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I enjoyed it - in turns touching and funny - but it didn't wow me.
My initial thought - "This book doesn't so much break the fourth wall as lean over your shoulder and point at it, giggling" - got to be somewhat less true as the book went on, and that bummed me out, because I like Scalzi's sense of the absurd, and when that evaporated somewhat from the proceedings - not that there wasn't plenty of ridiculousness and wit remaining, but something essential and effervescent was abundant early and absent late.
Especially glaring was one character who got outed for their meta-Maguffinism and then entirely omitted from any followup to it; the structure of the book made that the elephant in the coda unless my obvious assumption was considered to be so obvious that it never warranted the subsequent explanation.
Three expendably anonymous crewmembers out of five.
My initial thought - "This book doesn't so much break the fourth wall as lean over your shoulder and point at it, giggling" - got to be somewhat less true as the book went on, and that bummed me out, because I like Scalzi's sense of the absurd, and when that evaporated somewhat from the proceedings - not that there wasn't plenty of ridiculousness and wit remaining, but something essential and effervescent was abundant early and absent late.
Especially glaring was one character who got outed for their meta-Maguffinism and then entirely omitted from any followup to it; the structure of the book made that the elephant in the coda unless my obvious assumption was considered to be so obvious that it never warranted the subsequent explanation.
Three expendably anonymous crewmembers out of five.
