ericbuscemi 's review for:

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

3.0

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I enjoyed the sci-fi noir setting, and thought the mystery was well done — and it kept me guessing. But I found the book to be overlong, and too focused on extraneous details. I understood that Tesla suffered an accident, but the sheer amount of times the settings of her DBPS (Deep Brain Pain Suppressor) was mentioned was too damn high, as was the number of times her panic attacks were detailed. Same with the number of pages spent faffing on about how cute her dog Gimlet is, along with its every movement and noise it made. I think there's a very good novella buried in this ~400 page novel, if a lot of that repetition had been edited out.