When Free Fall was released near the end of the summer, a number of reviews popped up (both here and on BGG). Golem was released almost two months ago, and it's been pretty quiet.

Has anyone read this? Any thoughts on it?

Golem is pretty good. It is written entirely from a perspective of a bioroid, which gives it an unusual and unique style that is interesting (reminds me of "Flowers for Algernon"), but takes a bit of getting used to. It's much lighter on the science though than Freefall (I really enjoyed the quasi-technical expositions in Free Fall!) and psychologically darker. Themes and feel are rather similar to Robocop actually.

rbelikov said:

Thanks, Rus. I appreciated your thoughts on Free Fall from a few months back. I liked Odom's writing from his work in the Shadowrun universe, so I'm pretty excited about this.

I have read both Freefall and Golem and thought both were worthwhile, though I was surprised to find that I liked Golem better. Both books are written in a sort of workman-like style, but Freefall consisted largely of a noire detective novel that happened to have taken place many years in the future. Technology here was just a backdrop to what what otherwise a conventional story. Odem weaves the technology found in Golem into the main narrative as he takes the reader through what I gather will be an emergence of consciousness for the android (not a spoiler, as I think you reasonably gather as much from he blurb on the back cover). As above, I agree that Golem is essentially a Robocop, though done a bit better. Some of the conversations the android has (with other bots, for instance) are revelatory. There is more to do here and I am looking forward to where Odem takes the series.

Judd

I read Golem and have just started into Free Fall.

I was wondering when the Second and Third books for the Golem Series are comming out..

I felt Golem was pretty good, It reminded me of a Blade-Runner / Robocop hybred. The story was interesting to follow especialy form the perspective of a Cyborg. Although i would have found a way to yank them directives out.. **** them..

Yeah, I just finally finished it recently and really enjoyed the novel. I appreciated Odom's attention to detail for some of the minor characters, and he took the story into some really interesting moral gray areas. I have the feeling the second and third books in the series won't be out any time soon, but hey - I can wait patiently.

I recently picked up and read both of the Android novels. I felt both had a blade runner / Total Recall 2070 vibe to them. I can't wait for the next volume in this trilogy to be released. I found I had a hard time putting this novel in particular down when I needed to get some sleep. I had to know what happened next!

I feel the same way. It took me slightly longer to get into Golem (than Freefall) but once I did it was harder to put down. Both books are excellent in my opinion. I feel like there's been a dearth of good sci-fi detective novels and this series seems to be filling the niche nicely.

Golem was good but the second book Mimic took it to a new level. The third one will be mindblowing if it's half as good as Mimic ends.

IMO you just cannot separate them, and I found myself not enjoying the end of Mimic (a bit overstretched). I can't wait to read the third book (hopefully there would be Kindle edition from the start).

Both books are much better than Android Free Fall, and I cannot compare them to Strange Flesh as it has very different POV.