Kicking off my favourite summer reading challenge with a sci-fi audiobook.
Mickey7
Edward Ashton
Mickey7, an “expendable,” refuses to let his replacement clone Mickey8 take his place.
Dying isn’t any fun…but at least it’s a living.
Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous—even suicidal—the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal…and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.
On a fairly routine scouting mission, Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. By the time he returns to the colony base, surprisingly helped back by native life, Mickey7’s fate has been sealed. There’s a new clone, Mickey8, reporting for Expendable duties. The idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they will likely be thrown into the recycler for protein.
Mickey7 must keep his double a secret from the rest of the colony. Meanwhile, life on Niflheim is getting worse. The atmosphere is unsuitable for humans, food is in short supply, and terraforming is going poorly. The native species are growing curious about their new neighbors, and that curiosity has Commander Marshall very afraid. Ultimately, the survival of both lifeforms will come down to Mickey7.
That is, if he can just keep from dying for good.
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Whenever I find out a film I like the look of is based on a book, I usually try to read the book before I watch the film. When I saw the trailer for the film it seemed like such an interesting concept that I decided to pick up the audiobook and give it a shot.
Unfortunately, I feel like it didn’t quite live up to the potential of said interesting concept. There were a lot of great things about this book but I felt like I spent a lot of time waiting for something exciting to happen that never quite materialised.
The story follows Mickey7 an ‘expendable’ whose body has been cloned so that he can carry out dangerous missions and then be remade if he doesn’t survive them, as his unit tries to build a colony on Niflheim. Things start to go a bit awry for Mickey when he is presumed dead on a mission and Mickey8 is made, since duplicates are not allowed and rations are thin, they have to live as if there is only one of them.
For me, this is where this book shines, with the characters. I found it fascinating the differences between 7 and 8, how one can be so different from the other even though they both started from the same person. This becomes especially apparent as the pressure starts to show between them as they try to live the one life and have to share rations and relationships.
The world-building was great and as the story is told from Mickey’s perspective as a history buff we get to find out a lot about how the characters got to that moment in time. Again, I found it pretty interesting hearing about why Mickey joined up to be an expendable and the following versions of him and how they met their end. There just didn’t seem to be much of a plot beyond that and it did start to get a little repetitive at points.
At a certain point, there were some things that happened that made me feel like the story was going to be coming up to an inciting incident of sorts but, even after that section, there was no exciting climax, just another history lesson and a few too many things unresolved. Whilst the narration was brilliant and there were some great elements in the story, it just didn’t quite capture me the way I had hoped.
everywhere-and-nowhere.com 