Mickey Barnes gets himself into situations, sometimes of his own doing,,sometimes not. Either way they often get him killed. That's his job. Groups attempting to colonize distant worlds can use an Expendable for dangerous or suicidal missions. That's someone who can be reconstructed. The reasons for Mickey taking this job and the complications when something doesn't go as planned are surprisingly enjoyable. Edward Ashton writes a brisk plot that includes interesting characters, good world building and a touch of philosophy. It's a fun read that isn't dumb. I hope to read more from Edward Ashton.

I know I'm the odd one out but this one lost me. I'm a sci-fi dilettante and this, this is for those with a real taste for it. Mickey has escaped his debts by becoming an Expendable on a mission to colonize an ice world. He does the awful jobs and every time he dies, he is regenerated until the 8th time, when he comes back and finds there's a clone of him. He's got to deal with that even as things go wonky on the mission and the ice world. It's an interesting premise but it just didn't resonate. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

This is a seriously good adventure! You had me at "hello", (or thoughts of The Martian), with that first line - go read it ;) Excellent plotting, I like Mickey a lot, Berto, not so much. Funny without being outrageous, and not until I finished it did I think, oh, that's a totally doable movie! Good explanations for how and why they got there, very enjoyable read!

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received an eArc of this sci-fi novel through NetGalley in exchange for me honest musings . . .

I really, really enjoyed three days in april by this author so was excited to read this one.  This novel follows Mickey who works as an expendable on a human colony.  Have a job on the colony where the end result is likely death?  Mickey is the solution.  If he dies, no problem.  A new body is made and a backup of his brain is installed.  Only Mickey isn't so thrilled because those memories include how he previously died and the emotions that went with it.

There is also the rule of only one expendable per colony as making new bodies uses precious resources in limited supply.  Mickey7 has experienced death 7 times.  Circumstances occur where he is supposed to die but doesn't.  Only Mickey8 is already baked.  Problems ensue.

I really loved the set up of the book and learning about both the colony and how Mickey found himself in his weird job.  I also loved how flashbacks were used in this novel to slowly give details of the prior versions of Mickey to enhance the story.  I did enjoy Mickey7.

The plot did end up being a bit of a let down in the end.  The middle of the book was kinda slow.  The sections of the two Mickeys in the same colony were unbelievable and poorly done.  Both 7 and 8 should have been caught immediately.  There was relationship angst that could have been interesting but felt more like a red herring.  Also the native creatures aspects of the colony planet were glossed over and simplified.  The resolution of all conflict and the ending of the book left much to be desired.

Most of this book didn't work for me but I don't regret reading it for the parts I did like and the concepts of the expendables' usage in establishing a new colony.  I would read more of the author's work in the future.  Arrrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank ye kindly St. Martin's Press!

Fun story - worth a read. There are too many Mickeys (an expendable that does the most dangerous and suicidal jobs) on this colony. Great snark, good dialogue.

A great escapist fantasy that was originally a novella but turned into a very solid full-sized book. Mickey Barnes is a professional Expendable in a space colony. You need someone to patch up your spaceship, absorbing a lethal amount of radiation that will kill him? Mickey is your guy. Once he dies, a new Mickey will come hot off the vat with his same memories and personality, ready to do it all over again. He’s died and been reborn 6 times, which makes our main character Mickey7. When he’s left to die, Mickey8 is activated but then, Seven survives and they’re in a pickle. In a world with severely limited food and resources, there can’t be two Mickeys. There are also religious zealots who think he’s an abomination. The supporting characters are very well rounded. The situation is pure science fiction but it’s handled in a relatable way. I was surprised at how much less I liked Eight than Seven and, well, that’s the whole point of the book. Is Seven Mickey Barnes at all anymore? The book poses interesting philosophical questions in such a way that you don’t even notice. Lastly, the plot is simply fantastic! So well written and intelligently put together that I’d give Mickey 7 stars if I could. Excellent!
Thank you, NetGalley/#St. Martin's Press!

this is a super readable sci-fi that suffers from not enough expanding on extremely interesting elements
i liked the premise of the switcheroo but it didn't really go anywhere?? like it was fun to explore the concepts of self and identity through mickeys 7 and 8 but i do wish we got more of their dynamic and not in that sylkie manner (SO weird)
plot twist wasn't that big a deal but still fine
i think it's a book that's enjoyable with some pretty interesting themes and good meditations on the concept of 'who are you really after all these iterations' but just didn't fully deliver
very excited for the movie though

This was so much fun! Mickey signs up to be an Expendable for a new mission to colonize a new planet. Being an Expendable means he’s most likely going to die a few times. In fact, our story opens up with the seventh iteration of Mickey. However, after having an accident and assumed dead, a new Mickey is made- but 7 isn’t dead, so now 7 and 8 are trying to make it work so they can both be alive but things get a bit difficult and tricky. Especially when it comes to food rations.

I really enjoyed this! Mickey is a great character and quite funny. There’s a lot of witty banter between the characters which made this so enjoyable. It’s a very accessible science fiction story. The science discussed is interesting but isn’t necessarily the main focus of the story. The characters that are trying to make a go on the icy planet are at the center. I particularly appreciated the discussion about what it means to be a human. If someone keeps getting created over and over again but has the same memories, are they the same person? Do our memories make us who are? It’s definitely good for thought.

