I can hardly object, given the title, that this should turn out to be morbidly melancholic. 
 
If you’re squeamish (I am hopelessly so), know that the stages of decomposition are meticulously described. This illustrative precision seems to be Crace’s superpower. He applies it just as impressively to the development of a house fire, not so much forensically as faithfully.
 
I might have given up on Being Dead (I find invented misery distasteful and indulgent these days), but the writing is not just competent, the lives and individuals are all so well observed in a Franzen-like way. For example:
 
The death that the mature Celice had imagined: “her tent repitched each day, a footstep nearer home.”
 
The self-important professionals, kept waiting at a meeting her husband will never chair, “equally competitive in their impatience.”
 
And “that too-close ocean smell” of a smothering home life that their daughter, Syl, left.
 
There are books I keep and books I don’t. This one’s for market day. I have some pretty good titles at 1€ a pick.

Building a futuristic world is a bold assignment when you want it to be credible. If you’re not on top of it, all kinds of contradictions, inconsistencies and implausibilities can sprout up and multiply. Even so, readers will still bear or overlook a slip or two as long as the writing’s good and the story’s a solid one.
 
That ain’t the case here.
 
The main premise for the plot is that humans are now genetically engineered or cybernetically upgraded, except for our hero, Hwa, an elite bodyguard. She is 100% natural. She does, however, have a “dazzle-pattern” face that the enhanced humans cannot recognize. How, I do not know. Go figure.
 
In this highly advanced world, there are no robotics or sophisticated surveillance and policing, presumably since that would render Hwa ‘s profession redundant.
 
Hwa is certainly athletic. In the first action sequence, “Her navel met her spine.” (sic) Our crack is attacking a man because she has mistaken a microphone boom for a rifle. What big boss Lynch’s right-hand man is doing up a tower with the broadcasting equipment, I was unable to ascertain.
 
When Hwa is ushered into the presence of the superrich caricature “I’m a powerful man” Zachariah Lynch, she is surprised that he knows who she is. She will go on to be surprised that, as the precious son’s new bodyguard, they check up on her.
 
Lynch has a crystal ball from beyond the Singularity. Very nice. A must-have, I’m sure you will agree, for someone with his kind of wealth and status.
 
Meanwhile, despite society’s prodigious progress, they still teach French at his young son’s school (they still have schools). When a gunman shows up there and the alarms ring out, it’s time for Hwa to take charge and show what she is made of. Instead, she chats casually with the boy in the washroom where they are hiding.
 
Cory Doctorow called Ashby’s work “often profound” and “never boring”. No, it isn’t, and yes, it is. So awful I had to stop reading. The short sentences seem meant to be impactful and pithy, but they’re just corny. Then there’s the flat tone. It never varies. Like this. And that’s quite enough.

A seductively crafted account of one man’s solipsistic and coexisting fictions.
 
The private narratives that we live out can border on psychopathology, is my take on Priest’s story. I, who think our species is a collective headcase, found it very well-written and uncomfortable reading. As intriguing and disturbing as a mouth that devours itself.

A breathless tale, related at fever pitch from start to finish, Prokop jealously guarding the secret of his infernal substance just as others are jealously guarding him.
 
Although it’s less about the destructive power of unchecked science and more about Čapek’s romantic fantasizing. Nary an episode goes by without the unbecoming and typically delirious scientist having some young woman fall in love with him, not least the princess, whose extreme obsessive passion is more explosive than krakatit itself. I lost account of how many times she throws her arms around his neck. The book was published in 1922 Czechoslovakia, so they never go further than agonizing alone, then storming each other’s rooms to rage and accuse, before covering each other in kisses and swooning.
 
Expect no relief other than that of closing the book after the final page.