Comment 270 on “Only Forward”

1. Carol. says:

   at 1:9 AM

   I made a mental note to tell the next Street Engineer I met that they were doing a damn fine job Sort of an embarrassing thing to think, but I knew it was safe I always lose my mental notes Glad I m not the only one I had some intelligent things to say about Only Forward, but I can t find my mental sticky notes I do know that I found the beginning undeniably clever and almost unputdownable My reading updates show chuckling and snerking through the first hundred pages Working out what that might [...]

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2. Stephen says:

   at 1:9 AM

   6.0 stars On my list of All Time Favorite novels I really enjoyed the two other books I have read by Michael Marshall Smith, Spares and Straw Men and so had fairly high expections going into this book They were SIGNIFICANTLY exceeded I loved this book from the opening page to the very last word This book is defintely a mind trip where reality is not always what you think it is and you are never sure what is going to happen next However, unlike other books like this, the author does a superb job [...]

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3. Nikki says:

   at 1:9 AM

   Oh my god When I started reading this book I expected it to keep up the fairly light tone of the early chapters Then it fucked with my heart bad Don t believe reviews saying it makes no sense it makes perfect sense, in the end, as long as you stop holding onto normal logic and start applying some dream logic The narrator is unreliable, yeah, and he has attitude, and he knows he s telling a story, so there are bits that some people find irritating, like the way he keeps saying he ll tell us abou [...]

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4. Ɗắɳ2.☊ says:

   at 1:9 AM

   4.5 5 This shit is bananas.RTC one day, maybe.

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5. Kevin Kelsey says:

   at 1:9 AM

   Conceptually it s brilliant, but with terrible execution and poor writing.95% of it is Ohh look at x isn t it WEIRD Actually, never mind, how about y, isn t y WEIRD Well, if you think y is weird, you re really going to go wild for z It s the weirdest of them all Followed by completely ignoring x, y and z, and throwing in a straightforward explanation of what has actually been going on the whole time.I really, really liked the explanation, but the book forgot to tell a compelling story until the [...]

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6. Vit Babenco says:

   at 1:9 AM

   Michael Marshall Smith combines dystopia, hardboiled mystery and magic realism but he is always staying on the mocking side of things so the black humour fountains up.The dystopian world is sinister and kitschy There s no good or bad time to get on a Red mono They don t have hours where you do certain things, or days even You just pay your money and take your chances Actually, by Red standards the carriage I boarded was fairly civilised True, there was both vomit and a human turd on the seat nex [...]

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7. Karl says:

   at 1:9 AM

   This book won the August Derleth Award 1995 and Philip K Dick Award 2000 The books starts with a small boy that is left on his own in a flat The boy answers a knocking on the front door of his high rise flat to find a man with no head standing on the doorstep.Set in a stylized future City where individuals live in neighborhoods organically responsive to their moods and lifestyles, the story begins as a routine missing persons case for its narrator, Stark, an irreverent soft boiled detective who [...]

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8. Skip says:

   at 1:9 AM

   Weird Really Hard to classify too The first half of the book follows Stark, who is hired to find an important person, who is believed to have been kidnapped He lives in an interesting alternative world, with many oddball friends and neighborhoods, my favorite of which is the Cat Neighborhood About halfway through, everything changes as we are abruptly transitioned into a dreamworld, with little upfront explanation As the explanation unfolds bit by bit, we long for a cohesive end There is an endi [...]

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9. Ryandake says:

   at 1:9 AM

   i want to take a pair of scissors to this bookt to make confetti, or compost, of it, but to rearrange ite author is introducing quite central new characters on page 320, fer chrissakes the last 15 or so pages of the book are a firehose of infodump well written infodump, but still , the streams of which tie the book together.but how much better it could have been if those streams were introduced earlier as rills it would have ameliorated the worst problems of the beginning, and made the end vastl [...]

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10. Alexis Hall says:

    at 1:9 AM

    Brought to your courtesy of Reading Project 2015.I love this, I deeply love it, largely because of a single quote which I shall now transcribe How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn t have any substance after all Like when you ve split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way yo [...]

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11. Evans Light says:

    at 1:9 AM

    100 pages DNF No rating.Despite glowing reviews and enthusiastic recommendations, this book ultimately didn t pull me along Relentlessly imaginative, I found it was the lack of forward narrative momentum that ultimately put me off, ironically enough The tone was lighthearted without being outright funny, but the characters didn t engage I skimmed the remainder of the book and didn t see anything to pull me back in.I think that fans of David Wong s Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits would find m [...]

