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A review by mafiabadgers
Mickey7 by Edward Ashton
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
First read 01/2025
I was initially horrified when some monster added a 'Read a book that's going to be adapted' to our library book club bingo, but then I remembered that I'd downloaded this because I'd heard Bong Joon-ho was making it into a film. It took me two years to get round to reading it, but I beat the deadline, so hey! Snowpiercer was good and Parasite was excellent, so as recommendations go, that's not bad. Unfortunately, Mickey7 was... just okay?
The blurb gave me the impression that making contact with the aliens and brokering some sort of peace would be a significant part of the book, but there isn't really any progress made on that front until the very end. The book is divided into present-day chapters, in which Mickey7 mostly tries to avoid being around Mickey8 and spends his time being hungry and somewhat horny, and the flashback/exposition chapters, which tell us about Mickeys One through Six, then deliver important lectures about Why He's Being Discriminated Against All The Time (future religion bigotry), Why Everyone Hates Multiple Concurrent Clones (been there, done that, went bad), and Why Humans Are Colonising The Galaxy (we'll kill each other if we don't spread out). That last one was easily the part with the most wasted potential; if everyone is so concerned with ensuring the survival of the human species at all costs, even though it won't make a difference to their own lives, then mightn't it be possible to make a connection between the finite life of Mickey7 and the infinite replication of Mickey? After all, any individual person is convincingly argued here to be just one person. Mickey, or humanity, is a fairly abstract concept, but seemingly a reassuring one.
Mickey7 has the same somewhat humorous first-person narration as an Andy Weir novel. It's marginally more willing to engage with the philosophical implications, but it's clumsily done. The Ship of Theseus is predictably explicated, rather than being used to inform the writing. It was difficult to care about any of the characters, and Marshall was a dull villain without nuance. There's a story arc in the TV show Farscape in which a character gets unwillingly duplicated, and I have to say that, almost entirely on the strength of the characterisations, the whole thing is much better done than anything in this book. But that's a lot of TV just for a story arc. I would say that if you want to read a story about clones, go for Le Guin's 'Nine Lives'; if you want a story about dying repeatedly and coming back to suffer, play Slay the Princess.
And I've never said this before, but the sex scene needed a lot more detail. 'Would you fuck your clone' is an age-old question, but when it came down to it, Ashton chickened out. I hear Robert Pattinson is starring in the film, though. I trust he won't let me down.
I was initially horrified when some monster added a 'Read a book that's going to be adapted' to our library book club bingo, but then I remembered that I'd downloaded this because I'd heard Bong Joon-ho was making it into a film. It took me two years to get round to reading it, but I beat the deadline, so hey! Snowpiercer was good and Parasite was excellent, so as recommendations go, that's not bad. Unfortunately, Mickey7 was... just okay?
The blurb gave me the impression that making contact with the aliens and brokering some sort of peace would be a significant part of the book, but there isn't really any progress made on that front until the very end. The book is divided into present-day chapters, in which Mickey7 mostly tries to avoid being around Mickey8 and spends his time being hungry and somewhat horny, and the flashback/exposition chapters, which tell us about Mickeys One through Six, then deliver important lectures about Why He's Being Discriminated Against All The Time (future religion bigotry), Why Everyone Hates Multiple Concurrent Clones (been there, done that, went bad), and Why Humans Are Colonising The Galaxy (we'll kill each other if we don't spread out). That last one was easily the part with the most wasted potential; if everyone is so concerned with ensuring the survival of the human species at all costs, even though it won't make a difference to their own lives, then mightn't it be possible to make a connection between the finite life of Mickey7 and the infinite replication of Mickey? After all, any individual person is convincingly argued here to be just one person. Mickey, or humanity, is a fairly abstract concept, but seemingly a reassuring one.
Mickey7 has the same somewhat humorous first-person narration as an Andy Weir novel. It's marginally more willing to engage with the philosophical implications, but it's clumsily done. The Ship of Theseus is predictably explicated, rather than being used to inform the writing. It was difficult to care about any of the characters, and Marshall was a dull villain without nuance. There's a story arc in the TV show Farscape in which a character gets unwillingly duplicated, and I have to say that, almost entirely on the strength of the characterisations, the whole thing is much better done than anything in this book. But that's a lot of TV just for a story arc. I would say that if you want to read a story about clones, go for Le Guin's 'Nine Lives'; if you want a story about dying repeatedly and coming back to suffer, play Slay the Princess.
And I've never said this before, but the sex scene needed a lot more detail. 'Would you fuck your clone' is an age-old question, but when it came down to it, Ashton chickened out. I hear Robert Pattinson is starring in the film, though. I trust he won't let me down.