I bought this book not on the recommendation of friends but only because it was advertised by amazon while I was scrolling for new books. And since I have been pleasantly surprised by how stupid Amazon's AI seems to be when trying to show me ads of different brands of things I just had bought on the site I was curious how appropriate this recommendation would be. In short: not very!

It is a british spy story playing in London. The british intelligence unit is storing their droputs, agents who have fallen from grace but couldn't be sacked in a special building off the official premises: Slough House. An older office building in dire need of maintenance where the disgraced agents stay and work until they either die of boredom or quit the service alltogether. And because it is so funny they call these dropouts slow horses.

The story starts by introducing all the relevant main personnel from the officials and from the slow horses. Some of the dropouts' stories are told, some of them are left for later. But they all have had a very dire fate that had made them end up in Slough House and gives the story a kind of London-noir impression. One of those characters whose story is held back by the author to increase the mysterious atmosphere around him, is Slough House's boss, Jackson Lamb. All of the slow horses have in common that they desperately yearn to be allowed back into the officials service. But this never happens. Besides that they have no real connections amongst themselves.

Then a student is kidnapped, a british asian of pakistani descent. The kidnappers threaten to decapitate him live on the net. The underdogs from Slough House spring into action to prove their value by trying to rescue the kid. But things get complicated. It turns out that somehow the official service is involved in this kidnapping and that it is a set up. A PR stunt where the intelligence agency comes to the rescue at the last moment, that is the plan. But it gets out of control. The kidnappers are informed of this stunt and escape with their victim. So now the intelligence agency's boss tries to pin the blame on the slow horses who then not only have to find the kidnappers in time but also to defend themselves against this vicious plan. They show their real superpowers (metaphorically speaking) and in the end all ends well.

I didn't like the story very much. It remined me too much of these childrens' books by Enid Blyton, where kids are shoved aside by the adults, learn about some special secrets and then rush away to save the last great auk. This spy-depressed-noir atmosphere here didn't look very convincing, far too much like a klichée the author has to fulfill. Some twists were nice but others were totally redundant. And I found it somewhat boring for large parts. So for example the unending description of Slough House from the points of view of fictious spectators were only some parts of the boredom.

In the end I didn't really care if the story ended badly (all are dead, evil triumphs) or well as it does. I won't get the follow up books, most definitively won't watch the apple+ series that was made of it. My recommendation is if you really want to read it just find someone to borrow it to you and don't forget to give it back.

This book is about getting hooked on credit cards and self optimisation. And this review is with spoilers, as always.

In an undefined but obviously near future a teen starts to use nano bots to effect some changes to her body. Harmony is her name and she just wants to look better. Become more attractive and be more popular. As this is quite successful she starts to add more and more features to her nanos' programming. Everybody else is doing it too and it is easy. You just scroll through the available add ons on your smart phone (like Take Control, Powerful Poise etc.), you choose the one you need and with a klick you get a shinier skin or better teeth color. Or thinner calves. Whatever is on offer and whatever you want you can add it to your nanos' programming with no effort at all.

The effects are real and the pay is virtual since it is of course payed by credit card. For every improvement you automatically sign a subscription contract. It works out quite well for Harmony and basically everything is fine (if you can ignore the vicious social behaviour of her and her peer group). But Harmony's fiancee is overdoing her upgrades somewhat causing a breakdown of her nano programming that she barely survives. Afterwards things have changed, Harmony tries to take back control of her self optimisation and leaves him. This leads to a job loss and all of a sudden she notices that she had long ago fallen into the classical subscription trap: everything is ok as long as the money is there. When the money is out for one reason or the other then everything breaks down. Ignoring it doesn't help as Harmony comes to notice.

We witness her breakdown from good job to less good job to no job at all. As Harmony is less and less able produce the money for her nano enhancements the programming businesses shut them down part by part. We see Harmony trying in vain to argue with call center agents to give her some leeway and in the end they even exercise punitive measures for missing payments like shutting down Harmony's sense of smell. The shutdown of the nano programs leads to a complete reforming of Harmony's body. She had been using these nanos for years and so it takes some time for her body to adjust to the lack of the nanos' interference. Her hips get wider, she gets fat, her hair reverts to normal color and texture. She has no money no job sees no perspective and is nearly 30 years old.

She goes to the only place left for her: her mother's house. Her mother is a very caring person but Harmony's relation to her is quite distanced. She does not directly despise her mother (she even had payed for some medical nano enhancements for her) but she sees her as too intrusive and had done everything to get away from her home before. Going back is a capitulation. And going without the nano optimisations is like a bad rehab: her body is slowly adapting back to the new normal, her real ugly self and her mind tries to cope with the fact, that she will never be able to afford further enhancements, since her actual debts will last for the next 100 years. Harmony is clearly not happy but she tries to live with it. Until in the end when her mother suffers a near fatal stroke she starts to see possibilities again to follow her addiction:

Nothing ridiculous, this time.
Nothing too far-fetched.
Something for her arse.
And maybe a little something for that flab of fat underneath her arms.
She will make the choice for herself, for who she wants to be.
She shall begin again.

