#Booklog: Only Forward

I'm not entirely sure whether I was just feeling things more than usual when late last night I finally finished "Only Forward" by Michael Marshall Smith. Truth be told, it might have been part elation of finally having managed to finish reading the book, but I think it's just a very powerful ending.

The whole book starts off as a kind of hard-boiled detective-cyberpunk dystopia, and what can I say? That's my jam. But eventually, without wanting to spoil, so I won't, the whole thing turns into something different, and then into something different yet again (quite a feat for a book that's not a Stephenson-esque tome, but rather slender).

And, well, the ending. To be honest, the whole twenty to thirty final pages of the book had me almost cry mine eyes out. It's such a rollercoaster of a "what could've been" or maybe "what should've been", and everything that happened before was put in the starkest of perspectives. What a magnificently manipulative bastard Smith is.

I'm glad I finally did finish it, because it'd been sitting on my bedside table, about two thirds in, for a year or maybe more, and I wasn't sure whether it was worth it to keep going. I can happily proclaim that yes, it's worth it. What a book!