• Full Title: The Android’s Dream
• Author: John Scalzi
• Year: 2006
• Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure
• Publisher: Tor
• ISBN 978-0-765-30941-9 (hardcover)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia Page

 

Summary

It’s difficult to say much about this story without including spoilers (and there are a couple of very light spoilers below). It’s set in a universe where many sentient species coexist, if not always peacefully, and Earth/humanity joined up a several years earlier. One particular species is about to transfer power to a new ruler and one of the specific requirements for their ceremony involves a breed of sheep. Several entities will stop at nothing to either capture, kill, or protect this sheep, depending on each entity’s interests.

 

What I Liked Least About It

Even for Scalzi, there’s an awful lot of exposition. He manages to make it interesting, and sometimes funny, but I think it made this story heavier and thicker than it needed to be. Perhaps, in his efforts to make the story’s universe complex, he went too far and simply introduced too many factors — all of which then had to be explained at length.

One final downside for me: The story simply has too many twists and turns for my taste. I’m as willing as the next reader to learn new things along with the characters, but really don’t like having my chain yanked too many times. In this story, it felt like every time I had a good handle on the plot and the general flow of things, it turned a corner and went somewhere else. And — this is a mild spoiler — whenever I thought I knew which characters were going to live to the end, one of them wouldn’t. Don’t misunderstand; I do actually enjoy plot twists, and I find it realistic that an occasional main character dies (if it’s the kind of story where people die). But I don’t like too much of it.

Also: Unusual repeating word (“coincidence”), lack of character descriptions and forward-backward time jumps.

 

What I Liked Most About It

As can be said of every Scalzi book I’ve tried so far, this was fun — despite my complaints above. And though we (another mild spoiler) don’t meet the main character until page 51, which is odd for any novel, he’s a likeable enough guy and finds innovative ways out of scrapes.

The underlying plot lines are interesting, but not heavy with themes that kept me thinking heavily afterward. This is one thing that makes Scalzi different than most sci-fi writers I’ve enjoyed. Almost always, when I enjoy a sci-fi story or author, it’s because of what they forced me to think about. Scalzi doesn’t seem interested in making me think too much or be concerned about anything. He’s just here to entertain me, to tell me a story he thought up, and he typically does it well. It can be a pleasing diversion.

 

Conclusion

This is my fourth Scalzi book, and it’s fourth-best among them in my opinion. It’s still a lot better than a lot of ficiton I’ve read. If you haven’t yet read Scalzi and are thinking about it, I would recommend instead Old Man’s War or Collapsing Empire.

 

 

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