Reviews and Comments

Wow! I really, really liked this book. It was not at all what I expected. The entire premise is just absurd. I expected the story to also be just as absurd, but it ... wasn't.

Scalzi has approached this book, like his last two, from a point of realism. The premise is, of course, absolutely insane. The moon becomes "cheese" (an organic matrix I think is the way book NASA states it). That is impossible! But the book characters also know it is impossible!

The entire structure of this isn't much of a story. It's more a rumination on what might the moon turning to cheese really be like? How might people react? What might some real consequences be? Each chapter is a day of the lunar cycle, and they focus on different people. There are some repeat characters and some mentions of characters across chapters, but really the Cheese Moon (Of course Scalzi gives us a "real" name for it - Caseus) is the main character.

About 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through, there is a real bit of danger that comes kind of out of nowhere. And from then on the book becomes a series of explorations of death, of relationships, and of consequences.

And then there's the end. I marked this for spoilers, so here's the spoiler. The moon just turns back to normal at the end of the lunar cycle. No explanation given - just like none was given for why it changed in the first place. It was really a huge Steven King moment for me (an ending that is just kind of like ... well I don't know where to go next so yeah it was insert easy way out). And for a minute I was like "Oh no Scalzi... not you too!"

But then, the last two chapters. One 10 years out and one I think 100 years out, I didn't do the math... those two, very short chapters are what sold me. Those two chapters made the ending have a point. They showed us one of our major flaws, which is that hindsight is never 20/20. History is never what we think it is. And, given enough time and enough misinformation and enough humanity - we will forget the truth. We will make it something else. And that was a powerful ending to the dumbest premise ever turned into a full novel.

Overall I found these books to be a relatively quick reads. The premise is good. Keanu Reeves, I mean B/Unute, is a demigod (maybe? or he's an alien? Or something else?) who can't die. Well he can die but he comes back from an egg. Either way, he's been alive for tens of thousands of years. He's seen and done it all. He has a perfect memory. He's now working for the governement as a special forces type soldier, out doing special forces things except instead of fighting bad guys, he's out collecting weird artifacts for the government to use in experiments on him.

Overall, the story is rather shallow. Where the novel really outshines the comics is the additional world building and background on Unute. The comics I think actually did a better job at exploring a bit more of Unute's past, but he's pretty one dimensional here.

I preferred the overall plot of the novel to these volumes. I feel like the comics took the "easy way out" at the end, even though they left something else to follow. The end of the novel felt more satisfying to me.

All in all though, I enjoyed these and will explore the other entries at some point.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. I did not know about the comic it is based off of before I picked it up. I wasn't sure what role Keanu Reeves had vs. China Miéville. This book has some of the dense prose that I would expect from a Miéville book, but also is a bit toned down in that regard as it compares to some of his other work I've read. In other words, there were less bits where I was just going WTF? and trying to get through it to figure out what the hell was going on.

So you have a guy who can't die? What does that really look like? I thought the explanations for how that has effected B (or Unute, our protagonist) very well thought out. There are sections of the book where he just seems like Bill Murray in Groundhog day, just doing whatever the fuck he wants and not caring about what comes from it. There are sections where he's found a "regular" human to spend some time with. You can tell that he still feels for the people around him, even if he knows they are temporary and he'll encounter countless others in the future.

I liked that the philosophical aspects are not quite front and center. I liked that the story was a mystery within other mysteries. The ending was good, but kind of unsatisfying? It left room for more stories, which I would happily read if they write them.

All in all, this was a good read and I'll check out the comics too. The intro implies that this story isn't like those, which intrigues me.

A good finish to the series. A few of the things wrapped up a little too neatly, but also some surprises at the end.

I enjoyed that we get to see Juliette united with Charlotte and move toward the start of their next adventure with the survivors from Silos 17/18.

I am wondering what else the author has planned with these characters. The bit about the people from 17 being "wrong" (i.e. "infected" by Anna with the nanobots that keep the people in Silo 1 alive/healthy for so long) seems too good to pass up!

I enjoyed how Howey weaved in the reasons behind what happened mostly in the background, but did make it pretty explicit what happened by the end, so if you missed some of the hints you weren't left completely clueless. I think that bit above about the Silo 17 survivors having healing nanobots being one of the last things left (mostly) unsaid.

Great series!

Yes I am very clever for that title.

Great follow up to Wool. Didn’t go where I thought it would - but glad Howey did what he did.

The edition I have had a nice afterword from the author and I appreciated the insight to his thought process for the plot.

I liked going back to see how it all ended up (or started?) where it did in Wool. Getting Solo’s story was fantastic. Finding out why the silos were made (fanatics!! Who’da think? Yes I’m being sarcastic there) was a good choice as well.

Looking forward to the rest of Juliette’s story. Interested to see if/when she meets Donald.