diana_reads_and_reads 's review for:

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

4.5

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When I heard this described as if Becky Chambers wrote a mystery, I immediately put it on hold. It did not disappoint. The cocktail recipes at the beginning of each chapter sometimes featured in the book and sometimes their names were commentary on the goings on. I found the portrayal of chronic pain nuanced and so human. I wish there was a little more world building and that we got more details on exactly what happened in Tesla Crane’s accident, but maybe we’ll hear about that in future books. 🤞🏻 I thought it was interesting that in this timeline, everyone goes by Mx., which really would simplify things but sometimes made it hard for me to visualize the characters. On the other hand, I was really tuned in to the other descriptors given to each character, which I’m normally not, so maybe that’s a good thing. This reminded me a bit of the JD Robb mysteries, which are set sometime in the future, but I haven’t read one of those in a long time so I could be drawing a bad comparison there based on the scraps of memory I have. This is also fade to black, and JD Robb is decidedly not.