dremadeoraich 's review for:

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

5.0

adventurous dark funny tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

---

This is my first Edward Ashton book, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But the blurb fit the story perfectly and, given that first line in the book (“This is gonna be my stupidest death ever”) was so great, it didn’t take me long to get hooked. Mickey is an “expendable” – he is the guy who, on the planetary colonial expedition, gets all the jobs that will probably—or certainly—end in death. Because Mickey can be rebooted. Sort of. It’s complicated. It’s also a touchy subject, and it’s absolutely taboo for there to be two Mickeys alive at any given time. So what happens when one of the Mickey’s doesn’t, you know, die as he’s supposed to?

 

The entire story is told through Mickey 7’s eyes and, while 7 isn’t exactly the brightest or most skilled member of the Niflheim team, he’s the average guy who ends up changing everything. History is his jam, and his dives into the history of other beachhead colonies, including why they did or didn’t survive, pepper his own tale with backstory. Even so, it was never boring. Instead, this method of telling built the larger story a bit at a time, feeding me just enough info to fill in a blank for understanding, but maintaining enough mystery to keep me reading. Nice balance!

 

There’s a lot of snark in Mickey’s internal dialogue. But there’s also a good deal of deep thought. As an expendable who’s died and been “reborn” numerous times, he keeps asking himself (as do others) a singular question: is he immortal? Given the story itself, this is a common theme throughout, in varying degrees and angles, and I found the concepts used to describe the quandary fascinating. 

 

But Mickey 7 isn’t just about Mickey. Nor is it just about Niflheim and the colonists. There are greater questions in the wind here, and the way 7 addresses them was noble and intriguing. Also snarky.

 

This is a really fun, intriguing read. There’s a lot (a lot) of hard sci-fi here, but not so much that it’s inaccessible to those who don’t/can’t follow physics, or who can’t math (like me). All in all, I loved this book, and will probably read the second in the series (Antimatter Blues). There’s even a movie titled “Mickey 17,” which we’ve watched—it didn’t follow the book exactly, and in places it diverged wildly. That said, it’s fun, if a bit bizarre. 

 

If you like hard sci-fi with snarky characters, you’ll love this book. Definitely recommended.