Mickey7

This was a very engaging read that didn't break a lot of new ground, but did well with established sci-fi tropes. The protagonist was interesting, and there was a good, tight story.

I would say this was about 80% Murderbot and 20% Andy Weir. The core of the book was ideas I've seen used fairly frequently in sci-fi. There were some new ideas and world-building, but they weren't super well integrated in the story. Sometimes the narrator would just take a break from the action to spend a chapter talking about worldbuilding.

I didn't love the way the author wrote women. They were fickle and turned on people too easily. A lot of the book was about Mickey learning self-respect, but he never addressed how Nasha's teasing could read as cruelty. It also doesn't really reveal what Mickey 8's deal is. He seems different from Mickey 7 in ways that are never explained, although maybe that's just a way of saying the narrator is different when seen from the outside.

I'll read the sequel soon and am looking forward to the movie.

Fun light-hearted sci-fi. It doesn't aim higher than that but it accomplishes it perfectly. My low rating only reflects that I don't think anyone misses anything if they skip it. But they wouldn't regret reading it either.

It is built from a fantastic batch of components. 1) A colony ship traveling a decade to settle a new planet. 2) The planet is a snowball with hostile life that can bite through steel walls. 3) They fail to grow food and are starving. 4) Mickey's job is to die and be recreated. 5) Every character is a comic on par with The Martian's Mark Watney. 6) Mickey gets accidentally duplicated.

Each of these on their own would be a solid foundation for a story. Combined, they are just a lot of fun!

I'm looking forward to the movie adaptation. I'm hoping they either keep it as light-hearted fun, but it comes off better on film, or they add some ambition and depth and make it all more meaningful.

I figured going in I'd either love or hate this. The notion of being a disposable person with cloned versions of yourself waiting in tanks is familiar enough to me (such as the "troubleshooters", the player characters in the RPG Paranoia) that I've seen the possibilities for how surprisingly dull it can get.

Mickey7 did not fall into those traps. Through cleverly timed breaks for exposition and world building, mixed with just the right amount of gallows humor, I was never caught wishing the story would just move on already or felt the need to take breaks to escape the darkness.

In an interesting science fiction setting of humans trying to establish a beachhead colony on an inhospitable world, Mickey7 shows us how we can process trauma, how our past selves shape but do not define who we presently are. I see a movie is being made from it, and I fear it will lose a lot of what I love in the translation. I did pre-order the sequel book, though, and am looking forward to more of Mickey.