I'm giving Spares three stars because its batshittery was on par with the crazy I tend to enjoy in urban fantasy, and I did indeed inhale this book. the main character is not admirable, though he does admirable things; the story is fascinating yet mad, the characters are pretty expertly layered assholes who spend a lot of time under the influence of something or another; the setting is futuristic enough to almost be dystopian-but-not-really. Honestly, well-played. Smith's use of language is by t...

5.0 stars. This was an incredible novel. I would describe it as science ficiton "noir" in the family of Blade Runner or the Takeshi Kovacs novels by Richard Morgan. Brilliantly written and peopled with superb characters, this one is highly recommended. Nominee: Britsh Fantasy Award for Best Novel

*Minor spoilers early*I say minor spoiler because what I mention here is revealed between 50-60 pages in, but if you want to remain in the dark, skip ahead. At the core of this story, it reminded me of Never Let Me Go and the 2005 film "The Island". However, I was surprised to see this book was published in 1997, years before either of those came out, so it may be the first, or at least one of the first, stories to feature the element common to all three. Unlike those stories, this one was told

3.5 ish

Spares was written way back before Michael Marshall dropped the Smith from his name, was just starting out as an author and was single-handily responsible for some of the best British sci-fi that had been seen in years! The third of his offerings after One Of Us and the ground-breaking Only Forward, Spares was a novel that redefined the term Cyberpunk and gave us something entirely different from anything we had seen before. Part comedy, part tragedy, part post-modern satire, Spares takes us on

...it's a sad fact of life that you can't always learn from your mistakes, because by the time you've made them you've changed the playing field forever."Such a bluntly spartan title as Spares undersells Michael Marshall Smith's second novel. To be sure, the titular concept of cloned humans kept mentally crippled and used for spare biological parts is one with potential. A competent sci-fi author would have extrapolated from that and built a decent novel of it.But MMS could hardly be contained t...

This book marks my 400th rating! Time flies when you’re slinging insults at Stephen King fans, I guess.I have no idea how to rate Spares. I picked it up at a second-hand book fair because I loved the premise; a corporation creating human clones as spare body parts for the rich. This had the potential to make some really interesting commentary on class and science. But unfortunately, it just didn’t.More akin to a D-grade Blade Runner, the original premise is irrelevant. Spares could have been rep...

It was ok. While the premise and the plot sounded really exciting I found the execution was so hit and miss, with patchy writing and odd segues that I actually did not enjoy reading most of it very much at all. It was one star until the ending, which earns another star all on it's own.A lot of the concepts were good, very good even, but that clumsy patchiness of the writing style really detracted from the concepts. If the narrative had been able to carry me along I would have had less time to th...

The stars only go up to 5 and I want to give it more. I mean, I gave 5 to “Only Forward” but I like “Spares” even more. After I finished “Only Forward” I had to agree with some reviews saying that the book was not entirely polished. “Spares” definitely has the finished polished feel. Good read all around with an ending that is satisfying and not at all Hollywood!(view spoiler)[This book is not about a rescue, even though Spares play an important role. This book is not about vengeance, although J...

So this book had great promise for me. The book follows Jack an ex Police officer who looks after a clone farm. The book starts as Jack breaks out a few clones after getting sick of the way that they are treated. He takes them to his old town to get supplies and starts getting hunted. The clones get stolen and Jack has to work out who stole them and how to get them back. The book starts with a bang, straight into the action and the violence of a great action packed book. Jack is a complex charac...

Spares took me a while to read, not because it isn’t amazing, just because I also kept grabbing library books which have deadlines. I finally got around to finishing it and wow, definitely one of my favorites. As previous reviews have mentioned, it’s not so much about the spares, but about Jack Randall. I feel as if the book description makes you think you’ll understand all about the spares. I guess there is some understanding, but it’s really just a story about Jack. By the time I picked it up,...

I found this book to be pretty dire if I'm honest. I am never interested in having a junkie as the so called hero in a book as I find nothing heroic in snorting crap up your nose or sticking needles in yourself. I hate hearing these so called heroes whine about their tough life and expect to get my sympathy. Instead the phrase 'get stuffed' comes to my mind. If this is the best, most reliable man for the job that they can find to guard the cloning investment of rich people, then there is somethi...

Michael Marshall Smith totally blew me away with Only Forward, so Spares was going to be a tough act to follow. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as great as Only Forward (few books are), but the quality of writing was right up to par. I get the feeling that MMS' stories are an outlet for him to get a few things off his chest. His characters tend to wax philosophic during lulls in the action, and where this seems to annoy some readers, I found these lulls the best parts of the novel.Like Stephen Ki...

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I guess you could call it Sci-Fi Noir with a touch of Dystopia. A future where rich people clone their children so they can have spare body parts should they need them requires a heavily damaged anti-hero, and Jack Randall is just that. Cop turned junkie turned spare farm caretaker, he has to return to the past he tried to escape to try to rescue the spares he has come to care about. Fast-paced and gritty, it's almost impossible to put down even when...

Calling Spares a ‘hard-boiled detective’ story is like calling Ben&Jerry’s Wavy Gravy ‘chocolate swirl ice cream.’ Sure. I guess--if you ignore philosophy, organics, ingredients, and taste.I mean, the lead is an ex-cop/ex-soldier. It's pretty standard detective; just replace the bottle of Scotch with a foil-wrapped pouch of Rapt. Usually.“Then on an afterthought I reached behind me and took down a bottle of Jack Daniels. Actually, it wasn’t an afterthought. It had been a first thought and an in-...

A mixed bag of noir fiction, dystopian society, sci-fi and philosophy, not terribly great at neither of those, but it has some interesting moments.

This book was TERRIBLE.I had 2 chief complaints with the book:1) The writing is piss poor.2) The story has almost nothing to do with the "Spares". A more fitting title would have been "Crackhead Ex-Cop".Let's just assume for a moment that Michael Marshall Smith actually wrote a book about the Spares. Here's a rundown of the *completely* believable premise.In the near future, rich people pay lots of money to keep clones of themselves in "farms". Whenever injured, the rich people just carve a piec...

The premise(s) of Spares is fascinating. I appreciated the author's devices to allow the reader to gradually discover the world and characters, that the storyline is not spoon-fed exposition with handy explanations for every single device or occurrence, and that there are multiple concurrent/intersecting plot points. The execution of this composition was somewhat hit and miss for me at times, with moments of brilliance and then moments of disjointed seemingly half-conceived transition, although

Blade Runner meets Apocalypse Now! Clones, but clones with a much more realist existence... as the ultimate health insurance for the mega-rich!.The Gap war veteran and huge drug addict Jack Randall takes some time out of life working at a clone facility, when he decides that he just can't let them live caged up anymore. Set in a digital-led future where a fallen mega-mall has become the city of New Richmond, over 200 floors of humanity - the higher up you live the more wealth and privilege you h...

Where do I begin? I recall hearing on a podcast or reading somewhere that this book influenced Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy (a huge favorite of mine). And in reading 'Spares' I had to remind myself that 'Spares' was published before 'Altered Carbon'.'Spares''s hero (well anti-hero actually) reminds me a lot of Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs. 'Spares' doesn't have the same wide scope as 'AC' (no space travel and no colony worlds for Randall to explore). Most of the action takes place in New R...