This book was a very quick read. I don’t know how many pages it is actually, because I read it on my kindle, but it only took about six hours to finish. It’s hard for me to review, because I don’t want to give anything away, but here goes.
The beginning of the story takes place in the 25th century, and the characters are members of the Universal Union, and crew on the starship Intrepid. If it sounds a lot like Star Trek, it’s supposed to. I’m not sure how funny it would be to someone not familiar with Star Trek, but for this Sci-fi nerd it was absolutely hilarious. The author is purposely highlighting some of the lazy and repetitive storytelling present in the original Star Trek and other Sci-fi TV shows. The main characters are lowly members of the crew, and it doesn’t take them long to figure out that something is wrong on their ship, which has a statistically implausible high casualty rate. Naturally they must endeavor to uncover the cause of all of the crew deaths.
There isn’t a lot of characterization for the protagonists, and no descriptions of them other than to reveal their gender. Backstory is minimal, so to some extent they are blank slates. Some of the characters are so bland that I even forgot their existence between scenes. I’m not sure if this was all intended by the author, but I suspect that most of it was.
My biggest problem with this book was the three codas at the end. While they definitely tied in with the story, they were so different from what came before that I was actually quite confused as to the whole point of it. Once I finished it, I realize there was a point, but I’m not sure this narrative choice was the best. I think the story would have been just as good without the three codas. While I was reading it, I felt this was a solid 4 stars, but after having read the codas, I almost downgraded it to three. But I decided to keep it at four because of the amount of times I literally laughed out loud (or cackled, according to my husband). It was a fun story.
I had the exact same issues with the codas when I read the book. I thought the point of the novel was already well made and the codas were just two-by-fours to the head.
A friend of mine lent this to me last night, I might be starting it sooner than I thought based on your review.
I love this book, three codas and all. I’ve read it like three times now? The audio version is excellent (Wil Wheaton does good work with all of Scalzi’s non-Old Man’s War books, so highly recommend).