Polished off Spite and the book as a whole last night. Lebbon's final entry was decent but not as good as the few preceding stories. I can't decided if I would've got more out of it if I'd already read the Rage War trilogy. Probably.
Overall I ended up quite enjoying the book, although it was undeniably uneven (typically to be expected with a short story collection). Generally, I thought the second half was far superior to the first. The stories I really loved were Reaper, Zero to Hero, Episode 22, Deep Background, Empty Nest, Deep Black, Distressed and Dangerous Prey; I guess 8 out of 15 isn't too bad. The only story I absolutely hated was Darkness Falls, which was total cack, although I found Blowback to be a bit of a slog as well. Everything else was just OK. A few of the stories would've been much better without one or two things dragging them down.
Could've done without all the rather obvious errors in the book (especially in Dark Mother, can't believe that slipped through) but otherwise I thought it was a decent effort. I'm not sure I'll ever read the whole thing again but I'm sure I'll come back to a few of the stories.
