Book 20

"Spares" by Michael Marshall Smith

This guy is an amazing writer. Seriously, he has a gift. This is hard-core, hyperviolent sci-fi that reads like a cross between William Gibson and William Goldman with lashings of magical realism and flat-out surrealism. "Spares" is Mashall's second novel and it flows smoothly and quickly. The title refers to the latest in medical insurance. Your parents pay a million bucks when you're born and and a clone is made of you, then kept in a special "farm" until you, for example, have a car accident and lose a limb, then the drive out to this farm and cut of the appropriate limb from your clone. Of course, they're all non-thinking and cattle-like but it's still creepy and a guy who works security on one of these farms starts teaching them to be more human and frees a few of the clones, or spares.

He is, of course, an ex-special forces guy who went to a weird nether world with other special-forces guys and, well, then it gets complicated. And icky in parts. Marshall doesn't pull any punches (witness the My Lai-style massacre of villagers in the nether world), but is also really funny and genuinely touching in parts. You may have to import the book from the UK, but find it, buy it and read it. It may be a little clunky in a couple of parts, but really only a couple. It's awesome.

Four and a half Bright Eyes