The story is told in scenes that switch between Harmony's development after her breakdown and her earlier experiences, on her way towards the breakdown. That makes reading a little difficult. Another reason why I found reading the book difficult is that Harmony is not a nice person. She is totally self centered but also extremely dependent on other peoples' praise and acceptance. She gets addicted to the attraction of her fiancee even though he is constantly buying new add ons for her with her credit card to physically and mentally shape her to his wishes. She feels somewhat obliged to help her mother with medical nanos after her first stroke. This ends after the mother's second stroke when Harmony is living with her in her house and she decides to better spend the money on new apps for herself.

Harmony's problem is of course neither new nor futuristic. Money on credit cards is as real as physical money even though it is spent much much easier. And longing for physical enhancements is a problem already today. The pressure to optimize yourself to better fit the real or imaginate demands of society is already prevalent: be fitter, be better organised, have your nose carved into some more attractive shape, and those breasts! Women feel more subjected to these demands but this is becoming more sex independent. So once this self optimisation is easily reachable for everyone why should not everyone try to get there? The thing is to know when to stop.

Harmony doesn't know and is only forced to stop: first by the malfunction of her nanos and second by her lack of money. But also society as a whole doesn't know when to stop. These nanos are medicine and they can help fight diseases like strokes or heart attacks. But they also can go further: restore brain damage or repair damage through ageing. This unluckily doesn't make the damaged alive again, but only makes their bodys working. So that then there are lots of people who would have been brain dead (and thus really dead) in the old times but now can be living on, even though their minds are gone.

I really liked the book even though I severely dislike Harmony the more I think about her. It is well written and it made me think about things like: would I use these nanos until I became a mindless zombie lying in a bed in a geriatric clinic? But I sure would use them to prevent possible strokes! People really should be taught how to use credit cards correctly!

Buy the book and read it!

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This book is only readable for people who have seen several series of the Star Trek Brand and still can remember them.

This book is only readable for people who have seen several series of the Star Trek Brand and still can remember them. If you are one of them you will certainly know that a typical Star-Trek crew consists of a fixed set of main characters and a diverse group of background characters, often without names, with short appearance and hardly more than one sentence of text. They are interchangeable. And these lowly crew members very often wear a red shirt. In the Star Trek Brand the color of the dress is a way to distinguish rank and working position of the characters. Those with the red shirts as the lowest ranks are the most expendable. That is why in many of the series it is a character in a red shirt who dies in dangerous situations when the heroes manage to get away alive in various thrilling ways. A redshirt on an away mission in the Star Trek Brand is prone to die.

This is what Scalzi was building his story plot on. Soldiers of a real future suddenly notice strange behaviours of themselves and their comrades. The crew of the UU's flagship starts to suffer heavy losses when they are on away missions. Their captain and the officers always come out fine, or at least alive, but the other crew members, those with the red shirt of their rank they very often die. And they die in the most stupid ways possible even though they are basically very intelligent persons. They usually know what they are doing and are good enough to having been chosen for the flagship crew. During the story some new members of the crew find out that the older crew members know about the fatality of away missions and try to avoid them at all costs. And they start to investigate this irrational situation. After several twists they come to the conclusion, that they are somehow influenced by the storys of an old TV SF-show from several centuries before. They manage to travel back in time to meet their actor counterparts and the producers of that show. They convince them of the horrible dangers that their stories pose to the future space farers. The producers promise to write one final show and then stop it altogether. The future men then manage to get back to their own time and everything is fine. But the author couldn't stop himselve to add a little extra meta twist.

The second part of the book consists of the reports of the actors and the producer who have been visited by their storys characters. And that's it.

The book is a little boring. It obvously is intended as a parody of the Star Trek Brand. But since the basic twist is given away in the cover text the unfolding of the plot is more ore less predictable which seriously reduces the fun. And in the end of the first part all inconsistencies of the story are painted over. The second part looks as if the author still had to fill in some pages and to add some human aspects. So Scalzi just wrote an adventure story with an slightly amusing meta background about what if Bones really came back to harrass DeForest Kelley?

It could have been a reflection of what reality really is. Of how we interact with the imagination. Books like Michael Ende's "Die unendliche Geschichte" or Glukhovsky's "Sumerki" are far better at exploring the reality of our phantasy.

So you might read this book when you are bored and know enough of Star Trek to care about the basic story twist. But you better just borrow it and give it back after you finished reading

#literature #review #rezension #science-fiction
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