Rob

I have mixed feelings on this one. I struggled with the characters, including Mickey. His view on people doesn't vibe with my own. His choices that lead to him becoming an expendable are not ones I'd make, but I guess I understand. Most of the supporting characters are worse, except maybe Nasha.

For me the thing that kept me picking the book back up was the story itself. There is a bit of a mystery and I wanted to know what happened. Mickey did grow on me as the book went along. He had some interesting character growth. The book explores a lot of ideas about what is self.

I guess there is a sequel, but I'm not likely to pick it up. I am fine with this as a stand-alone.

I will continue the series, but every time I pick up a new book in this series I'm reminded how much I can struggle with the writing. I love the characters, the world building and the overall plot has me interested. That said there are just huge lulls of infodumps or overexplaining things and I just sort of tune out. I want to see where the story goes. This book finished much stronger than it started.

The narration is fantastic as always. I think it's a huge help to get through the slow parts of the series. I was annoyed when the book got delayed, but I'd rather it be delayed than have a different narrator.

For a while John Scalzi was one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Anytime a new book a pre-order was automatic. However I was mostly underwhelmed by his last two novels The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain. Both had fun sounding premises and both didn't end up being as fun as their premise.

So here comes this book about the moon turning to cheese. In the afterword Scalzi mentions how its the final book in what he sort of considers a loose trilogy of unrelated books. I was staring to think that maybe I'd be more selective of which novels by Mr. Scalzi I'd pre-order in the future.

Thankfully this was a book that ended up being as fun as the premise. If you're looking for a hard sci-fi novel, well you must not have read a John Scalzi novel before. The science is hand wavy at best. But that' not the point.

I'm not generally a fan of short stories. This book is almost that, but not quite. Some characters we meet once and never again. The book explores a lot of ideas, characters and parts of the US with the question of "how would they react if the moon turned to cheese?". It's a silly premise and question, but somehow it leads to some really interesting vignettes that worked well together into a novel length story.

Despite my somewhat low expectations and a style of story telling I generally don't enjoy, Mr. Scalzi somehow pulled it off.

Wil Wheaton does his usual good job with narrations. This book has far less snark than other books by Mr. Scalzi but I still think Wil is always a great fit for his novels.

Executive Summary: This was a fun novella, and I plan to continue with the rest of the series eventually.

Audiobook: Kevin R. Free did a good job. It isn't a must listen for me, but it's certainly a decent option if like me you do a lot of audiobooks.

Full Review

I've said this before in other reviews, but I'm not a huge fan of the Novella series trend that seems to be happening. I generally like longer stories. I often don't feel like they are priced the same as full novels where it seems like I'm not getting my money's worth, especially in audio.

I got the ebook of this for free, then promptly forgot I had it and bought the audio on a daily deal. I might not have read it otherwise. I really love the premise of this. I don't read a lot of sci-fi, but what I do tends to be very character-driven space opera. There don't tend to be a lot of robots/androids. This is still very character-driven. However it's much smaller in scope. Oh and the protagonist is some kind of cyborg who calls himself Murderbot.I liked the humor a lot. It's not so much laugh out loud funny as it is clever/wry. That suits me just fine.I also really like the humans in this book. The interaction between Murderbot and his humans was what really moved this story rather than the plot. I feel like the crisis could have almost been anything and it wouldn't have mattered.

I'm not rushing out to pick up Artificial Condition right away due to it being a novella instead of novel, but it's on my wish list and I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.

It's been a while since I read the last book in this series. Apparently that one was set on the moon and featured Nicole instead of Elma and the book I loved the most.

This book returns to Elma and Mars. I'm not sure how much was the return to Elma and how much was just the plot not being as strong, but this one wasn't as good as the last.

Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it, and would read another one if she writes one, but at points of the book Elma was getting on my nerves and the interactions with some of the other characters did as well.

Once again Mary Robinette Kowal does an excellent job narrating her own book. The audio is a great option for this series.

I rather enjoyed this one. Not a whole lot of plot, but fun characters that I just enjoyed spending time with. Very low stakes. I see a lot of people call this “cozy” I think of it more like a slice of life anime style story. I found myself making excuses to keep listening. That's always a sign of a good book.

I guess he's doing a prequel. I may pick it up eventually, but I don't feel like there is a need for that. Or a sequel really. I think this works really well as a stand alone. Maybe I'll change my mind later though.

The book also came with a second short story that was a bit of a prequel. It was fine, but not as enjoyable as the main story.

I knew Travis Baldree from his audio narration, that's what first put this book on my radar. Normally I'm not a big fan of authors narrating their own books (with a few exceptions). You can add him to the list. He's a great narrator and there was no way I'd do this in any other format.

Similar vibe to the original. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as that one, but it was still a fun read. In general I don't tend to enjoy prequels, but I thought this one worked well enough. There was a good mix of characters and subplots to make this different enough from the first. Everything here feels pretty self-contained apart from maybe the epilogue that makes this feel mostly like a stand alone.

I guess there is now going to be a 3rd book, though I don't know where that falls in the chronology of the first 2. I will check it out at some point, but I won't necessarily rush to pick it up.

Travis Baldree does his usual excellent job at narration for this. Normally I'm not a huge fan when authors read their own works, but I enjoy Mr. Baldree's narration for a few other series so he's an excellent choice here.

It's been a while (3.5 years) since I listened to Heaven's River, so my memory of the characters and where things left off was fuzzy. I did mostly get back into things after a bit without feeling the need to look for recap.

The book was enjoyable enough that it kept my attention, but it also sort of felt like a bit of a transition book. There were like 4 main plot lines, and all of them felt like setup for more books. I'm good with that, I'll read more books.

I thought it ended in a fine place where I'm looking forward to the next book but not going to be impatient for it to come out. There are lots of loose threads but nothing I'd call a cliffhanger.

Audio narration was fantastic as usual. Ray Porter is excellent.