The Spare Man

The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal, 2022 novel. I wasn't into this at all. I thought it was long and slow and tedious; I didn't like the main character or her husband or most of all her awful little dog. Some interesting stuff about a chronic-pain-management system that could dial sensation up and down - the protag was most sympathetic when she was navigating her disability, deciding how to trade off pain and sensation, or considering how the different gravities (Lunar/Martian/Terran) would affect her - but even that got a bit old. I mean, I think it was the correct writing choice for Kowal to make that an aspect of the character that was always with her in every scene and choice she made, I just think I would have gotten everything I was going to get out of it after a novella. The space cruise ship was also a kind of neat setting, but, again, a novella's worth of neat at most. And the mystery plot just always felt kind of muddy and ponderous? I don't know, I think this book needed really snappy dialogue to pull itself off, or a really sharp/snarky POV voice, and it just wasn't there.

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