[A second copy, UK edition, for a trade or ring]

British author Michael Marshall Smith is gathering an enthusiastic fan following. Only Forward was his debut novel, and has won a couple of awards [August Derleth Award (1995) and Philip K. Dick Award (2000)]. I found Only Forward quite Old School, in the manner of Roger Zelazny, Philip K. Dick, or Alfred Bester. But that is good company. Even though the story is derivative and slightly awkward, the characters are well-made, well-imagined, and they keep you reading.

From Publishers Weekly: "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 type who specializes in "finding people, or things." Stark''s retrieval of Fell Alkland, a scientist who has fled the driven environment of Action Center for the placid Stable neighborhood, proves relatively easy. But pursuit by Action Center operatives and Alkland''s crippling work-related nightmares force Stark and his quarry to escape to Jeamland, a collective repository of dreams and childhood memories that Stark appears to know very well, and to which, as he discovers only belatedly, he has been lured back deliberately."

Released to another Bookcrosser via mail.

Just caught this book as an RABCK from Wordsnark... Thank you so very much! I look forward to reading it, although it will have to wait until January probably...

This was a really fun book to read! I enjoyed the story, the writing style and the characters. I read this a while ago and am just now getting around to making a journal entry, so you're not going to get anything highly detailed, but I definitely remember having fun reading this. And, in the end, isn't that about the highest praise a book can receive?

Loaning this to my mom, then who knows where it will go?