I absolutely love this book and what's not to love? It has a city run by cats and one of my favourite quotes of all time: "Everything you've done, everything you've seen, everything you've become, remains, you can never go back, only forward, and if you don't bring the whole of yourself with you, you'll never see the sun again. " ( )

Awesome, a completely new concept. The world is now made of individual self-ruled neighbourhoods, where the only uniting rule is that they don't bother each other. A neighbourhood just for cats, a neighbourhood where everyone trying to work harder than everyone else. My favourite is where the lead character lives, Colour, where it is pretty normal except as you walk down the street the street changes colour to set off your outfit perfectly! Brilliant.

On top of all this amazement is a great private detective story, one man hired by a probably dodgy company to find another man in another neighbourhood. A good story but not as memorable as the world. ( )

cool concept, didn't work. requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. and even then it's still boring. ( )

Stark, the wonderfully quirky and original protagonist/narrator of this story is called in to solve the mystery of the disappearance of a high level exec. The nature of Stark's narration makes this a bumpy and often confusing ride through a number of worlds and realities. Written with good amounts of dry humour. ( )

Stark is a troubleshooter/dick who has a specialty in recovery of things that people can't find. In this case he is tasked to find a scientist.

However, it is not that simple, really, the City he lives in is very bizarre, indeed, with different parts being completely different and having completely different rules. As in rules of reality, more Cynosure or Wonderland than just the bad neighborhood or slum type of thing.

Didn't quite work for me, but is not bad.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2006/12/only-forward-michael-marshall-smith.html ( )