I think this is the first novel of this year's nominees that I read, which means it's been sitting my my memory and fading the longest, and yet I can still remember large parts of what I felt. The plot, yes, if I concentrate, but especially what I felt while reading it.
To begin with, the only other Scalzi fiction I'd read was Old Man's War -- a nice little tale, though given all the praise I'd heard of it, I thought it fell a bit short. I had been meaning to pick up more of his works since then, to see if they improved and how much, when Redshirts came out. I requested it from the library, got it a few weeks later, and settled in to read one night.
In the first part of the novel, I remember being surprised and amazed that such cheesy writing had been published, honestly. Still, there was something about it -- Scalzi walked a fine line there, since for the novel to work it had to be cheesy, and yet keep the reader going. In retrospect, the prose must have been nicely crafted for that effect, but at the time I was almost on the border of giving up on the novel. (Sidenote -- the name, cover, and blurb all helped as well. They pointed out that this was not a novel that was taking itself seriously, so I could sit back and go along for the ride a bit more than I might otherwise.)
The next part I remember was that same night, as I got to the part where the Narrative was introduced, and having some strong disbelief -- again, not that it was wrong for the story, but that an author could get away with something so meta.
By then I was hooked, though I had to stop for the night. I picked it up again the next night, a Friday, and devoured the rest of the story. Really, once I got to the audacious plan to fix things, there was no stopping me. Sure, the novel was cheesy and meta, and still felt a bit like a popcorn-flick, but it gloried in being so, and I gloried with it. Then it's characters started struggling even more, and I cared about them, and even as the cheese faded away and it actually became a (kind of) serious novel, I enjoyed it.
The story came to an end, and it was satisfying. It worked, and tied everything together, and it was a nice little story. I was satisfied, and considered stopping there, but I had time before bed and there were the three codas remaining.
The first one intrigued me, spinning a new perspective on the story's events. It was plausible enough to wonder if the whole thing was in fact the writer's delusions causing him problems. It added some interesting ambiguity to the novel, which I appreciated.
The second coda started slow, but hit me hard. I've not exactly flitted from thing to thing (heck, I've been programming computers for more than 20 years now, and over 15 of that professionally, which is almost the opposite of flitting), but some of my hobbies feel that way. I pick something up, then drop it. Pick up another, and drop it. At the time, I had been considering if writing was going to be that way or not -- because let's face it, writing can be hard sometimes, and when things get hard, a big part of my subconscious thinks I've been doing something wrong, because how hard can it be to sit down and produce professional-quality output, right? I mean, I do it at work all the time (nevermind those 20 years of practice -- those aren't the reasons you're looking for, my subconscious says while waving a hand). So I felt somewhat indicted by the end of that coda, even though it was a story and fictional character who had been doing something wrong.
As an author, I'd also note that this coda was another extremely effective use of second-person writing. Either these are getting more common, or I'm just noticing them more, but either way I should pay attention to when they are used and why.
So, thus set up and already somewhat reeling from the second coda, I read the third one.
Look, I'm a guy, and talking about emotions is sometimes hard for me. Also, I don't analyze them much or spend time thinking about the hows and whys of them -- quite possibly to my overall detriment, I'll admit. However, I'm not ashamed to admit this coda nearly brought me to tears. I was, frankly, shocked at how much it affected me. I was moved to send @scalzi a tweet about it, something I'd never done about a story before (or since, so far). I had to, quite literally, sit on the couch with the closed book in my hand for fifteen minutes or more before I could get my mental and emotional balance enough to do anything else -- like remove my bookmark and put the book in the "return to library" pile.
So, you might say that I have a high opinion of this book, and you'd be right. I liked it enough I actually made a note to nominate it for a Hugo when the nominations opened, and followed through on that. Will it get my final vote? I haven't finished two of the novels yet, so I can't be sure, but it is certainly a very strong contender.
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