This was made into a TV series this year, but I bought this book five years ago and then forgot to read it. Until now.
I quite enjoyed the TV series (but eight 20 minute episodes released weekly felt, er, not optimal), so I was wondering whether this was going to be another example of the Bad Book/Good TV Series thing. (It also works the opposite direction.) But no! This is a very entertaining, very brisk little book.
I guess it’s a novella (150 pages long), but it reads like a short story, really. It’s very compressed, and doesn’t elaborate on anything. It feels refreshing — this book could easily — easily! — have been expanded to 400 pages (by adding some “character development” and all that stuff). It works well overall, but certain sections feels more like reading a recap than reading a book.
I think basically everything that’s in this book is in the TV series — the dialogues are copied word for word, I think. But the TV series did indeed expand on stuff, so we got more emoting, and some added plot points. But reading the book, it kinda amazes me how well the TV series managed to capture the brisk feel of the book, so perhaps they did it in 20 minute chunks for good reasons.
Hm… but do I want to read further books in this series? Hm… Yeah, I guess? Oh, I see there’s five more books and a lot of short stories… OK, I think I’ll try the next book at least and see how things go. I can easily imagine how this sort of thing could go completely off the rails.
All Systems Red (2017) by Martha Wells (buy new, buy used, 4.13 on Goodreads)