Redshirts

Redshirts by John Scalzi. 

If you’re a big fan of Star Trek or any of the other spin off shows from the Trek universe like Star Trek: Section Eight the Shuttle Bay Crew or Star Trek: Entitled Journey, you’re going to love book. This book is about those pesky “redshirts” that always seem to die in either ever episode or every other episode. This book wants to put a face on them and give those "redshirts" a real back story before they die real quickly. 

For the most part Scalzi succeeds but I still never really felt a connection to any of characters in the story or at least to care about them beyond “redshirt” characters. He did give them enough background and more details than “redshirts” normally get, to have me care about them beyond those “redshirts”, which I guess was the main reason for the story. But I still would have liked there to be more to the story than just some parody of those Star Trek “redshirts” if he had succeeded in that I think this book could have been much better than it turned out. But there is enough scenes in the book that comment on those “redshirts” that will bring a good smile to your face and for some might even bring a hearty laugh from the belly. Some of Scalzi’s insights are just delightful to read. 

The book does enter some META territory near the end that I thought was going to derail the book but Scalzi didn’t let the story get away from him unlike Gaarder did with Sophie’s World.  Instead Scalzi ended Redshirts like Sophie’s World should have ended, the right way. I won’t go into details but let’s just say the META parts do get carried away but still stay true with the flow and confines of story and don’t for once feel like a gimmick because you know this actually based on Star Trek and there were sometimes those writers went super META.