What a way to start the year—existential crises and smart-assery.
Mickey7, aka Mickey Barnes, is our guy. He’s an Expendable on a mission to establish a beachhead colony on a far-flung world. Expendables are just that—they are the people sent on suicide missions, given dangerous tasks, experimented upon medically to develop vaccines and treatments for whatever exciting new ailments await colonists on their new planet. He’s the guy who will die for you, only to have a new copy of himself ready to go 24-hours later. Mickey7 is the 7th instantiation of Mickey Barnes (obv), but an accident while he’s out scouting and is then presumed dead means that there are now two Mickeys in the colony, Mickey7 and Mickey8, in a culture that does not tolerate multiple copies of a person. While he is busy hiding that there are now two of him, issues with the local creatures maybe possibly not being creatures at all but sapient beings also start to pop up.
I asked in a Goodreads status update about midway through the book if anyone had seen the Bong Joon-ho movie yet, thinking it was already out (this is how up I am on the state of movies right now) and that I could watch it this weekend, but it doesn’t come out until March! I feel like this is an indicator of just how much this book got to me. It was very close to being a five-star reading experience, but in a couple of parts it really freaked me out in a way that I do not like, so I just couldn’t give it the full five.
It was compelling, interesting, and thought-provoking. It also had some truly disturbing (for me, I guess) body horror elements, so that makes Bong Joon-ho’s involvement in the film make more sense. It says a lot about Ashton’s writing and plot that I was able to finish this despite one of my literal nightmare fuels being at the center of this book (something that if I know it’s there, I usually won’t pick a book up: SPOILERS radiation poisoning and the threat of nuclear weapons END SPOILERS). It’s also told in a conversational style that is a little bit reminiscent of Mark Watney from The Martian.
I will be reading book two, and obviously yes, watching the movie in March. Will be interesting to see R-Pattz die a lot (and they have upped his death count from six to sixteen!!!) bc Bong is a wild man.