Redshirts

A Novel with Three Codas

By: John Scalzi

Narrated by: Wil Wheaton

Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory. Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the facts that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces; (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations; and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

©2012 John Scalzi (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Great stories, bad transition

the book was going great. and then makes an incredibly abrupt turn, at the expense of the original story. while enjoyable in its own way, it left the original story to be wrapped up in a few sentences. that was unexpected and annoying to me.

Meta-enjoyable

Great genre-subversion story, and very funny. If you don't like meta-meta-fiction then this is not the book for you. The narration was very entertaining; what Wheaton lacks in distinction between voices, he more than makes up for with enthusiasm and tone that matches the material perfectly. Another reviewer said his penchant for dropping the "he said" and "she said" to the point of distractedness and at first it bothered me too but I got over it. The codas are a little too long but mostly funny.

done just right

It took me two tries to get into the book, but once I got past a slightly slow and confusing start, it was great fun. It encapsulates everything you've always wanted to yell at the Enterprise security ppl.
The ending was a little eye-rollingly self-referential though.

Entertaining, but doesn't develop well

Would you consider the audio edition of Redshirts to be better than the print version?

Wheaton's narration is great, I enjoyed the audio production

Would you recommend Redshirts to your friends? Why or why not?

Overall I would recommend it, because the story is interesting enough, but it won't stay in my mind for long. The codas were overly long and unnecessary.

Have you listened to any of Wil Wheaton’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

This is similar to Wheaton's over performances.

Any additional comments?

Some interesting treatments of the ideas, but best suited to a short story.

Throughly immersive

love doesn't begin to come close to how I felt about this book, my only complaint is that I desperately wanted more

It was pretty alright

What did you love best about Redshirts?

Great idea for a story, and it was pretty hilarious at times.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Redshirts?

Time travel!

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Wil has a pretty distinct voice which was nice because of the familiarity; but he didn't change his voice ever for different characters. Long strings of dialogue just kind of mesh together and are hard to follow. Lots of he said, she said, he said, he said.

Any additional comments?

I didn't really like the Coda's.

So well done.

I thought i liked Scalzi before - but this was better than everything else so far. Wheaton might have had something to do with that, i admit. Both the story itself and the performance were excellent.

Love Scalzi and Wheaton

Fabulous writing with perfect narration. Quick plot, and great characters with just enough snark. If you even remotely enjoy Sci Fi you will enjoy this.

wonderfully meta

It's not just that there was a hilarious story spoofing Star Trek. It's that the tale broke the fourth wall in so many creative ways, again and again.

Scalzi has phenomenal stories. This isn't one.

The premise has been done, which does get addressed in the book if you can make it that far. Even so, it's a cool premise and could be worth re-exploring for the umpteenth time if done right. It isn't.

Personally I almost gave up about five minutes in when, during a conversation between a couple of characters, the words "Dan Said" are for some reason repeated so many times that I thought that the audible recording must be skipping (it wasn't). This is just one example of how the somewhat juvenile style of Scalzis writing distracts from the story and pace of the book, and is only so disappointing because it's not on par of what I expected being a fan of Scalzis other books.

Wil Wheaton is a fantastic narrator, the best in the scifi genre at least, and probably too five overall. Sadly even his ability to bring characters to life wasn't able to make up for what seems like a story that didn't need to be told. There are a lot of characters. Correction, there feels like there are a lot of characters. I don't actually think there are, but since you never really end up caring about any of them, it becomes almost hard to keep track of who's who.

Overall I would have to say this one is a hard pass and recommend checking out of one the other Scalzi books, preferably one with Wheaton narrating.