The Android's Dream (edition 2007)

Much enjoyed - tightly, cunningly plotted, with plenty of jumps and surprises. I was slightly disappointed with one aspect of the dénouement, however, though it's a bit nit picky.

(spoiler)
There's a bit where it is explained / shown to Brian, the artificial intelligence, that the only way to cut through the Gordian knot of the big historical battle would have been to have surrendered en masse; and the way that the surrendering resolved that situation is logically complete in itself (the human soldiers fighting would have survived as they'd surrendered, the aliens behind the war would have been unable to commit the planetary devastation that they did, as their human allies would still be in situ, and the real losers would have been the war-mongering aliens who pushed for the invasion in the first place). Fine, so the AI is told that in the current situation, surrender is also the way for the humans to, counter-intuitively, win. And indeed it is, but only because of something that is not told to us until page 369' less than ten pages before the dénouement - by which time, I'm afraid, it can only count as a deus ex machine, rather than as a really neat piece of conclusion that naturally arises firm all that previously-known items, rearranged in a way the humble reader would never have thought of. It's still very neat, just not *quite* as neat as I'd hoped. ( )

I dunno, it just wasn't really my thing. Too many fart jokes.

Loved this book!

Not only was the story compelling and interesting, but parts of it made me laugh my tail off. Perhaps I'm morbid and horrible, but the assassination scene was way funnier than it should have been. ( )

An SF novel that's half a complicated tale of action and interstellar intrigue, with various factions either trying to prevent or provoke a diplomatic incident and/or interfere with an alien species' political succession, and half a work of absurd humor. I don't think this works quite as well as it could: the plotty stuff is a bit long on exposition, variable on world-building, and high on ridiculousness, while the humor varies randomly from embarrassing fart jokes to some really clever and intelligent satire. But it's reasonably fun, and probably worth reading just for the three or four funniest bits alone. ( )

I didn't think this was as strong as Old Man's War, the first Scalzi novel I read, but once I got past the first chapter, which I found rather juvenile in its humour, I thought this was a fun romp of a book. There are nods to other works and even an invented religion but on the whole this is a fast paced work that takes our reluctant hero on a quest to prevent Earth's destruction. ( )