Only Forward

Michael Marshall Smith

This one managed to bypass the standard choosing the next book to read selection criteria, my highly scientific procedure of rolling a number of dice to decide.

A detailed explanation of this procedure used to be on the index page of this site before I decided that three or four screens of text was way too much for an opening page and deleted the whole lot and started over.

I just decided I should actually document the dice rolling technique again, it can be found HERE

The reason that this one jumped ahead of the other books is because it was a request form THE PILE made by Gareth/Bullywug, he highly recommended that I read it.

Apart from it having a nice cover, visually simple yet striking and a textural treat (satin finish with embossing and a small patch of gloss) it was also a very good read.

It starts of in a very off beat comical manner, somewhat like a Terry Pratchett or a Douglas Adams, in its back-to front style descriptions and humorous approach, then begins turning into a more serious novel as it goes along.

As it progresses there is a some elements of Lovecraft, when the main character and narrator "Stark" goes into detail about a place called Jeamland, a place a lot like Lovecraft's Dreamland, a place also thoroughly examined in Brian Lumley's Dreamlands Series. This leads me to wonder if this was the inspiration.

It is a similar concept, the place where people go when they dream, a whole world with permanent residents influenced/created by powerful dreamers. It really doesn't go into it as far as naming locations and such.

People who have read the similar material will probably get more out of this aspect of the novel because they are already familiar with the concept so more attention can be paid to the specifics relating to the story.

Definitely worth reading either for the story in itself or a different perspective on the Dreamlands concept.