Redshirts by John Scalzi

A good book. However, although I'm not surprised it won a Hugo, I'm sort of a little disappointed because I didn't feel it was that good a book. In fact, of the two Scalzi's I've read, I would say that I think Old Man's War is better.

( More Under the Cut, I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but I will discuss the basic premise, structure and characters )

As I say I'm not surprised it won the Hugo. Scalzi has a very high profile online presence and is cheerfully self-publicising. Moreover, if you're not familiar with the kind of meta-fictional games this book is playing (which are, I suspect, more common in fan fiction than elsewhere) then I can imagine the premise is startling and original, and there is no denying that it is mostly extremely well executed. Redshirts could easily have been a one-joke novel but it's never content to simply rest on its central idea. The dialogue which drives most of the novel is consistently witty and often clever. I just have a suspicion, I suppose, that Scalzi wrote better stuff when he was less famous.