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12. Adam Light says:

    at 1:9 AM

    ONLY FORWARD is one of the most original, mind bending novels I have had the pleasure to read in as long as I can remember.I planned to read it sometime this year, but when I put it on my to read list, my friend Gregor promptly advised me that this deserved my immediate attention.To begin with, I read the Straw Men trilogy by Michael Marshallmany years ago, and had no idea that the masterful author of those books also wrote under the name Michael Marshall Smith When I learned this, I sought out [...]

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13. Bill says:

    at 1:9 AM

    This is probably going to be the worst review I ve written.There is so much to say about this novel, but I can t really tell you anything without spoiling it So, where to start How about the story Well, the less you know, the better Suffice it to say, our hero s travels take on some strange turns.This is the second book I ve read by Smith His thriller Straw Men, under the name Michael Smith, was quite good, but the story wasn t one I wanted to keep following for two novels Only Forward was enou [...]

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14. Daniel Roy says:

    at 1:9 AM

    What a perplexing book On the one hand, I certainly have never read anything quite like it but then there are tons of aspects of the book that are irritating and unsatisfying, making the novel fall well short of brilliance.The novel starts as an Adams esque science fictional satire, complete with home appliances with snappy personalities My suspension of disbelief wrestled with the setting for a while, until I accepted that it was satirical and surreal, and thus should not be expected to make mu [...]

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15. Veeral says:

    at 1:9 AM

    It is impossible for me to write a synopsis of this book Nevertheless, let me try without giving away too much.The book is divided into 3 parts Extremely funny in part 1, weird in part 2 and the weirdest book you will ever come across in part 3 Even than Naked Lunch Sigh I haven t finished Naked Lunch yet, even though I have tried 3 times There I said it And I think I might have given away too much already I admit that it might not be everyone s cup of tea, but it s what shall I say, different, [...]

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16. Gregoire says:

    at 1:9 AM

    Un voyage travers des mondes cit s plus d lirantes les unes que les autres Le lecteur h site entre la r alit et le r ve, le conscient et l inconscient Le r cit est ponctu de r flexions plus philosophiques qui questionnent et donnent un semblant d explications L intrigue ne m a pas particuli rement emball et n est finalement que pr texte parcourir les souvenirs de Stark Son enqu te est une sorte de psychanalyse, intrusive et incisive trange est ce qui vient l esprit pour qualifier ce livre mais a [...]

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17. Naomi says:

    at 1:9 AM

    Hmmm this was 4.5 starsunding was a challenge Could have gone up to 5 or down to 3.5 As I ve said, I had a hard time rating this one I had to consider how much I enjoyed it, plus how good I think it was, plus whether I d recommend it So, 5 stars it is, then I immensely enjoyed the first third and I d read the whole thing again I don t regret it at all and I d recommend it to anyone as long as they don t have a problem with mentions of corpses and canniablism, dead babies in particular I might ha [...]

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18. Daniel says:

    at 1:9 AM

    Early in to this book I flashed back on the books of Ron Goulart that I read back in the 70 s and 80 s There was a very similar sense of humor And as I got a little further in to the book, I began to sense a bit of Phil Dick When I told this to my friend, he said that the writing style reminded him of Roger Zelazny I can see that, too.There was something incredibly unique here I never got a sense that I was reading something that had been done to death in different ways.In Only Forward, Smith cr [...]

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19. Marc Nash says:

    at 1:9 AM

    This read as a mix ofThe End of Mr Y in it s evocation of an alternative reality on the lines of that book s Troposphere andDivided Kingdom in a country divided by personality types in this case neighbourhoods such as Colour , Sound , Idyll , or the benighted Turn.I found the evocation of these different neighbourhoods satisfying than the personal psychological journey of the main character It strikes me that when you try and bridge from a fantastical other future world back to our recognisable [...]

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20. Ann says:

    at 1:9 AM

    First part funny but confusing Second part even confusing, and not so funny any Third part bittersweet and beautiful I still don t know what to make of this book Many people don t seem to like the ending, but I loved it Only then do the first parts make sense You get bits and pieces of the back story throughout the book and can guess what s important and what different things have to do with each other, but only the end explains it all, and I m one of those people who need that Otherwise this b [...]

