Mike Barker's Reviews > Black Rain

One hot mess of a book. I got it free from my Prime account. I persevered to the end, though I was ready to chuck it in long before I reached 100%. Where to begin? There were plenty of themes that could have been whole books in themselves, had they been adequately developed. I supposed that's the main thing that struck me. 1, the whole natural versus synthate society thing. There's a whole book right there explaining the whys and the hows. 2, the perversion of genetics and/or health insurance industries into disease generators for profit. 3, the murder. 4, the synthate things could have been personalized and internalized into a highly compelling autobiography. I would have enjoyed learning more about Night Comfort. Or even Jack and the murder and his un-self-awareness for that matter. 5, the sibling rivalry and daddy issues. 6, we're given a pretty interesting dystopian society that could have been profitably developed in its own right. All these kind of popped in and out and were never developed enough for me to care about any of them. And sadly, the whole "Games" construct fell flat for me. There way too many unexplained time lapses, and too many gotchas that were inadequately prepared.