David Sewell

Slow start, gets better, ends up good not great

Revisado: 05-14-22

KPS has an arc something like Scalzi's very first novel, "Agent to the Stars": starts out in the real world as more or less a satire of a particular corporate environment, slowly modulates into the sci fi realm, and ends up spinning an inventive plot with both humor and deeper significance. But KPS isn't the achievement that his first book or many others have been. The afterword suggests one possible reason: it was written quickly, to replace an abandoned novel that his publisher had contracted for. That said, if you enjoy Scalzi's brand of humor, characterization and plotting, it's worth adding to your library. After the first quarter or so of the book, the plot becomes more complex, the characters a bit deeper, and the humor less forced (meaning that Will Wheaton doesn't have to spend so much time giving the text that annoying intonation that signifiies, "I'm reading this sentence with this odd snarky emphasis so you know it's SUPPOSED to be FUNny"). Although the physics that enables characters to pass between alternate Earths isn't convincing, the biology that Scalzi devises for monster-world is fairly clever. There's a mystery of sorts in the second half whose solution anyone paying attention to the book sees coming chapters in advance, but it's still fun to see the good guys solve it and the bad guys get what they deserve.

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Must-read sequel to 'Navajos Wear Nikes'

Revisado: 06-10-20

This book can stand on its own, but you'll get more out of it if you've read "Navajos Wear Nikes", Kristofic's memoir of moving to the Navajo Reservation as a boy and growing up through high school there in Ganado and nearby Page, Arizona.

"Reservation Restless" overlaps some with the earlier book, returning to a few episodes from high school and the beginning of Kristofic's mentoring by English teacher Lyle Parsons, who plays a major role in the new memoir. From there it moves forward to Kristofic's adult career as a college student and teacher back in Pennsylvania, and ultimately to his return to the Southwest. It shares a lively sense of humor and irreverance with "Nikes", but adds sustained themes (the importance of wandering while paradoxically being rooted, the deep history of the Navajos and their culture, respect for the environment and especially the Southwest's water resources), and a new vein of powerful poetic language, at times very moving.

The narration is a bit odd--slower and more deliberate than it was in "Nikes", sometimes too slow (and I found myself using the speed settings on my iPod at times). But always clear and easy to understand (and I say this as a hearing-challenged person), and of course Kristofic's familiarity with the Navajo language is critical as the book has many words, phrases, and even longer texts in that language.

With this book, Kristofic joins my personal short list of authors who have written about the West better than anyone else.

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Has its moments, but not Scalzi at his cleverest

Revisado: 10-05-19

I was hoping this story might have some of the conceptual inventiveness of the Locked In books, but no such luck. One imagines Scalzi coming up with the title as a play on the novel/film "The President's Plane Is Missing", and then whipping up a plot just to fit the title. It's moderately entertaining and worth the low price of admission, but unless you're a reader who just plain needs to read everything John Scalzi publishes, you won't be missing anything by passing it by. It doesn't help that the narrator doesn't handle the dialogue tags at all well.

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Fine, but maybe not the best first Scalzi to read

Revisado: 07-28-19

"Agent to the Stars" was my first encounter with Scalzi's SF, and the first time through I gave up after about four chapters. Three reasons for that: Scalzi's wisecracking (often wiseass) humor, a plot that seemed more about Hollywood than aliens, and an alien that seemed just plain silly.

Subsequently I read and thoroughly enjoyed several of Scalzi's later works. I came to understand that Scalzi's humor is never gratuitous, that underneath his breeziness are always serious ethical and existential concerns, and that once one of his plots gets going, it doesn't let go. ("Agent" takes longer to get going than anything else by him I've read; probably first-novel growing pains.) All of that ends up being true of "Agent to the Stars" as well. The characters aquire surprising depth, and a ha-ha-funny book morphs into an often moving exploration of friendship, love, moral commitment, and what it means to be a "person" when you have the biology and technology to change that as needed.

The novel that absolutely sold me on Scalzi was "Lock In"; that, or "Old Man's War", or "Android's Dream", might be the best places to start. If you start with "Agent", you may well be all in from the first chapter--but if not, give it some time to develop and I'd hope you find it rewarding.

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