I'm writing this review after reading the sequel of this book, which will color my opinion (in a negative way).

I have to admit that I was very hesitant to pick up this book. It's another sci-fi series by John Scalzi, and we all know what he did to his other series: flip the bird mid-book and drop his readers.
Will he just stop this series as well as soon as he gets bored with this?
Still... I had nothing better to read and had to pass the time until [a: Steven Erikson|31232|Steven Erikson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1219169436p2/31232.jpg]'s [b: Rejoice, a knife to the heart|36405688|Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart|Steven Erikson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1522055721s/36405688.jpg|58099943] came out for Audible. So I jumped in.

I liked it. It is hard to know what kind of book it is. Is it satire? The ship's names and ridiculous situations and Will Wheatons super annoying always shouty over the top narration seem to indicate that. I reminded me of the [b: The Willful Child|20518786|Willful Child|Steven Erikson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1418694657s/20518786.jpg|26112570] series, but then with a longer arc, and sloppier (very sloppy) writing.
Is is space opera? It certainly has the scope, but it feels too light and immature to be actually space opera. Maybe it's targeted at YA?

I have to talk about the (technical) writing. It's bad. Scalzi is improving, his dialogs aren't as stilted anymore as in his earlier work. There is no longer an avalanche of 'he said' 'she said' and the characters seem to be actually alive and real instead of cardboard cutouts with stiffly moving mouths.
Don't get me wrong, I like reading Scalzi for his imagination. He is a great story teller. It's just that with his earlier books I had to rinse my brain with strong soap to make everything unstick and uncross.
Imagine every advice ever given to authors about writing a story. And then blatantly ignoring said advice. That's Scalzi. The amount of info dumps, "as you know, Bob"'s, lantern hangings, etc. is staggering. This is only the first book in the series, so some of the info dumps may be excused. But after having read the second book, I'm sad to say that they seem to increase.
It pulls me out of the story every time, and that's too bad, but I like the story, over the top as it is.

After reading this first book, I gave it 4 stars out of five. I liked the story and the characters thát much. But after reading the second book, I downgraded it to 3 stars. Hope the next books won't be pulling the rating down even more.