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21. Neil Powell says:

    at 1:9 AM

    This really was a book of two halves It begins as a wonderful sci fi world created around the premise that the Earth is covered by one massive city and each neighbourhood has different rules and behaviours that govern the people who live there The whole missing person private eye tale evolves nicely, but then at the half way point it becomes a strange and surreal trip through a dream world I found the story lost its cohesion here, and it made it difficult to want to finish the book The narrative [...]

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22. Bethnoir says:

    at 1:9 AM

    This made me laugh extremely and cry, emotional, sassy, tough and soft, a dream and a nightmare, exceptionally strange and wonderful.

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23. Laura says:

    at 1:9 AM

    I hardly know what to think about this book It started out quite promisingly an interesting alternative world, solid protagonist and a plot which seemed to be moving at about the right pace However, around half way through everything changes This isn t be so bad in and of itself, at least if the rest of the book eventually linked everything together The problem is that it doesn t About 20 pages from the end I became extremely suspect when none of the loose ends had been tied up At this stage the [...]

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24. Javir11 says:

    at 1:9 AM

    He dudado entre ponerle 2 o 3 estrellas, al final se queda con tres porque creo que es una buena novela, pero no est escrita para m.Resumiendo.Lo mejor de la novela ha sido la ambientaci n de la Ciudad, me han encantado los diversos barrios que nos muestra el protagonista y las peculiaridades de aquellos que residen en ellos.Tambi n destacar a alguna de las ideas que el autor nos va transmitiendo durante la historia.En su contra, pues que es muy lenta, demasiada reflexi n del protagonista que ab [...]

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25. Sammie says:

    at 1:9 AM

    This book is exactly what science fiction should be There are two very distinct parts to it I found the first part the Neighborhoods so absorbing, interesting and real that it didn t feel like reading fiction at all As clich d as it might sound, I felt like I was really there The second part of the book Jeamland was equally as interesting, thought provoking and easy to read, but it did not have the same intense feel to it Plot wise, Jeamland is a bit of a leap and expects the reader to willingly [...]

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26. Christopher says:

    at 1:9 AM

    4.5 StarsPart 1 Hardboiled detective in a strange cyberpunk of sorts future Funny in a Hitchhiker s Guide sort of way Part 2 Things get weird Very weird.Part 3 Surreal to the point that if I hadn t read the entire book in one sitting, I might question if I hadn t picked up the wrong book by mistake I can t begin to describe the last half of this book without spoilers.My only gripe, that I leave here so that my future self can remember what that annoyance in the back of my mind over this novel mi [...]

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27. Matt Pillsbury says:

    at 1:9 AM

    This book doesn t blend genres it tosses genres in a burlap sac and then pounds on them with a hammer It starts out as a spoofy take on hard boiled detective stories and cyberpunk science fiction, and it ends as a solipsistic fantasy, one which is by turns maudlin and horrific, and the path it takes between those points is a needlessly convoluted one I don t think I d describe it as a successful work, but it s far too engrossing, and even, at times, moving, to be called a failure.

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28. Genevra Littlejohn says:

    at 1:9 AM

    This book stuck with me for a long time.Set in a future so far ahead as to occasionally be unrecognizable, this is nonetheless a very visceral story about regret and anger, and the distance between people, and the inability to go home the fact that one must always, can only, go forward Very recommended if you re looking for a science fiction story unlike anything you ve tasted before.

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29. Burke Spencer says:

    at 1:9 AM

    I m not sure if this book is sci fi, fantasy, or literary fiction Well probably not the latter, but definitely somewhere in the middle of all three often and at different times throughout the book I found this novel highly original, I won t go as far to say it s the most unique book I ve ever read, but it s definitely up there I won t spoil anything for you as far as the plot I will say that the world s the author created are fascinating, dystopian, and bizarre Reading this book at certain point [...]

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30. Ian Casey says:

    at 1:9 AM

    Someone set up this 2015 HarperVoyager edition of the book as a separate page on If a clever person could merge it into the main page that would be nice I haven t described what I look like, have I Remind me later and I will it s not that bad, but it s kind of uncompromising Every face says something the deal with mine is that though you might not like what it s saying you have to admire the strength of its convictions Any work of literature worth the name works on multiple levels Only Forward t [...]

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