While I’m reading as much Cybils stuff as I can, there came a point when I needed a new audiobook and gave up on finding a Cybils-nominated one after 10 or 15 minutes of looking. I asked the youth librarian who buys them for help instead, and have one now, but in between, I listened to this book that my love had bought and wanted me to listen to.
There is still time to enter my giveaway of Cheryl Mahoney’s The Wanderers.
Redshirts by John Scalzi. Read by Wil Wheaton. Tor, 2012.
This is a book written for adults, and as such, there is some language and reference to sexual activity, in addition to numerous, numerous secondary characters being killed off.
Andrew Dahl is looking forward to his new assignment with the xenobiology lab on board the fleet’s flagship, starship Intrepid. Once there, though, he notices disturbing things: every away mission has numerous casualties (always the lower-ranking officers), and every time bridge officers come looking for people for away teams, the higher-ranking people in the back manage to be elsewhere.
Then he finds a crazed-looking man, Jenkins, hiding in the service tunnels, who has a theory about what the Intrepid is and why the casualties are so much worse here than any other ship in the fleet. Jenkins has the theory, and if Dahl can convince his friends to believe it, they might just come up with a plan to change things.
There’s a major twist here that I’m trying not to give away. But I was really impressed by this book. It was funny (with recurring episodes of pants being stolen), and exciting, and I cared about the characters and it was a nice, satisfying story. Then came the codas – one each told in first, second and third person, with a slightly different set of characters. These were moving enough that my love and I were both in tears, and I was gobsmacked at the range of it all.
This book won the 2012 Hugo for best novel. It’s narrated by Wil Wheaton, who is made to read Scalzi’s books. If you enjoy science fiction books or most especially old-school Star Trek, I highly recommend this.
alibrarymama 
I read the “dead tree” edition of the book, and had pretty much the same reaction, down to being in tears as I closed the book at the end. My one complaint is that in the first coda, I heard John Scalzi’s “voice”; it read an awful lot like his own blog (which I find entertaining, so that’s not all bad.)
Ahh… I could see that with the first person. I’ve only visited his blog once or twice, so I didn’t have that problem. I know he’s my brother-in-law’s favorite author, and I should try to read more of him.
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