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 ( )

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. ( )

"A dark labyrinth of a book..."
-Clive barker ( )

Only Forward is another intriguing book by Michael Marshall Smith. If you've seen My Waking Life it will prepare you some what for this novel. Although, as is the case with most of Smith's stories, the way things end up being aren't always what you would have guessed given the way they start. Only Forward is a story about a guy called Stark who is a special kind of guide who helps people deal with their nightmares. He lives in The City which is divided up into Neighbourhoods with names like Colour, Red, Sound, Cat and Idyll where people (or animals) get to live the way they want to. While it's a sci-fi story because of it's setting, Smith covers adventure, family, love, loss, depression and a bunch of other emotions on a roller coaster ride. My only criticisms are that some of the scenes that take place in Jeamland seemed to drag at times and the ending is very abrupt (in a I've-reached-three-hundred-pages-now-I-can-stop kind of way) but the overall story was very engaging. Two of my favourite quotes are: "But I had no drive. I was an armchair romantic, someone who sat and thought and might have done so with increasing pointlessness until the end of his days. - pp290" and "...the whirling part of my soul that never knew what it wanted and let everything slip through it's hands, because it didn' know itself well enough to know what it should be grasping. - pp290". ( )

http://home.earthlink.net/~karen20000... ( )

I first read this book almost ten years ago now, and I've never forgotten it. It's possible to read it as a metaphor for writing one's first novel (the title, and the narrator's constant determination to 'get on to the next bit', almost translate as "Come on, keep writing!") But inspiring as that was for me personally, it really misses the point. This is just a stunning book: hugely original, utterly thrilling and – unfortunately for me, writing this now – almost totally indescribable! Hopping with gleeful abandon between horror, SF, comedy, fantasy and – strangely but touchingly – a 'coming of age' story, Only Forward is something a bit special, I reckon. Give it a go. ( )

this is a book I need to read again. I can't really remember it. I do remember thinking 'wow - this is the book that I would write (if I were to write a book)'.

Trying to sum up the experience of reading this book isn't the easiest task. It doesn't end in the way it begins. It leaps form neighbourhood to neighbourhood to Jeamland picking up different mysteries, different plot lines, different questions. The reader isn't just expected to follow anywhere though. There are no jutting transitions creating the literary equivalent to travel sickness.

Each bit flows on from the next; the transitions are wonderfully smooth. Smooth. You could describe the rest of the book as that. Smooth narrator, plot, everything. The world really gives that sense of wonder and amazement without overloading the reader with details. The characters are essentially the people we meet on the street. You can say 'I know that person'. Maybe not as overblown; a smirking satirical voice leads us through.

There where some bits that broke the spell for me. A usually unforgivable cliché in the final chapters almost ruined it. But, all in all, it was a very pleasant read. ( )

My house has eaten this, which is a shame because I really enjoyed it. Imaginative and compelling, but the end really dragged, something I find in a lot of science fiction. ( )