This book is loaded with more Awesome than many I have come across...How much Awesome you ask?...More units of Awesome than a Vulcan DJ or Robocop riding a Unicorn…… That is significant Awesome!!!6.0 stars. This is the fourth book I have read by Michael Marshall Smith (MMS) and the lowest I have rated any of them is 5 stars (with this book and Only Forward being on my list of All Time Favorites. I guess you could call me a huge fan of his work. One of Us is a "hardboiled" style science fiction murder mystery set in a near future world where the technology exists to allow bad dreams and harmful memories to be transferred from one person (normally the rich and powerful) to another person....for a price. This technology has been declared illegal and so this very expensive service is provided on the black market. Our main character, Hap Thompson, is an employee at the company primarily responsible for the “memory transference” market. Hap is one of the best at being able to deal with the mental fatigue and "backwash" involved with taking on another’s memories. Early in the story, Hap unwittingly finds himself in possession of the memory of a brutal murder and immediately becomes the target of several powerful factions, including a very mysterious group of men dressed in identical gray suits that seem to be able to do things that defy the laws of nature. From beginning to end, the story moves along at a great clip and I was completely sucked in by the plot. Plus Hap is a terrific character and there is a great supporting cast that make the story even more compelling. In my opinion, the greatest strength of the book is the brilliantly quirky world MMS has created. For those of you who have read Smith’s other work, you know the kind of phenomenal world-building of which he is capable. This is as good as he has done. Some of my favorite examples in this book include: - Talking, semi-sentient, appliances that are generally either surly or wise-cracking and provide a good portion of the story's humor. - A number of very original and creative drugs including: (1) "coincidence" which can actually make good coincidences occur for you and (2) "fresh" which makes everything a user experiences feel like it is happening for the first time. - A virtual reality world where some people work and spend most of their lives. The above is just a sample and the setting is really amazing. However, MMS does not cloud or confuse his world by using overly flowery language. Instead, his prose is fairly straight-forward and crisp (though excellent) and so you don’t find yourself having to battle dense writing at the same time you are trying to keep up with the amazingly crazy world-building components. I think it was a great decision and made for a superb reading experience. I know I am gushing, but I think this book deserves it. Top-notch writing, engaging characters that are capable of being both extremely witty/funny in their observations and at other times convey "deeply compelling" insights on the nature of the human condition and society as a whole. All in a unique and compelling setting. MMS executes this flawlessly. OH…...OH...OH....and I almost forgot, the BIG REVEAL/TWIST at the end is flat out awesome in the most awesomely awesome way and worth 6.0 stars all by itself. I won’t give away any details to it except to say that I thought it was pretty "bold" and "daring" given the subject matter and beautifully realized. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!!
It took me a really long time to read this, probably about as long as it took me to read A Feast for Crows. It has more to do with circumstances though, rather than the book itself. You may also want to blame Diablo II and Morrowind, but, well, it's Diablo II and Morrowind.Reading The Straw Men and its sequel, The Lonely Dead, Michael Smith stood out in the world of thriller writers. I had a phase where I read a lot of them, and despite the good times it's true what they say. These thrillers tend to be fast-paced novels meant to be read in a few hours, mostly for fun and not much beyond that. Even Harlan Coben, who I really love and respect, is guilty of that. Basically, these novels wouldn't be memorable and have potential to be truly great novels.Smith is different. He takes the good stuff, like the fast pace, the writing that goes down easily and the cliffhangers. He even takes some of the cliches, like the buddy - only here he can't do all the work. He takes all these elements and piles more on them, clearly aiming for something more than just a hardboiled sci-fi thriller.It starts with the plot ideas - a machine that transfers dreams from one person to the next, and how Smith develops them. There's a description of the type of dreams they use that for - 'anxiety dreams' - and it's so weird the only thing it could be is a dream. It continues with tiny pieces of worldbuilding. Smith doesn't create a 'huge, immersive world', the kind that in order to explain it you'd get an extra 200 pages. Instead, he drops little details and facts that made you wish he might've added some of these extra pages. The talking appliance thing, damn, and how he reveals it. He doesn't tell us the world has talking appliances, he just says that the clock or the coffe machine is saying and doing such and such.The main thing that lifts Smith higher than others it's his atmosphere, which was also in the other novels I read. Smith's nove are full of paranoia. The ground is always shakey, and no one really knows anything. There's no one who can know everything. No one can be really trusted, and although there is a 'main villain', there are plenty of characters who may or may not be in league with him or a league of their own. This isn't as convulted as it sounds. It's not like Smith created different factions, it's that he created an enviroment full of unstable and paranoid characters, and that makes everyone else even more paranoid and unstable.It also goes off completely off the Airport Novel tip in the climax. Just when he was supposed to give us some action scenes and wrap it all nicely, he instead goes all literary. There's a really cool idea at the end. It's not developed enough, particularly because this is still a thriller and all the philosophical poetry at the end doesn't have that much do with it. It adds something though, and it made the novel even more weird.Smith writes really good paranoid fiction. I actually like One of Us than the other two I read, due to its lack of developed ideas and the way it goes off at the end - there are two novels here fighting for attention and Smith didn't bridge the gap between enough, but it's still very good and now I'm officialy a fan. It also has the best deus ex machine ever.
