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 ( )

This one has been sitting in my to-be-read pile for years. In fact, it must be at least ten years because the bookshop stamp has a seven digit phone number - and they went out in 1994! I originally picked it up because it was a winner of the Philip K Dick award. This award is given each year for the best annual sci-fi novel that did not go into hard cover publication. (No Dick novel ever went into a hardcover publication in his lifetime which was why the award was created.) And I am kicking myself for waiting so long.

Some have compared MMS to Douglas Adams. I can see why - but the analogy doesn't really work for me in this context at least. This book is more like some of Neal Stephenson's novels eg SnowCrash.

Stark, the book's narrator, is a sort of a futuristic hard-boiled private eye. He's got contacts everywhere, he's 100% sure of himself at all times, and he seemingly can get any job done no matter how unusual. His speciality is finding lost people - which brings us to this story wherein things don't go quite as they'd been planned.

There are two intertwined stories here - the neighbourhoods and Jeamland. Both would support a full novel in their own rights. MMS's handling of these is masterful. I found the ending unexpected and disturbing.

This is certainly a great read - and i'll be looking out for his later works. ( )