There's two angles from which I come at this book.One angle is of great pleasure in the ideas of this book. It's a very clever concept, with a fun blend of meta ideas and an intriguing storyline. There's nothing not to like about a fun story, right?The other angle is focused more on the latter half of the book, especially the codas. Honestly, the latter portion of the main story got ridiculous in a way (that wasn't any more ridiculous than the rest of the book) that stopped being as interesting to me. The first half I was laughing and wanting to see where the story would take me, the latter half I kind of just wanted to finish the book so I could move on to something else. I think the reason why is that the impression I get from this book is that John Scalzi is very in love with his writing and how clever he is. So much so that instead of ending the book with the end of the story, he instead wrote codas in different perspectives (1st, 2nd, and 3rd person) just to show everybody else how clever he is. And I spent so much time thinking about the author that I barely thought about what those parts contributed to the piece as a whole. Does that make any sense? Scalzi's self-adoration drew attention to itself and distracted from what were otherwise interesting parts of the story that had a surprisingly strong emotional component to them.But yeah, as a whole I liked this book, I don't regret picking it up, but the humor didn't ever elicit more than a chuckle, and the story was fun until it got less fun. Put me in the group of people who don't understand all the love for John Scalzi, especially as a novelist. I like his writing style, but I'm more entertained by it in small doses, such as his Whatever blog. I will forever adore him for his scathing commentary about so-called objectivism and for comparing John Galt to a super-intelligent cup of yogurt that must be eaten.But, a blog is not a novel. This is where Scalzi suffers as a writer. Say what you will about Stephen King's most recent books, but he has been both an excellent author and an excellent columnist. I've enjoyed King's reviews of the Harry Potter novels, and I also love King's criticism of the Twlight novels. If I were to put it in music terms, asking Scalzi to write a novel with any kind of depth and value is like asking The Ramones to play something, anything by Rush. It's tough to stretch out to 20-minute epic songs when every good song in your catalog is two minutes or less.Oh. Redshirts. Right. It's about expendable crewmates aboard a Star Trek-clone spaceship, and they realize they're getting killed off way more than they should. Blah blah blah. Cue gratuitous Holy Grail and The Voyage Home quotes to appeal to the nerds. More blah. If I wanted to revisit a poor version of Star Trek, I'd watch the Abrams abominations and not reread Redshirts.I've read Old Man's War, Agent to the Stars and Redshirts. I'll continue to read his blog, but unless I have to read one of his books for my book club, I won't be reading any more books from him.
What do You think about Redshirts (2012)?
If you are at all interested in Star Trek, especially TOS, this is a really fun read.
—patrickg
I don't read a lot of sci-fi, but this was a fun, quick read
—r_mach
