Redshirts

by John Scalzi

After having read a serious nonfiction book, I thought it was time for something lighter. A word of advice, if you just want to be entertained, Scalzi is the way to go. Every time. 

Confession: I was never a Star Trek fan. Of course I've seen a few episodes here and there and I get most of the jokes, but I never saw a reason to sit down and really watch the series. Given that, it's probably safe to say that there are some jokes that I missed in this book, but I think I got most of them and they were hilarious. Scalzi points out things that don't make sense that I had never realized were so stupid, like shooting a door panel to shut the door, or things exploding on the bridge when other parts of the ship get hit by enemy fire.

It didn't take long before I realized that this book was actually Stranger than Fiction meets Star Trek. Once I realized that, I was completely on board because I am a huge fan of Stranger than Fiction and because Scalzi is an extremely talented story-teller. I was worried about the premise having already been done, but Scalzi has his own twist on everything and this book is no exception. Also, Scalzi is never more entertaining than when he's having fun and I think he had a lot of fun writing this book.

I had two problems with Redshirts. The first one is the overly explanatory narrator. It wasn't terrible, but there were more than a few times where Scalzi describes a character's actions or body language and then the reason behind them, even when the reasoning is already obvious. He also felt the need to give us a character's name after each and every line of dialogue. This makes sense when there are more than two people in a conversation, but there were times when it was already obvious who was speaking and the reader didn't to be beat over the head with it.

My second issue is with the codas at the end. They were entirely unnecessary and I wonder if they were there because Scalzi's editor told him he had to make the book longer. He tried to use them to make some interesting points on writing and fate and that's fine, but I don't think the codas were necessary to do that. I think he had already done a pretty good job of accomplishing that in the story itself. The first coda in particular felt way too preachy and I think Scalzi got a little carried away writing about a character that I, personally, had very little interest in.