![\"A](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Mickey7.jpg?resize=196%2C300&ssl=1\")
By Edward Ashton\n\u00a9 202, St. Martin\u2019s Press
\n305 Pages
\nISBN 13: 978-1250275042<\/p>\n
By Edward Ashton
\n\u00a9 202, St. Martin\u2019s Press
\n305 Pages
\nISBN 13: 978-1250275042<\/p>\n
This is my first Edward Ashton book, so I wasn\u2019t sure what to expect. But the blurb fit the story perfectly and, given that first line in the book (\u201cThis is gonna be my stupidest death ever\u201d) was so great, it didn\u2019t take me long to get hooked. Mickey is an \u201cexpendable\u201d \u2013 he is the guy who, on the planetary colonial expedition, gets all the jobs that will probably\u2014or certainly\u2014end in death. Because Mickey can be rebooted. Sort of. It\u2019s complicated. It\u2019s also a touchy subject, and it\u2019s absolutely taboo for there to be two Mickeys alive at any given time. So what happens when one of the Mickey\u2019s doesn\u2019t, you know, die as he\u2019s supposed to?<\/p>\n
The entire story is told through Mickey 7\u2019s eyes and, while 7 isn\u2019t exactly the brightest or most skilled member of the Niflheim team, he\u2019s 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\u2019t 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!<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot of snark in Mickey\u2019s internal dialogue. But there\u2019s also a good deal of deep thought. As an expendable who\u2019s died and been \u201creborn\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
But Mickey 7 isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
This is a really fun, intriguing read. There\u2019s a lot (a lot) of hard sci-fi here, but not so much that it\u2019s inaccessible to those who don\u2019t\/can\u2019t follow physics, or who can\u2019t math (like me). All in all, I loved this book, and will probably read the second in the series (Antimatter Blues). There\u2019s even a movie titled \u201cMickey 17,\u201d which we\u2019ve watched\u2014it didn\u2019t follow the book exactly, and in places it diverged wildly. That said, it\u2019s fun, if a bit bizarre.<\/p>\n
If you like hard sci-fi with snarky characters, you\u2019ll love this book. Definitely recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Edward Ashton \u00a9 202, St. Martin\u2019s Press 305 Pages ISBN 13: 978-1250275042 This is my first Edward Ashton book, so I wasn\u2019t sure what to expect. But the blurb fit the story perfectly and, given that first line in the book (\u201cThis is gonna be my stupidest death ever\u201d) was so great, it didn\u2019t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8n0kX-1Cr","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":594,"url":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/12\/a-god-in-ruins\/","url_meta":{"origin":6227,"position":0},"title":"A God In Ruins","author":"DremaDeoraich","date":"February 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"By Kate Atkinson Back Bay Books, ISBN: 978-0316176507 Paperback, \u00a92016, 480 pages Ex-bomber pilot Teddy, a.k.a. 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