What do You think about One Of Us (1999)?
I don't know where to start complaining about this one. From the idea of renting out one's brain space (stolen from Johnny Mnemonic) through the notion of rogue appliances wandering the landscape (stolen from Transmetropolitan and Futurama), on to the one dimensional characters who all seemed cut from the auditions of almost every faux-Bladerunner film of the last 20 years, this book is a spirited attempt at plagiarism. Supporting characters are given one-syllable names like Deck, Quat, and Vent in an attempt to sound futuristic, but wind up sounding like cheap, plastic accessories for a 3rd rate computer.Almost as annoying is voice of the narrator. He supposedly grew up in Florida and moved to LA, but he's the inner voice of the London born author. For the record, anyone who would hyphenate "no-one", talk about "white goods" instead of household appliances or "pootle off up the road" is British. Or else a wannabe Anglo-poser. I kept waiting for him to follow up a gunfight with a nice cuppa and a little sit-down for some telly.The last 75 pages of the book include 10 pages of tedious and unnecessary backstory for a supporting character, another 10 pages on the creation of the universe and mankind's role in the greater cosmology, and the most bare-faced, unapologetically literal deus ex machina I've ever seen.Worst of all? I can't get that time back. I kept hoping the story would give me some reward for seeing it through to the end, and it didn't.Fuck.
—Datsun
This has very strong Philip K Dick overtones. A great read and a typical Marshall-Smith novel written in the first person by the grumpy but funny old-skool crim. Not bad but seems to be a bit scattered and rushed at the end.BriefIt's not what you've done that counts—it's what you remember....If you could sell your conscience, could you get away with murder?Hap Thompson works the gray area between truth and lies. He works for REMtemp, taking on other people's memories. It's illegal, but usually harmless. Maybe a petty criminal wants to pass a lie detector test. Or an unfaithful spouse wants to enjoy a guiltless affair. All Hap has to do is carry the memories for a couple of hours. It's easy money. Until a beautiful young woman who committed murder leaves her memory with Hap—and won't take it back.Now Hap is on the run: from the LAPD, from six angels of death in gray suits and sunglasses, and from the best hit man in the business—his ex-wife. Even worse, people all around Hap are disappearing in a strange white light. His only hope is to negotiate with a guy who may be much more than he seems, so he can stay alive long enough to discover who is and who isn't...
—Donovan
Questo libro è stato scritto nel lontano 1998, ma francamente mentre lo leggevo pensavo risalisse a parecchi anni prima.Il futuro fantascientifico che prospetta è un futuro molto simile al presente (e si svolge più o meno verso il 2020), con giusto qualche differenza tecnologica che basta a classificarlo come fantascienza.Per cominciare, e la cosa è di fondamentale importanza per la trama, sono state create macchine per togliere ricordi e sogni dalla mente di una persona, e immetterli in altre p
—Tanabrus
