John Dale (1)

I want to fully admit that my three star rating is probably greatly my fault--this being the third "Noir" collection I've read, I should clearly stop receiving them for review because they're just not up my alley. I rated each story individually as I read them, and the average was a little under a 3. The collection is divided up into three sections, generally about Family, Sex, and Criminal Justice. Family, for me, was the best of the three. A few 4's in there: "Good Boy, Bad Girl;" "In The Dunes;" and "In the Court of The Lion King."

I'm not puritanical but I'm not a huge fan of graphic sex in my literature, and I see plenty of crime in my job so it doesn't hit me as dark or jarring as it's probably meant to. The family section was primarily what appealed to me--I'll stop reading these Noir books now. Again, no knock to the genre, just a personal preference.

I'm going to be honest, parts of this made me chuckle. But even for a sci-fi comedy, some of the dialogue was pretty unbelievable (think Hitchhiker's Guide but less clever), and I really didn't enjoy the world building that let so many fantastical technologies all be developed at the same time to be incorporated in one cyber-partner for our protagonist. I am a big sci-fi fan, but the introduction of technology into this world was implausible and poorly done. The story was fun, but not enough to draw me in past the dialogue and other issues. Unrelated: I LOVE the cover, so kudos there.

**I received a free Advance Reader Copy of this book in exchange for this unbiased review (and I'm sorry it took me so long to provide that review--since having kids my brain power allocated to reading has been severely handicapped).**… (meer)