Laith
Book Club for May _____
I have a problem in assuming that a book will be YA whenever I see that reader's choice award. In fact, seeing the tag has almost the exact opposite of the intended effect on me-I tend to stay away. This approach has yet to fail me, because seeing that reader's choice just means the book is popular. Popularity doesn't indicate quality, in fact it only guarantees two things: First, the book is simple enough to be understood by the majority of people and second, the book is probably getting a movie deal-when all's said and done you'll have consumed the story without ever once trying to. This is absolutely true of Mickey 7, this book is funny, with a fantastic premise and a casual first person narration. It's an incredibly easy read, knocked out in a weekend with time left Sunday night to watch the movie. It's good, I liked it.
Mickey 7 is told from the perspective of Mickey Barnes, the titular protagonist. Well, really, it's the seventh iteration of Mickey that's the protagonist. You see, Mickey has found himself in quite the pickle; he was so desperate to join in on the colonization mission to planet Niflheim that he was willing to sign up for any position available. Fortunately for Mickey, he gets a job, and that job comes with the added perk of immortality. Unfortunately for Mickey, he's volunteered as the colony's "expendable," narrowly beating out a death-row conscript for the job. Got a gaping hole in your ship's radiation shield or a pesky alien virus that liquifies internal organs? No problem, send in your Mickey, he'll plug that hole, test that vaccine, and Mickey2 will be printed before the first one's finished vomiting up his irradiated kidneys. Oh, and let's make sure to back up the precious memories he made along the way.
The humor comes in Mickey's delivery-he's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but that doesn't mean he can't crack wise. There's a delightful combination of unintended pratfalls and lunchroom quality backtalk that makes Mickey come off exactly as he's meant to- an overgrown class clown. Given that this story is told from Mickey's perspective, it's worth pointing out how excellent the character work is because it is the real meat of the book. Beyond making Mickey likable, his specific character traits lend the narration a dubious, unreliable quality. Unfortunately, Ashton doesn't play with this idea nearly to the degree that he could have, favoring simple story beats and a conventional plot structure that children could follow.
My general criticism with the book follows along the same lines, everything is much too simplistic and doesn't go anywhere interesting. Ashton takes a fantastic premise and rolls it along a linear plot in which our characters do very little; this is a book that promises the world with each development just to push you along from one hallway to the next. I spent the second half of the book waiting for Mickey to do something, for anyone to do anything, but the story just goes nowhere until it's time for the plot to happen. I don't want to spoil the plot at all, but I will say that if your interest was in seeing the whole "expendable/replicant" concept explored, this will not fully scratch the itch.
I delayed this review a little so that I could watch Mickey 17 (I did not in fact watch it the same weekend I read it) and see if it changed my appreciation of the book at all, which it did. The movie is pretty different from the book, changing some of the setting details and Mickey's own backstory; it considerably plays up how stupid Mickey seems. From those changes there are two major improvements that the movie makes to the story, the first is obvious: instead of 7 lives, movie Mickey has lived 17. The second was the overhauling of the character of Mickey 8 / Mickey 18; 18 has a completely different personality to 17, and it opens such an interesting can of worms.
First, adding 10 deaths improves the story twice fold. What the movie does so much better than the book is in showing Mickey's suffering, that's because there's just more of it. The book had a razor-thin philosophical premise that followed along the lines of Sisyphus' ship, but I couldn't put my finger on what was missing until I watched a 3-minute montage of Robert Pattinson vomiting blood. The Mickey of the book doesn't like to linger on unpleasant memories, and so the renderings of his deaths are more than a bit cloudy. Sure, he recounts his previous lives as the story goes on, but the Mickey of the book isn't able to show us what we need to see, to demonstrate the horror of his existence to such a moving degree.
The second change stole the show for me. To quote the movie, "Mickey 18 is 'spicy' Mickey, and Mickey 17 is 'mild' Mickey". This was such an obvious change to make, and it completely addresses the problem of "no one does anything all book long" by forcing 17 and 18 into conflict. In the book, 7 and 8 generically agree on everything, there is no question of identity or anything disharmonious between them (to the point where the movie interrupts the weird threesome and the book lets it play out). BORING. Mickey 18 on the other hand? He'll murder 17 in a heart beat, drink his blood out of a Marshall skull cup while he rides on a creeper; his changed personality raises so many interesting questions about expendables that the original just doesn't.
This book was good. It's an easy read and I can totally see why this was 2022's darling. Unfortunately, to my spoiled SF palate, the book is just a little too plain and generic - discarding its most interesting and heady elements in favor of a straightforward and linear story. The movie is an improvement by a large margin, but it's not the next Interstellar or Alien.
