English language
Published April 6, 2012 by Tor.
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, with the chance to serve on "Away Missions" alongside the starship's famous senior officers.
Life couldn't be better...until Andrew begins to realize that 1) every Away Mission involves a lethal confrontation with alien forces, 2) the ship's senior officers always survive these confrontations, and 3) sadly, at least one low-ranking crew member is invariably killed. Unsurprisingly, the savvier crew members below decks avoid Away Missions at all costs.
Then Andrew stumbles on information that transforms his and his colleagues' understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is...and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives. Redshirts by John Scalzi is the winner of the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
An excellent piece of postmodern literature, with a good share of self-irony without which postmodern can't exist.
Layers and layers of (mostly) fun and thought provoking reading.
Most importantly: DRM-Free
I have very mixed feelings about this book. It started out as a straight satire of sci-fi tropes, which I really enjoyed. But it very quickly changed into a very different kind of self-referential story. And then, near the conclusion, the meta-ness of it all is bumped all the way up.
I still can't decide if I liked that or not. It wasn't hard to follow in any way (although the time travel part introduced a pretty glaring plot hole that was never resolved). The story was clear and understandable, despite the meta-ness. The characters were likable, and the story compelling.
But the plot is so weird, that even after finishing the book, I still don't know if it was a good weird, or a bad weird.
