Rambling (Only Forwards - Michael Marshall Smith)

Member Name: kingjevs

Product:	Only Forwards - Michael Marshall Smith
Date:	02/04/03 (44 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good first 150 pages, interesting story

Disadvantages: dizzy, spinning end

Synopsis
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Stark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings. Then there's Red close by: if you want to see a tactical nuclear battle recreated as a sales demonstration. Stark has friends in Red, which is just as well because something is about to happen.


My review
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I bought this book after reading several Amazon reviews of this new author; I had actually found the book as a recommendation from a Neal Stephenson book ?INTERFACE?.

The book sounds incredibly interesting, and is right up my usual street, set in the not too distant future, society is bound by new rules, fiction with a scientific edge (but not star trekky ?sci-fi?) and for the first 150 pages it was exactly that ? and interesting read, describing a new kind of society where people live in closed communities that reflect their ideal society, and all the different ways that can manifest itself.

The story is excellent right up until JEAMLAND is mentioned.

For some reason, this totally turned me off reading it. It seemed a cop out. To be able to enter a ?dream world? where everything can be sorted out, or affected inside someone else?s dreams. It didn?t really ring ?true? (what ever True is in science fiction). I became increasingly distracted by the story, taken into dizzy loops and sub plots, spinning out of control.

By the end of the book I was sick of it, and wanted it to end?. I really struggled through perhaps the last 50pages, forcing myself to read it till the end (as I am want to do, I cannot leave a book unfinished, even if I don?t like it).

A good read, that may appeal to some., but I felt it cheated me out of a proper ending. 4/10

Summary: