Review: Redshirts by John Scalzi

I bought this off the back of Ready Player One, which I loved and I've been trying desperately to find something similar ever since. I haven't quite managed but I have found some really interesting books along the way. Redshirts is one of them and definitely one of the best - I completely fell in love with its geeky sci-fi tone and little nods to pop culture.

Plot summary:

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, and Andrew is even more delighted when he's assigned to the ship's Xenobiology laboratory. Life couldn't be better ... although there are a few strange things going on:

(1) every Away Mission involves a lethal confrontation with alien forces

(2) the ship's captain, the chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these encounters

(3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

Suddenly it's less surprising how much energy is expended below decks on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned an Away Mission. Andrew's fate may have been sealed ... until he stumbles on a piece of information that changes everything ... and offers him and his fellow redshirts a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives ...

So I'm going to sit here with my blue hair, my large black glasses and my 50s dress and cringe a little as I talk about how 'totally meta' this book is. Apparently I've morphed into a fully-fledged hipster and I now loathe myself a little bit. Still, there's no getting around it - Redshirts is meta, I do love it and I am going to talk about it.

I love books like this. The Thursday Next books, Between the Lines... books where you're involved in the storytelling or where the creation of the book is part of the whole plot.  I was instantly, totally and absolutely hooked about three pages in.

Essentially, it's a sort-of-but-not-really parody of Star Trek and those other futuristic sci-fi shows, where dramatic events continuously unfold but every episode is always self-contained. There are four people, main characters, who always survive, possibly injured, but they recover ridiculously quickly and then there are the redshirts. The expendable crew members, a few of whom die every episode just to point out to you how dangerous the mission is. Redshirts is their story.

Let me just say first of all that you don't need to have seen Star Trek to love this book. You only need to know what I've just said - that the main characters always survive and and someone expendable always dies. Oh, and there's usually some dubious science kicking about as well. It's self-explanatory and I assure you it it's hardly a difficult concept anyway.

As befits the genre it's parodying, it does sometimes take a second or two to work out the 'science.' I mean, the writers of Star Trek didn't exactly put a lot of effort into making their sci-fi logical or rational (and it was fine, it worked regardless) so a similar style has been recreated here. Either that or I'm giving John Scalzi too much credit and his knowledge of physics is just rubbish!

I admit that it lost me a little bit when I reached the epilogues. Well, they're called 'codas,' but they're essentially epilogues. Which I hate. I have incredibly mixed feelings about these chapters. First, I accepted their existence as they do sort of add something new to the story, although I wasn't sure if they quite fit the theme. Then I basically turned into Hanna Hulk because one of them is written in the second person and this infuriates me. Then the last one is quite deep, quite philosophical and I really enjoyed it and started wondering if maybe I just hated them on principle? Confusing.

Redshirts is so much more than a parody. It's funny, clever, occasionally philosophical and really made me care about characters I expected to be two-dimensional and flat. I loved this book an awful lot more than I expected to, and I can't recommend it highly enough, regardless of whether you've ever seen a Star Trek episode in your life.

Read Katie's review of Redshirts at Katie Who Can Read.

Review: The Suicide Shop by Jean Teulé

Because who doesn't celebrate Christmas by reading obscure French novels about suicide?

Plot summary: Has your life been a failure? Let's make your death a success With the twenty-first century just a distant memory and the world in environmental chaos, many people have lost the will to live. And business is brisk at The Suicide Shop. Run by the Tuvache family for generations, the shop offers an amazing variety of ways to end it all, with something to fit every budget. The Tuvaches go mournfully about their business, taking pride in the morbid service they provide. Until the youngest member of the family threatens to destroy their contented misery by confronting them with something they ve never encountered before: a love of life.

I was hooked on this book after about three lines. Despite the fairly desperate-sounding title, The Suicide Shop is a light, fun, quirky read with a chatty tone about a heavy subject. Mr and Mrs Tuvache run The Suicide Shop (catering to all your deathly needs) along with their three children, Marilyn, Vincent and Alan. Unfortunately the latter just doesn't seem to be getting the, uhh... hang of it (Ha. Sorry.) due to his naturally cheery and upbeat disposition.

It has quite a dark tone of humour (obviously) and yet it still manages to be oddly respectful towards the dead. The concept of suicide itself isn't ridiculed and nor are the victims themselves, only the world that has become so dismal that its inhabitants have decided they may as well not bother existing. Click over to BBC News and it's hardly an unbelievable idea.

The characters are fairly flat, but then it's hardly meant to be an in-depth epic tome. They are all interesting and unique, however. My favourite was Marilyn, who sobs dramatically over her weight and her believed lack of beauty, and pleads with her mother daily to allow her to finally kill herself. Reminds me of a lot of girls I knew as a teenager, to be honest... (and yes, I completely understand that that's probably the point, thank you).

"Hello? Oh, it's you, Monsieur Chang! Of course I remember you: the rope, this morning, wasn't it? You...? You want us...? I can't hear" - the customer must be calling from a mobile - "to invite us to your funeral? Oh that is kind! But when are you going to do it? Oh, you already have the rope round your neck? Well, today's Tuesday, tomorrow's Wednesday... so the funeral will be on Thursday. Hang on, I'll ask my husband..."
...
She speaks into the receiver again: "Hello? Monsieur Chang...? Hello...?" She hangs up as she realises what's happened. "Ropes may be basic, but they're effective. We ought to think about recommending them more often..."

Just a quick note on the translation - it's excellent. Obviously I can't comment on the accuracy, but translations (especially of more obscure works) tend to be stilted and generally just sound odd. The Suicide Shop is a huge change from the usual though - it flows to such an extent that I'd believe it was originally written in English. I wish all French works could be translated by Sue Dyson.

It's a very short novel, only 169 pages, but I feel it would get old quite quickly if it were any longer. I'm not a massive fan of the ending as it was quite predictable, but it worked. It would make a good indie-style film though. Oh. It is an indie-style film. Called it! :)

To conclude, I really would recommend this book. It's a quick read, but an amusing one, especially if you're in the mood for some dark humour and societal satire.

Read another review of The Suicide Shop at The Friendly Shelf. 

Review: Cuckoo in the Nest by Natalie Luurtsema

Hey look! I haven't died, although you'd be forgiven for thinking I had. In fact, it more or less amounts to the same thing - Law School. I started last week and pretty much all I've done since then is study and, very occasionally, sleep. Still, I'm working on some semblance of a routine though, so hopefully you should see my reviews a little more frequently than they have been :)

Summary - Last year Nat (stand-up comic and general incompetent) found herself with nowhere to live. She considered sleeping on the bus and washing in the rain but inevitable ended up on her parents' doorstep. It was only for a month, she assured them, if that. She repeated this phrase a lot over the next six months, while the housing market stagnated like a spoilt kid's fish tank, and her life followed suit. While her friends pursued normal adult lives, Nat was taking packed lunches to gigs and being treated to lectures on 'Why It's Nice When All The Tins Face Forwards In The Cupboard.' ("So we can see what they all are at a glance!")

Nat wouldn't say she was the real victim of the recession, but it would be nice if you did. Then she would do a tiny, brave smile.

I seem to be going through a bit of a funny memoir phase lately - there's my recent review of Let's Pretend This Never Happened by the hilarious Jenny Lawson, my current rereading of How To Be A Woman and the way that Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and Bossypants are beckoning me seductively from the top of my TBR pile. Cuckoo in the Nest is one of the more obscure titles, but I picked it up as the premise appealed to me in a relatable, oh-good-you're-pathetic-too kind of way.

The first thing you should know is that Natalie Luurtsema is a comedian, not a writer. Yes, this book is hilarious in parts but it can occasionally be a struggle to work through the awful sentence structure. Sometimes I had to reread a sentence two or three times in order to appropirately rearrange it in my head so it would make sense. It's not bad bad - you get used to it, just be prepared to kind of roll with it for a while.

It really is worth it though - I'd be interested in watching one of the author's comedy gigs, because her book is pretty damn funny. I was sat in a comfy chair in the library, sneakily stalking the reservation shelves, and suddenly I became that crazy person that giggles to herself. You know the one, they always tend to sit next to you on trains? It's very, very funny, especially because I'm sure so many of us can relate.

   "You're banned!" she cried triumphantly. "Banned! From the pale-coloured sofa!"
   She waggled the bit of sofa at me, which I recognised as the armrest. It seemed bigger out of context, but that was by the by.
   "See?" she said, gesturing delicately along a seam, like I was being scolded by a shopping channel presenter. "It's all filthy from where you sit there and do this (and she made a creepy claw motion like a tyrannosaurus rex impersonating Fagin) with your greasy hands."
   Now, I'm not a vain woman. Looks-wide I neither scare children nor inspire poetry. That's fine. But I firmly refuted this greasy-fingered, furniture-caressing grotbag image she was trying to thrust upon me.

 I could happily (happily, I tell you!) sit here and type out quotes all day - God knows it took me long enough to choose one - but this review will be nowhere near long enough to justify shoving in all the quotes that made me snuffle. Suffice it to say that there are a lot. 

As a slight diversion, you know what really bothers me? Okay, yes, a lot of things, but in relation to books. And this isn't a slight at Natalie Luurtsema, it's more of a general thing. You give up? Epilogues. I have never read a book ever where an epilogue actually added anything to the story. In most cases it actually ruins it. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Mockingjay? I'm looking at you.

Anyway, to meander back to a semblance of relevance, Cuckoo in the Nest has an epilogue and my thoughts above remain unchanged. One might say they were even concreted. I'm not going to spoil it, but it changed the entire tone of the book for me and left me thoroughly depressed. No, nobody dies, but I did end up sat there thinking 'Where the hell did THAT come from!?' It just didn't seem necessary to me and it did genuinely alter my opinion towards the book as a whole.

I really did enjoy reading this book, although it's not something I'd actually want to own. I think it could have been a lot more if it had been edited a little more aggressively and had seriously reworked the epilogue, but it does have some truly hilarious moments and I couldn't help but sit and giggle to myself.

Read my reviews of How To Be A Woman and Let's Pretend This Never Happened, two equally hilarious memoirs!

Review: Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

So I'm not really much of a book-laugher, or a laugher-at-books if you prefer. I'm more of a snuffler - when something amuses me, I make a noise that's kind of a hybrid between a tiger that's pleased to see you and Muttley. Jenny Lawson, however, made me laugh out loud until I cried, both with her debut book and with her blog, The Bloggess.

Summary - Every teenager wants to fit in and be just like everybody else. So imagine how hard that is when your father runs a taxidermy business out of the family home, your mother runs the student cafeteria, and your sister has just been elected high school mascot, which means she walks the halls in a giant bird costume. But as Jenny Lawson grows up, falls in love, gets engaged - in a way that is as disastrous as it is romantic - and starts a family of her own, she learns that life's most absurd and humiliating moments, the ones we wish we could pretend had never happened, are the very same moments that make us who we are.

I actually picked up Let's Pretend This Never Happened before I knew anything about Jenny Lawson or her blog. It was part of the 'Staff Picks' stand at Waterstones and I figured I'd give it a go, intrigued by the costumed mouse on the cover. Only later, after I'd read the blurb properly, did I finally click onto The Bloggess. And then, approximately five hours later, I temporarily stopped reading it. 

It was almost inevitable that this book would be compared to Caitlin Moran's How To Be A Woman - the cover is unnecessarily similar and the chatty, informal writing style is great in both. However, although both are autobiographical to a certain extent, How To Be A Woman deals with the sub-issue of feminism while this book spends more time with mental illness and anxiety. When you also take in the difference in countries, upbringings and employment, you actually have two quite different books.

This woman is hilarious - reading her blog is at the top of my 4am activity list (What? You don't have one of those!? You're missing out!) and I nearly always end up literally crying with laughter. I was reading Let's Pretend This Never Happened on the train, tried to stifle my laughter and ended up choking. Like I said way up top, I am a snuffler, not a laugher, so this is one pretty damn special book.

   It was at this exact moment that the 'dead' rattlesnake suddenly started angrilily striking at Victor's leg. Uncoincidently, it was also the exact same moment that I ducked back into the truck, taking the spotlight with me and leaving Victor in the pitch-black darkness on an abandoned road, as the angry rattlesnake he was holding tried to murder him.
   "BRING BACK THE LIGHT," he screamed.
   "I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO OUT THERE!" I yelled angrily, as I quickly locked the doors (for some reason) and rolled up all the windows. I was worried about him and wanted to help him, but I couldn't help but think that he had brought this on himself.
    "BRING BACK THE LIGHT OR I WILL THROW THIS DAMN SNAKE IN THE CAR WITH YOU," he screamed, which was surprising, both because he sounded very vital for someone dying of snakebite, and also because he'd wrongly assumed that I hadn't automatically locked all the doors. He knows so little about me,  I thought to myself.
...
   After a minute to slow his breathing, Victor's voice was only vaguely controlled. "You left me alone. In the dark. With a live rattlesnake."
   "No. You left me alone. In the car. For a live rattlesnake," I countered. "So I guess that makes us even." There was a long pause as he stared at me. "But I forgive you?" I said. 

There are one or two parts that I recognise from my avid trawlings of Jenny Lawson's blog, but not many. I suppose it's almost inevitable though - she's only led one life, after all, there's bound to be a little cross-over.

I have to admit that the book did go downhill a little bit towards the end. It started to get less funny and more about her anxiety disorder. It's obviously a very important part of her life, but it was a bit repetitive. Also, the ending itself disintegrates into a generic, soppy memoir and it did make me lose interest a little. I was reading this for amusement, not pseudo-poignant musings on memories and reputation.

That said, I still loved this book - I can't really explain how funny it is without you reading it yourself (which I highly recommend doing). It was difficult to not just post quote after quote for this review, because that's pretty much all my notebook page for this review consists of. Just buy this - I dare you not to snuffle.

Visit The Bloggess, or find Jenny Lawson on Twitter. 

Review: The Pirates! in an Adventure with Moby Dick by Gideon Defoe

At the end of The Pirates! in an Adventure with Moby Dick, there are ten pages of other (pretend) titles by the same author, and I love this book so much that I would happily read every single one of them. I'm sure The Pirates! in an Adventure with Heavy Petting and The Pirates! in an Adventure with a Steep Hill would sell especially well.

They’re back!!! The Pirate Captain and his irascible crew of scoundrels return in their soggiest saga yet.Fresh from their mishaps with Charles Darwin and the evil Bishop of Oxford, the Pirates set sail in a bouncy new vessel——purchased on credit. In order to repay his debts, the Pirate Captain is determined to capture the enigmatic White Whale, hunted by the notoriously moody Ahab, who has promised a reward.Chaos ensues, featuring the lascivious Cutlass Liz, the world’s most dangerous mosquito, an excerpt from the Pirate Captain’s novel in progress (a bodice ripper, of course), whale ventriloquism, practical lessons in whale painting, a shanty-singing contest in a Las Vegas casino, and a dramatic climax in which the Pirate Captain’s prize ham saves the day! Move over, Herman Melville.

So I've apparently infected the blogosphere with manic love (the best kind of love, naturally) for these wonderful little books with my review of ...with Scientists. I've been going on about these books to anyone who'll listen, and even a few people that won't. Check out Ellie's review of ...with Communists or Katie's look at ...with Scientists if you're not already 100% convinced!

Enough about the other books, let's look at this one :) In the interests of full disclosure, I haven't read Moby Dick (the proper book) yet, although I did buy it last week. You don't really need it to understand this book though, just as long as you know the very basic summary - Ahab is Captain obsessed with hunting a great white whale that once bit his leg off. Wow, that was hard, wasn't it?

The recent film actually encompasses this book as well, so the trailer suddenly makes a lot more sense. Here, the Pirate Captain suddenly realises that their ship is looking a bit decrepit, so they head off to Cutlass Liz to get a shiny new one, The Lovely Emma. Unfortunately they can't quite afford to pay her just yet so they take on a contract for Ahab to eliminate that famous white whale.

He looked at his second-in-command seriously. "I'm making a list of when it's acceptable for a pirate to cry."
"That sounds very important, Captain," said the pirate with a scarf, fiddling axiously with his eye-patch.
"So far I've got: one - when holding a seagull covered in oil. Two - when singing a shanty that reminds him of orphans. Three - when confronted by the unremitting loneliness of the human condition. Four - chops. I've just written the word 'chops.' Not really sure where I was going with that one. Any ideas?"

Just like the other books, ...with Moby Dick has an awesome sense of humour that mixes silly slapstick with subtle innuendo to produce one of the funniest books I've read all year. I also love the informative footnotes that provide fun facts, like the origination of the phrase 'cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey' or that it is suspected whales use the magnetic field of the Earth for navigation - that's why so many whales are beached at places where there is an anomaly in the Earth's magnetic field. I did run off to check the facts so I didn't look like a complete moron after this post went up, but thankfully they are all true!

These books are just good fun. They're tiny, but I could happily read them over and over and I doubt they'd ever get stale. I've just done a quick Google, and apparently Gideon Defoe is in talks with Aardman Animation to turn the last two books into a movie as well. I know, I'm raving and I'm sorry. I'll stop when you finally cave in and buy a copy :)

Read my review of The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists or visit Gideon Defoe's website here.

Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

Oh Good Omens, how much do I love thee? I love thee as though thou were a vassal of water and I were a lonely wanderer in the desert, or as though thou were a sugary donut and I a fat child. Know that I would do aught to preserve thy existence as I love thee more than aught else in the frickin' world.

