A review by irismaybooks
Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

adventurous fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I will preface this review by saying I do not know how to rate it properly. Sci-fi is not a genre I typically look out for nor do I enjoy, so that fact has definitely hindered my experience reading this book.

This was selected for my book club's February reading, as the movie is releasing at the start of March and they wish to do a group watch so we can compare– I am quite excited about this. Going into this knowing I will be watching the movie has definitely helped me to enjoy it, as I will read certain parts– such as the frequent jumping between the present and the past– and wonder exactly how this will be adapted to the screen. It also helped that there is a full cast, so I can easily look up what each character looks like. 

By nature I am not a very big enjoyer of science, and so a lot of the science talk in this both flew over my head and bored me completely. To be quite honest, with the amount of exposition it had, this book could have done with an extra 300 pages– or perhaps even become a series. The history of this character is convoluted and interesting enough for it to have worked, at least for me.

It was funny at times, however it felt very millennial. Not that this is a bad thing, however the humour to me as someone of a younger generation was outdated and made me cringe more than it made me laugh. It grated on me the more I kept reading.

I enjoyed it on a base level, to the extent that it was decent enough for me to get through, but not something I found myself wanting to come back to and pick up. If not for the book club, this would have definitely been a book I did not finish solely because without an incentive, I would have had no motivation to read it.

I did find it picked up around chapter 20, however by the time the ending came around it felt ever so anticlimactic! Vague spoilers from here, but after being lead to believe there was going to be a proper war between the humans and the 'creepers' as they are so called, it just ended up feeling very much like a self insert character in a fanfiction. Somewhere he can save the day and be the smartest man ever. It reminded me of playing mermaids as a child, in a funny way, where you would try and one-up your friends by having a tail that changes with your mood or being able to control the water and also speak to animals. Hopefully that makes sense, but either way, it felt very childish.

Overall it just was not a great reading experience for me, and despite enjoying aspects of the novel, it has just cemented that this is not the genre for me.