Book Club for May _____
I have a problem in assuming that a book will be YA whenever I see that reader's choice award. In fact, seeing the tag has almost the exact opposite of the intended effect on me-I tend to stay away. This approach has yet to fail me, because seeing that reader's choice just means the book is popular. Popularity doesn't indicate quality, in fact it only guarantees two things: First, the book is simple enough to be understood by the majority of people and second, the book is probably getting a movie deal-when all's said and done you'll have consumed the story without ever once trying to. This is absolutely true of Mickey 7, this book is funny, with a fantastic premise and a casual first person narration. It's an incredibly easy read, knocked out in a weekend with time left Sunday night to watch the movie. It's good, I liked it.
Mickey 7 is told from the perspective of Mickey Barnes, the titular protagonist. Well, really, it's the seventh iteration of Mickey that's the protagonist. You see, Mickey has found himself in quite the pickle; he was so desperate to join in on the colonization mission to planet Niflheim that he was willing to sign up for any position available. Fortunately for Mickey, he gets a job, and that job comes with the added perk of immortality. Unfortunately for Mickey, he's volunteered as the colony's "expendable," narrowly beating out a death-row conscript for the job. Got a gaping hole in your ship's radiation shield or a pesky alien virus that liquifies internal organs? No problem, send in your Mickey, he'll plug that hole, test that vaccine, and Mickey2 will be printed before the first one's finished vomiting up his irradiated kidneys. Oh, and let's make sure to back up the precious memories he made along the way.
The humor comes in Mickey's delivery-he's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but that doesn't mean he can't crack wise. There's a delightful combination of unintended pratfalls and lunchroom quality backtalk that makes Mickey come off exactly as he's meant to- an overgrown class clown. Given that this story is told from Mickey's perspective, it's worth pointing out how excellent the character work is because it is the real meat of the book. Beyond making Mickey likable, his specific character traits lend the narration a dubious, unreliable quality. Unfortunately, Ashton doesn't play with this idea nearly to the degree that he could have, favoring simple story beats and a conventional plot structure that children could follow.
My general criticism with the book follows along the same lines, everything is much too simplistic and doesn't go anywhere interesting. Ashton takes a fantastic premise and rolls it along a linear plot in which our characters do very little; this is a book that promises the world with each development just to push you along from one hallway to the next. I spent the second half of the book waiting for Mickey to do something, for anyone to do anything, but the story just goes nowhere until it's time for the plot to happen. I don't want to spoil the plot at all, but I will say that if your interest was in seeing the whole "expendable/replicant" concept explored, this will not fully scratch the itch.
I delayed this review a little so that I could watch Mickey 17 (I did not in fact watch it the same weekend I read it) and see if it changed my appreciation of the book at all, which it did. The movie is pretty different from the book, changing some of the setting details and Mickey's own backstory; it considerably plays up how stupid Mickey seems. From those changes there are two major improvements that the movie makes to the story, the first is obvious: instead of 7 lives, movie Mickey has lived 17. The second was the overhauling of the character of Mickey 8 / Mickey 18; 18 has a completely different personality to 17, and it opens such an interesting can of worms.
First, adding 10 deaths improves the story twice fold. What the movie does so much better than the book is in showing Mickey's suffering, that's because there's just more of it. The book had a razor-thin philosophical premise that followed along the lines of Sisyphus' ship, but I couldn't put my finger on what was missing until I watched a 3-minute montage of Robert Pattinson vomiting blood. The Mickey of the book doesn't like to linger on unpleasant memories, and so the renderings of his deaths are more than a bit cloudy. Sure, he recounts his previous lives as the story goes on, but the Mickey of the book isn't able to show us what we need to see, to demonstrate the horror of his existence to such a moving degree.
The second change stole the show for me. To quote the movie, "Mickey 18 is 'spicy' Mickey, and Mickey 17 is 'mild' Mickey". This was such an obvious change to make, and it completely addresses the problem of "no one does anything all book long" by forcing 17 and 18 into conflict. In the book, 7 and 8 generically agree on everything, there is no question of identity or anything disharmonious between them (to the point where the movie interrupts the weird threesome and the book lets it play out). BORING. Mickey 18 on the other hand? He'll murder 17 in a heart beat, drink his blood out of a Marshall skull cup while he rides on a creeper; his changed personality raises so many interesting questions about expendables that the original just doesn't.
This book was good. It's an easy read and I can totally see why this was 2022's darling. Unfortunately, to my spoiled SF palate, the book is just a little too plain and generic - discarding its most interesting and heady elements in favor of a straightforward and linear story. The movie is an improvement by a large margin, but it's not the next Interstellar or Alien.