The Blurb On The Back:

Ray is the perfect detective – tireless, logical and efficient, with a knack for wry one-liners. He’s also the last robot on Earth – turns out people just don’t like robots, even if they like the idea of them.

As the lone employee of the Electromatic Detective Agency – except for Ada, office gal and supercomputer, the constant voice in Ray’s inner ear – Ray prefers to stay out of sight. So when a familiar-looking woman arrives at the agency wanting to hire Ray to find a missing actor, he’s inclined to tell her to take a hike. But she has the cold, hard gold – and Ray was programmed to make a profit. Plunged into a glittering world of fame, fortune and secrecy, Ray uncovers a sinister plot that goes much deeper than the silver screen – and this robot is in the wrong place, at the wrong time.


ExpandThe Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Adam Christopher’s novel (the first in a trilogy) combines alternate history, science fiction and hard-boiled pulp crime fiction to mixed effect. Christopher’s starting point was to imagine what would happen if Raymond Chandler wrote science fiction (a genre that Chandler did not rate). I thought the novel captured Chandler’s cynical, hard-boiled voice and I enjoyed the world building - particularly the alternate history ideas (e.g. Kennedy doing a deal with Cuba to host American missiles). I also enjoyed Ray’s relationship with Ada (which inverts the pulp fiction relationship between PI and secretary) and the incorporation of B-movie SF elements, which are a lot of fun. However, Ray isn’t as interesting as he should be. Part of the problem is that Ray is more observer and explainer than investigator, which means that he doesn’t really drive his story while the fact that his memory’s wiped every 24 hours means that there’s a certain amount of repetition to his story, which bored me after a while and all in all there’s a lot of set-up without a big enough pay off. This is a shame because the foundations are good and Ray is a character with a lot of promise – certainly enough to ensure that I will be checking out the sequel.
The Blurb On The Back:

The Empire State is the other New York.


It’s a parallel-universe, Prohibition-era world of mooks and shamuses that is the twisted magic mirror to our bustling Big Apple. It’s a city where sinister characters lurk around every corner, while the great superheroes who once kept the streets safe have fallen into deadly rivalries and feuds. Not that its colourful residents know anything about the real New York … until detective Rad Bradley makes a discovery that will change the lives of all its inhabitants.


ExpandThe Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Adam Christopher’s debut science fiction novel is jam-packed with ideas – pocket universes, robots, superheroes and Chandler-style noir – but the story itself never really came together and was slightly too episodic for me. Rad’s a curiously passive character, dragged along by events rather than driving them and I was disappointed that Rex, having started off so strongly, disappears from the page for too long, leaving him somewhat underdrawn. This is a shame because Christopher’s New York and Empire State are fascinating worlds with some great concepts underpinning them and I desperately wanted to know more about the City Commissioners, the robots staffing the ironclads and the Pastor of Lost Souls but there’s simply so much going on and insufficient pages to explore all of them properly. I did love the bonus interview with Christopher at the end and the creative commons licence is fascinating – all in all I’ll read Christopher’s next book even though this didn’t quite do it for me.

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