Thomcat
6/11/2024
A novel in short stories, this was an interesting choice and largely driven by Tor. It was a quick read, most of it on a long plane trip. It's very political (half the characters are diplomats!) but advances the plot of this particular story in the end.
This story takes a lot of flak for wisecracking characters (both humans and aliens), but then that's Scalzi. I laughed some, I read it quickly, and in the end, even the wisecrackers advanced the plot. It was also nice for old fart Harry Wilson to get so much of the screen time. He's a good counterpoint to John Perry, who is almost certain to be back in the next book - The End of All Things
Finally, as I usually do with short story collections, my favorites were The Sound of Rebellion and A Problem of Proportion.