Spares

Rating:
Summary: Not quite as good as "Only Forward", but damn close
Review: Once again, a bizarre and twisted mix of fantasy, horror, SF, comedy and thriller. The plot lurches from mood to mood like a manic depressive; I laughed, I shivered and I almost cried in the space of a single page. The most horrifying parts of the novel were also the most plausible.

Stylistically, it's not quite up to the standards of "Only Forward" -- but then, I doubt anyone's going to surprise me again the way *that* novel did. The sub-plot about the gap is perhaps a little too similar to elements of the first book, but I was prepared to overlook it given how amazing the rest of the story is. And I had no trouble identifying with the protagonist.

If you're a fan of Philip K Dick, Stanislaw Lem, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker or Harlan Ellison, then you really ought to read this novel. Don't wait for the movie, there's no way any Hollywood studio will have the guts to do it justice.

Rating:
Summary: A terrifying look at organ transplants set in a future time
Review: Over a century in the future, former police officer Jack Randall's life has hit rock bottom. His former life was destroyed with the murders of his wife and son, and he suffers nightmares from his time in the military service in the Gap, an Internet virtuality world. For the past five years, Jack has worked as a guard at a SPARES Farm, a place where the affluent raise people to cultivate replacement organs. Jack may have thought this job was the pits, but the way his life is running, things turn even nastier for him. ...... Jack is fleeing the farm with seven inmates he has boldly freed. He takes the "contraband" to New Richmond where he hopes to earn enough money to disappear with his mates. Instead, he loses them to a gang. He tries to recover the "spares" before they are killed for their body parts. This places Jack into danger from a murderer, the same person who shattered his previous life. This time his enemy plans to eliminate Jack. ...... Spares is a strange apocalyptic futuristic novel that will chill readers to the soul because it feels so plausible. Jack is an interesting anti-hero fighting the morals of a corrupt society. However, it is the bleak future that is so picturesquely described that turns Michael Marshall Smith's novel into a fabulous tale that fans will devour, even as it chills their souls. .......Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Great Idea, Indifferent Execution
Review: Smith's first book, "Only Forward", captured my interest completely. After I read "One Of Us" though, I started to wonder if he might have gotten lucky that one time. After "Spares", I'm almost sure of it. A great idea, to be sure, the idea of genetic spare parts, but Smith floats the idea at the beginning and then abandons it in favour of a b-grade detective chase which yields no surprises. The main character is Smith's usual protagonist, a hard-edged Bruce Willis-esque ex-military type living in the shadow of his own harsh experience, chain-smoking furiously while making cynical observations about the cruelty of life; his outlook, while sometimes accompanied by wit, is neither original nor particularly insightful, and far too predictable. Also, some scenes (clones being abused and raped, for example, despite being owned by the super-rich) make no sense except to function as a vehicle for adding shock value. I'm all for shock and violence, but if it has no point, it's just not credible. Sure, it sold as a movie, but so did "Paycheck". Even as a detective chase, this story offers little. Skip it.

Rating:
Summary: Sorry Michael
Review: Sorry Michael. Only Forward was a brilliant achievement, but this seemed to be too many rehashed ideas and not the mind blowing trip that was it's predecessor. Still a great book, a little too dark in one shadowy corner for my liking, but bettering your debut was always going to be a tall order.

Rating:
Summary: I don't forgive that easily
Review: Spares is a book that seems to be going somewhere, at least initially, but isn't. There are many times when it seems to have found it's way, but the next chapter throws in a spin to an idea and you are left feeling confused. Normally, I actually kind of enjoy this kind of confusion, but overall I found this book to be a big disappointment.

There are a lot of unanswered questions. Like why stores the "Spares" together? Why do they allow the female spares to be mistreated and raped and have their skin "marred" by cigarette burns in the first place? Don't their extremely wealthy owners find it a bit annoying to have skin grafts that are marred with the evidence of such torture?

This is a violent book, worst still; it's violence for the sake of violence, gratuitous stuff, which really soured the experience of reading the book for me. I'm not talking run of the mill stuff here. Smith treats his readers like morons, by not only alluding to violent acts, but also going ahead and delineating, in excruitiating and often badly written detail, the events that transpire. For example the scene in the forest where the book's protagonist stumbles upon anther group of soldiers in a clearing, and those soldiers are standing "with their pants down" around the mutilated corpses of the children of the villagers, we don't have to then be given the "paint by numbers" explanation of what has occurred. For heaven's sakes.

"Spares" is a sexist book. There is only one female mentioned in the book who isn't a whore or about to kill herself or die horribly. Her career choice was to become a sales assistant but we only get to hear about her second hand and after her gruesome death. I'm not kidding. Smith doesn't seem to know how to handle female characters. They don't come across as real people at all. They are either whores or God's police (anyone under 15 is angelic, over 15 a loyal wife who waits patiently at home or a whore) His lack of insight is astonishing.

Oddly weird out-takes such as the one where Smith describes "workshops" are almost painfully embarrassing. This novel is less futuristic at times than an earnest return to the 50's.