There was a bit of a mix-up when the Antichrist was born, due in part to the machinations of Crowley, who did not so much fall as saunter downwards, and in part to the mysterious ways as manifested in the form of a part-time rare book dealer, an angel named Aziraphale. Like top agents everywhere, they've long had more in common with each other than the sides they represent, or the conflict they are nominally engaged in. The only person who knows how it will all end is Agnes Nutter, a witch whose prophecies all come true, if one can only manage to decipher them.

So, the Antichrist has been born and uh... lost. Both Heaven and Hell know that the end is nigh and are using their representatives on Earth, Aziraphale and Crowley, to manipulate the situation so their side can be victorious in the Final Battle. Except neither Aziraphale or Crowley particularly want the world to end. All the good musicians are in hell, and Aziraphale dreads the concept of sitting around in Heaven listening to nothing but Elgar. Crowley loves his 1926 Bentley, that has one owner from new (him) and doesn't want to lose all the work he did for Hell creating the M1 and mobile phones. So eventually, the pair think that perhaps it might be better after all if the World continued to, well... exist.

There isn't a single part of this book that isn't ridiculously clever. Even the insignificant parts have lengthy and hilarious footnotes. It's set in the modern day, unlike a lot of fantasy novels, so we can relate to a lot of the humour. It's definitely not a comedy novel though - it's much more subtle, more mature that that. The humour never gets in the way of the plot, so it doesn't trip over its own feet trying to be funny.

Demons aren't bound by physics. If you take the long view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them*. For those of angel stock or demon breed, size, and shape, and composition, are simply options.

*Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it's given credit for, it does not have a giant plastic snowman at the bottom.

However, it wouldn't be half the masterpiece is is without Aziraphale and Crowley. They bounce off and support each other wonderfully. Although on opposite 'teams,' they've known each other for millennia and so bonded out of mutual respect and loneliness. I've never seen such amazingly-crafted characters in any other piece of fiction - while they both obviously emerged from their respective sides, thousands of years on Earth has mellowed them out. Hilarity ensues, especially when each side suspects the other of being responsible for a particular grievance, like traffic wardens.

Crowley put the Bentley in gear. Then he remembered something. He snapped his fingers. The wheel clamps disappeared.

   "Let's have lunch," he said. "I owe you one from, when was it..."

   "Paris, 1793," said Aziraphale.

   "Oh, yes. The Reign of Terror. Was that one of yours, or one of ours?"

   "Wasn't it yours?"

   "Can't recall. It was quite a good restaurant, though."

   As they drove past an astonished traffic warden his notebook spontaneously combusted, to Crowley's amazement.

   "I'm pretty certain I didn't mean to do that," he said.

   Aziraphale blushed.

   "That was me," he said, "I had always thought your people invented them."

   "Did you? We thought they were yours."

   Crowley stared at the smoke in the rearview mirror.

   "Come on," he said. "Let's do the Ritz."

 

Sorry. I could pretty much sit here and post quotes at you all day, but then you wouldn't have the fun of discovering them for yourself. Which I highly recommend you do, by the way. Even the minor characters are amusing - Famine, of Apocalyptic Horseman fame, is responsible for introduction of fast food, diet crazes and insta-meals all over the globe and constantly visits McDonalds restaurants to gleefully examine his handiwork for himself.

 

It does have a fairly formal tone though, and frequently discusses theology issues, albeit in an accessible and humorous way. It suggests that perhaps God and his demonic counterpart aren't as infallible as they're supposed to be and that even their plans can go awry. I wouldn't say it's likely to offend anyone as it's very tongue-in-cheek, but be ready to consider that maybe God's plans are only ineffable because he isn't quite sure what's going on himself!

 

My only complaint is that the ending is a little slow. It's not bad exactly, far from it, but it doesn't seem to keep up to the fast-paced style of the rest of the book. I'm not really sure how I'd have changed it myself but it seems to very nearly cross the border into Twee And Cheesy Land.

Dark light is not actually an oxymoron. It's the colour past ultra-violet. The technical term for it is infra-black. It can be seen quite easily under experimental conditions. To perform the experiment simply select a healthy brick wall, with a good runup, and, lowering your head, charge.

 

The colour that flashes in bursts behind your eyes, behind the pain, just before you die, is infra-black.

I've read works of both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, but I'd be hard pressed to liken this to any of their other books. It's clear that the positive literary aspects of both authors are showcased in Good Omens. It's more formal than Terry Pratchett's usual works and funnier than Neil Gaiman's. I wish more than anything that they'd teamed up again and written at least one more novel because this is, and always will be, one of my absolute favourite novels.