I really wanted to like this book. H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzy" was near and dear to my heart as a teenager, and some of the first hard science fiction I started reading.

This isn't anywhere near that quality. This has hollow characters -- and every male character in the book with the single exception of Sullivan (who only has moments where he's not pretending to be a raging prick along withe Aubrey, Landon, DeLise and Holloway) is very busy throughout the entire book engaging in a planet-wide prick measuring contest which frankly makes for boring reading. If I wanted to see guys measure their pricks, I'm certain I can find it for free on the internet somewhere.

Beyond that, the plot is shallow, there's way too much time spent on the drama llamaing of the male characters over mining rights, and the fuzzies are a political back drop to a book that really should have been written as an original story, since it bears next to no resemblance to H. Beam Piper's works. It seems really like the borrowing of the Fuzzy set up is a marketing ploy, because I don't think this book would have flown on it's own right, if you'd presented it as anything other then a 'reboot' of a vastly superior series, and would have failed. Frankly, I hope we don't see another one of these from Scalzi.

In short: Homage became an insult. Take a pass on this and just go straight to the great: "Little Fuzzy" and other works by H. Beam Piper. ( )

Read this just after rereading h> Beam Piper’s book. Both great presentations and both quite distinct as stories. Leave the reader wanting more. ( )

I picked this up from the book sale table at the local library for 20 cents. I’ve picked up some gems that way, as well as lots of clunkers. But in general it’s a ‘what the heck’ impulse. You can’t go far wrong for 20 cents.

This book is a curious project, to my mind: a modern re-writing by Scalzi of the classic SF novel Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. It’s a pretty bold venture to tamper with a beloved classic. We’ve certainly had any number of imagined sequels of classics like Jane Austen’s novelsway too many, in fact. But it’s a lot rarer for someone to actually re-write the original in the original context. It’s as though Helen Fielding had decided to pay homage to Pride and Prejudice by setting Bridget Jones’s Diary in England in the Regency period and to call her heroine Elizabeth Bennett. Is Scalzi trying to show that he could do a better job than Piper with the concept? It just seems odd.

Nevertheless, considered by itself without reference to the original, it’s an entertaining enough read. This version, like the original, deals with the corporate exploitation of a planet which is threatened when a prospector encounters a cute little animal which eventually turns out to be a sentient species. The consequent legal battles constitute most of the fun. The good guys, of course, triumph in the end. ( )

A great story that moves across the legal rights of sentient beings. An entertaining banter that flips into a tour de force legal trial. ( )

Fun, uncomplicated read. That's not damning with faint praise, but rather an appreciation for a tale well told, with bad Bad Guys, and (mostly) good Good Guys. ( )