of any Shadowrun edition. I wish this had been expanded and made into a full book because I thought it was much better in production values and content than what has been printed so far. Full score on review.

Shadowrun seems to be going through a resurgence of popularity of late with a new video game and RPG edition and it made me want to pick up this story to give it a try. Once upon a time I loved the stories of Nigel Findley, Robert N. Charrette and Mel Odom who in my mind have already gone and set a standard for the setting of Shadowrun. A Shadowrun story brings some expectations for me. A world of magic and near future where machines invade everyone's life and even their bodies. A grey world of cyberpunk meeting the light and dark of fantasy. With Street Samurai, Native Shamans caught up in the schemes of ancient elves and dragons. A genre of its own where other unlikely genres come to meet and interact.

The story while well written didn't evoke any of that for me. It started with a cold sex scene that had me wondering what I was reading right form the start. None of the traditional mixes of Japanese slang or other Shadowrun slang are used in the story that I noticed It isn't a cyberpunk walk through culture ruin and invasive technology and it isn't a fantasy with any characters having any redeeming qualities that make me want to care for them. I usually would reserve a low rating for something with bad writing mechanics which this story does not have and had it been written for a different setting I easily could have given it a higher score.

I haven't read any of the other short stories released to go with the 5th edition roleplaying game, but with this as a measure I think one could do better just reading fan fiction from the Shadowrun community on steam.