Redshirts by John Scalzi

4 Stars

Is there anyone left on the planet who doesn’t know what a “Redshirt” is? There is?



Ha! Just kidding. Okay, for the three of you who aren’t familiar with the term, I’ll let Scalzi ‘splain it to you . . .

“The red shirt. You know, in the original Star Trek, they always had Kirk and Bones and Spock and then some poor dude in a red shirt who got vaporized before the first commercial. The moral of the story was not to wear a red shirt. Or go on away missions when you’re the only one whose name isn’t in the opening credits.”



After watching various crewmates of the spaceship Intrepid be assigned to away missions where they were forced to battle things like:

Borgovian land worms . . .



and evil death machines . . . .



and “ice sharks” . . .


(See what I did there with the Wesley Crusher and the shark and the eating of him and all? Brilliant!)

only to die an untimely death on said mission while all of the head honchos kept returning to the ship unscathed, Ensign Dahl and his buddies finally start putting two and two together and realize something’s up and decide to do something about it before they end up killed by a misfiring pulse gun. And then things get a little . . .



That’s pretty much all I can say about the plot without ruining the entire story. I will say that you don’t need to be a Trekkie to get a kick out of this one. This was my first Scalzi, and it definitely won’t be my last. It was action-packed, funny, and even a little touching in parts - and while I’m sure there are plenty of complaints out there about the dialogue driven storyline, my opinion is when it works it works. In this case it most definitely worked and I plowed through this book in a few hours.

You know what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like this? He says “read this damn book!”



I bought Redshirts a few weeks ago and, like almost every other book I purchase for myself, had no intention of reading it any time soon due to the vast amount of library books and ARCs I have at any given moment. However, with the passing of an icon this one got bumped to the top of the list. I’m so glad it did. LLAP, Mr. Nimoy . . .