Spares

Michael Marshall Smith

The follow up to Only Forward, Spares sees some semblance of recurring themes, yet is in no way related to the first Michael Marshal Smith novel.

Set sometime in the future, around 100 years from now it is mostly the story of a washed up police officer.

Once again we see weird cities and an enthusiasm for cats and drugs, more about that later.

The Majority of the story takes place in New Richmond, a large city that was once a giant flying shopping mall, which for some reason one day set down and never took off again. It is hundreds of stories high, the higher up one lives the more wealthy they are, your floor number is your ultimate status symbol, followed by the clothes with built in price readouts saying how much they cost.

A super rich family and the mob run new Richmond, everyone in power is corrupt and even legitimate business has investments in organised crime.

Jack Randal is an ex cop with a drug problem, his problems stem from his military service in the Gap. The Gap is a strange nowhere place, it is incredibly scary and nothing makes much sense there. It also feeds on fear so being scared makes it worse. Randal went a very respectable four days without having to get wasted on drugs and or alcohol to cope with it, most people didn't last that long.

The people that served in the gap had a surgical modification so that they could withstand the daylight there it was an implanted film of some sort, without it peoples eyes would burn out. In normal light this has an interesting effect called "bright eyes", this in turn became the nickname for people that served in the gap.

The war was a jungle war against peasants that could basically disappear and reappear and could only be killed with plasma guns because bullets where no good against them. Apart from the wacky natives it reminded me of pretty much every movie about Vietnam rolled into one. Which in a way makes this part of the novel somewhat like a high-tech version of Apocalypse Now (lots of drugs in that one).

The Gap was discovered by a cat that found its way through a dimensional door of some description. This is to do with the way that cats always want to be on the other side of any given door. You leave them inside and they want to be out side, so you let them out and they want back in. The theory is that they are just looking for "the" door, the door to the gap.

Once this was realised machines were made to transport troops there with a catlike AI controlling them. This is the cat reference, not quite the same as the Cat suburb that you could only enter if you like cats, but still cats none the less.

After Jack Randal had a mental breakdown brought on by the murder of his wife and child and left the police force, he went to work on a farm. This is not an ordinary farm, but a "spare" farm, where rich people keep clones in case they need a spare body part due to an accident or illness, the ultimate insurance policy. This is fine for a while as it requires basically no real work so he has plenty of time to take his drugs.

One Day Jack overdoses and the maintenance bot nurses him back, and in the process puts the idea into his head to teach the spares things. The rig things up so that the Spares can get out of their pens and teach them to read and write and about all sorts of things. This goes on for a while until one day the medics come to harvest most of the major organs from one of the spares and she speaks, pleading for them not to do it.

The shit hits the fan and Jack busts out some of the more inteligent spares with the help of ratchet the maintenance bot. Jack heads to new Richmond to seek the help of some of his old contacts. His ex-partner gets killed and someone puts a contract out on him. Things then start to get interesting.

I won't really say much more than this, don't want to give any more away. It is an entertaining book, definitely on par with the first novel as far as the quality and off-beat humor goes.

The cover art is effective and it feels nice. Unfortunately the back cover of my copy is slightly damaged, which is a real pity.