Did anyone like this book?

By d4rkwing, in Strange Flesh

I loved Free Fall and Golem but Strange Flesh was, in my opinion, terrible. It wasn't a detective novel (the only detective spent the entire time in the interview room). It didn't make good use of the background setting. The characters were one dimensional and uninteresting. It was everything I never wanted in a book. Does anyone else feel this way? Did anyone actually like it and would like to explain why?

Of the three Android books released thusfar, I'd agree it was the weakest. But it wasn't bad or anything.

I would agree that Freefall was the best.

I seem to be in the minority, judging from the reviews I saw on the internet: this was my favorite of the Android novels (though I've liked all of them). I don't get the repeated "it's 'noir' enough"-type comments I've seen some folks write, though. Knowing the outcome of a bad situation and exploring it through flashbacks (with the help of an omnicient narrator, Caprice in this case) is a total hardboiled trope. I thought the dialogue was totally believable, and novel thankfully shied away from overly expository conversations (to the the point of awkwardness, even….Farrer did a nice job of capturing the weird pauses and phrasings people use when they talk). It wasn't perfect, of course, but I dug it a lot.

(And while I'm ranting, while there is an incredible amount of overlap with film noir and hardboiled detective fiction, they are not interchangeable, nor are the terms synonymous.)

I like it quite a lot, to be honest!

I'll second Jasonpanella - of the five, I liked this the most.