Smith seems to find this sort of stuff exciting and sophisticated. I don't agree. I found the book to be an easy read, but condescending and at times sophomoric. I don't think that Smith is a talented writer. He seems to have written this book with one overwhelming idea in mind "Gotta sell this book to a big film studio" So it's a lot like reading a script that is written as a novel "Joe moves into the light, lights a cigarette, coughs, fade out"

The Vietnam-like flashbacks are mystifying, but aren't ever really worked into the book that well. A lot of trite explanations and hurried finishing-up of loose ends. The book ends with a whimper, and a luridly silly train of events - As the protagonist runs through the building, he meets the ghost of everyone he has ever hurt (all women, wouldn't you know) and they forgive him. Gah!

Rating:
Summary: Gibsonesque Masterpiece.
Review: Spares is a wonderful panopoly of eerie, urban neo-futurism coupled with a Jeff Noon-like disregard for conventional plotlines and narrative events. This book will both disturb and delight you. The harsh realities encountered by his complex characters are set amongst an intensely rich and diverse settings and contrast with the almost dreamlike ambience of his work. One of the best books I have ever read despite similarities to his other work. (One of Us & Only Forward) If you enjoy sci-fi and can suspend disbelief, you will be caught up and carried away...and not necessarily to a place you will like.......

Rating:
Summary: How the city learned to fly
Review: Spares is Marshall Smith's most diturbing work so far. Jack Randall is the caretaker on a ranch of 'spares', full clones of people in the outside world, kept in underground cellars in case their owner needs a part of their body. Dealing with contemporary philosophical issues whilst maintaining the pace of an excellent thriller, Spares deals with the cop, his late wife, hallucinations, gansters, genetic engineering and a droid obsessed with making coffee, Spares has more content and pace than anything I have read before. If complex and intelligent literature appeals but you've not read much Sci-Fi, read Smith.

Rating:
Summary: Spares
Review: Spares is not something massively profound and life-changing but it is a great book just the same. Spares manages to mold tragedy, comedy, and some awesome sci-fi into one great story. The comedy aspect will have you laughing hysterically at times and the first time one reads this book it distracts from the other elements. The second time through it becomes apparent that the comedy is really just Jack's way of masking his despair and depression. This is the tale of a desperate man who is in the process of having everything and everyone that he cares about taken away from him. Spares is a complete book in every sense of the word. I would highly recommend that you read it. Now where is the movie thats supposedly in the works?

Rating:
Summary: No concept
Review: Spares may be a well-told story, but it ends there. It is not conceptual science-fiction.

It's well-paced, exciting, has a good plot and some original ideas.

However- I find the psychology of the individual characters and the portrayed society, to say the least, lacking. In addition the concepts which do appear in the book are to my mind nothing more than senseless strangeness.

The hero appears to be the only person in "Sparesworld" who has any morals. Politics and social interaction are too simple to be believable - most characters come across as two-dimensional rip-offs.

As to the concepts which appear in the story: The spares: they grow up in a closed-off society of their own (like "wolf children", ot the film "Nell") - this aspect is completely neglected, or left dangling. Why society (apart from our hero) is numb to their situation is never explained either.

The "alternate universe": this is the "senseless strangeness" part. The idea Michael Marshall Smith came up with as to the entry to this universe is laughable - I find it incredible that someone would use this idea - it's an old tag-line turned story-pivot. And the inside of the universe has no substance - it's arbitrary and thus uninteresting. It appears to have influenced the hero only by being "scary", although the same description of the prallel reality could equally well have been termed "romantic" (dancing leaves) or "entertainingly surreal" (uninhabited villages)

The horror: When I think of the "ultimate horror scene" in this book, I automatically compare it to, for instance, the first dungeon scene in Banks' "Inversions". In this, specifically, "Spares" also lacks substance.

The ship: might have been used as a metaphor, but as far as I can tell, wasn't - just makes for an uplifting end.

All in all: don't waste your money. Buy a Gibson, Banks, Pratchett, Brin, Adams (if you haven't already), Vance, even an Niven, maybe even a Asimov, or a Shatner for a laugh instead.

Rating:
Summary: Please spare me from SPARES!
Review: SPARES was an inept attempt to explain some alternate cyberzone that has somehow interfaced with our reality. Too unbelievable, even moer so than Barker's Lovecraftian dimensions (even if Clive claims not to be copying H.P. Lovecraft's stuff). Perhaps Smith intended The Gap to be a multidimensional alternative universe (like State College courses) that doubles as those teenage clothing chain stores that go by the same name? And as evidenced by his dreary character, Jack, chasing some animated clothing after entering The Gap... Jack was also a huge problem for me, especially when he was instrumental in getting his wife and daughter killed. Couple that with the fact that ex-Leutenant Jack's a drug addict (a fact which the author uses to cover up for his lack of descriptive powers when describing The Gap), and you get another bad version of THE BAD LEUTENANT, a really rotten flick that had been made a few years back. Still, Smith manges to inject some fairly good humor, and some keen insights into the human condition. Which is the sole reason for raising my initial rating from a 5 to an 8. But then after I found out the end.....I knew then that Smith blew it in terms of writing a good story...that makes this novel another dreary book with another dreary antihero, a dull leftover 60s era thought process that seems to still have some hold in Smith's head, much to our chagrin.