Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

6 reviews

araehop's review

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emotional funny reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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cetortuga's review

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adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Me ha parecido increible el libro. Entronca con los problemas filosóficos presentes en la mejor ciencia ficción clásica a la vez que tiene un tono sencillo yaen narrador que se dirige directamente el lector. Me recuerda a la vez a Solaris y el Juego de Ender. Deseando leer más.
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sarah984's review against another edition

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adventurous funny medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This book started out fun and the voice was great, but the focus lingered way too long on Mickey absolutely failing in every way to stay hidden and not long enough on the entire plot, which was basically shoved into the last 50 pages. The antagonists were interesting but barely described and the solution that works in the end is ridiculous.
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juksu's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Figuring out the "twist" in the first 30 pages wasn't a bad thing, since Mickey7 has a lot of other stuff going on both in the present and in flashbacks. On the other hand, I feel like there was so much other neat worldbuilding and potential conflict that we could've explored more, like
the Natalist movement or the wider impacts of resource scarcity
.

Instead, we got Mickey8 spending what felt like 50 pages asleep or hungry interspersed with commentary on profound topics like genocide, cloning, and identity... but because Mickey is just a guy, his ideas didn't break any new ground for me. I heard Mickey compared to The Martian's Mark Watney, which is true except that Mickey is marginally more likeable while Mark is more interesting to read for a puzzler like me. Otherwise, they're definitely both guys who put "I love sarcasm and dark humor" in their Tinder bios...

On top of Mickey's narration leaning cringy/tryhard more often than not, the pacing of this book wasn't very consistent. Felt like the resolution blew in out of nowhere, to say nothing of
Marshall just... changing his mind overnight? It just felt jarring.
The premise was so good, but this is one of those books that feels like it would've been more compelling if it had a different point of view. It's not strictly bad—quick, light read with a few "ohh" moments and even a couple actually good jokes. But if you're looking for more of the hard science or psychological drama of The Martian, this may miss the mark.
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spaceteapot's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

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wandering_not_lost's review

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adventurous emotional
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

I really liked this.  Like...4.5 stars liked, and I bumped it up to 5 stars because I just had that much fun.  This book could have gone a lot of different ways, tone-wise.  It could have tried for the weird humor that "there's two of me!" seems to hit sometimes.  And at the beginning, it's easy to think that maybe that's what's going to happen, but it very much does not.  Because though the protagonist is a good guy who gets through most things with an adorably wry humor, the author plays this situation totally straight, complete with realistic scientific and logical constraints for a resource-poor colony.  Which means that yes, there's a few moments of fairly funny "holy shit how do I keep people from knowing there's two of me!", but that is far outweighed with the two Mickeys trying to negotiate who should take the dangerous missions they keep getting handed, and who gets to eat how many calories off their single reduced ration card (which, again, could be played for laughs, but isn't - FYI, anyone with food issues should know, there's a lot of not eating enough throughout the book.)

The author in general does that:  deals straight with the scientific and ethical implications of the premise, both in terms of the wonder of it all and also the really terrible things that humans can get up to when they have antimatter and cloning.  A lot of this comes through exposition sections throughout the book that give background info when it's pertinent.  This makes the actual story a little tighter and shorter, but I didn't mind, because Mickey's voice was fun, and I was really rooting for him throughout.

Would have been nice if it'd passed the Bechdel test, was my only quibble.
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