I highly recommend this book. It’s a fun ride and was such an enjoyable read. If you like a story with of a rag tag group of people forced to live in close quarters as they are adjusting to life on a new planet, then you’ll like this. It’s fast paced and filled with great characters.

A unique, intriguing story that had me laughing out loud, was just thoroughly enjoyable and a terrific science fiction read!! There were also some moments of dark, gallows humor and I always appreciate those. The story takes place many years in the future after humanity has left Earth and the diaspora to other systems continues. One of those ships has recently landed on the planet Niflheim to colonize it and it didn't turn out to be quite as hospitable as they were hoping. It's your basic giant ice ball and as the crews Expendable, Mickey7 is tasked with all the jobs that will kill a human. Once he's dead, they just bio-print a new version to replace him. And then things go kinda sideways- no spoilers- just be prepared for some thoughtful discussions about immortality, all the horrific ways a human can die and you won't want to stop turning the pages. Absolutely recommend this if you need a terrific sci-fi story!!

Though in the scifi realm, this novel is much more about relationships - with yourself, others and the environment you live in. The scifi aspects include being on a space mission, colonizing planets, tech and weaponry needed to survive - and replicating humans.
It's an interesting concept to have "expendables" as crew members on colonizing missions, people willing to do suicidal tasks to make sure the missions succeed. In this instance, a new version of expendable Mickey is created (Mickey8) when it's presumed Mickey7 has died, not an acceptable situation when rations and energy output are restricted. So, should the "extra" get recycled or can they work together to keep the truth hidden?
The plot is straightforward, but engrossing as Mickey7 attempts to survive, even while the colony is under attack from hostile native creatures. And it brings up the question of whether an expendable life is worth the same as anyone else's, as well as the issue of how far a colony should go to make its new "home" safe and habitable.

Mickey is an expendable, a person who knows they will always get the suicide missions and will most likely always die. But when one Mickey dies, another is harvested. After 6 deaths, Mickey 7 is on a mission and falls to his fate, only he doesn't die like everyone thought. Thus begins a real deep, fun, and confusing narrative. There was a big theme of death in this book, obviously with Mickey being an expendable, but we are sort of on this journey with Mickey as it learns how valuable life is and begins to question and defend his right to be alive. And it's certainly amazing to me that with a society so obviously far advanced that they can just make a new person, we're still struggling with death and learning what it means to be human. I really liked the characters and felt everyone had a part to play in the final outcome of the book. Sprinkled with a little space atmosphere, some cool science-y knowledge, and humor we've got one heck of a ride!

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Ashton channels a great mix of the 'fool' protagonist, and the underdog story that pulls some pretty complex schemes to get the upper hand in some sticky situations. Mickey 7 was such a fun and light read. It was a mix of the fantastic Sam Rockwell film 'Moon' and the Paul Rudd Netflix show 'Living with Yourself. I felt like Mickey had the perfect personality of being a pushover when it came to doing his duty, but then also sticking up for himself then all the chips are on the table. The supporting cast was also a great mix of personalities and every scene with the Marshall left my sides hurting with laughter. Ashton has broken through with Mickey7 and I hope he continues to explore these kind of tropes and sprinkle in his authentic brand of humor.

Very fun sci-fi book, heavy on the sci. If you're a fan of Andy Weir, you'll enjoy this book. He has a very similar writing style. I liked how the book felt like I was sitting down with Mickey7 and he was just telling me his life story. I loved the questions of ethics that this brought up.

Are we the same person if we aren't in our original bodies?
Is it ethical to experiment on people, even if they volunteered to continually die over and over?
Is it weird to have a 3-way with a clone of yourself?

Overall I genuinely enjoyed the book and a wonderful time. I hope this author writes more stories like this as I feel like they can become another Weir.

Overall, I really enjoyed the character and plot development of Mickey7. Many sci-fi books, in my experience, take too much time with the world building and deliver flat characters as a result. Developing the world as told by Mickey's understanding of history and cultural events both created a believable setting and gave context to propel the story forward.

Mickey7 has one of the best first chapters I've read in a while. I was thrust into the plot and ready to go wherever the author decided to take Mickey and his story. It's unsurprising that this book began as a novella. (I would have been equally unsurprised had it been a short story.)

Unfortunately, the middle part of the book lagged for me, due to the odd choice for much of the plot to center on the conflict of food rationing, which read as unappetizing and bland as cycler paste. It felt like a holding pattern for the ultimate denouement that was slightly clever but not as shocking a twist as I was anticipating.

If expanded into a series, I hope the women, particularly Nasha, get more to do than just their jobs and serve as love interests for Mickey. While I recognize the limitations of the first-person narrative, Nasha and Cat both deserved a lot more than what we got by seeing them through Mickey's eyes.

I received a digital advance copy of Mickey7 via NetGalley. Mickey7 is scheduled for release on February 15, 2022.

Mickey7 is an expendable. He is assigned to a mission looking to inhabit a new (and unknown) world. His job as an expendable is simple. Take on dangerous tasks with the full expectation of dying during each of those tasks. His death doesn’t matter, as he will be regenerated when he dies, with all of his memories and personality intact. So far, he has died six times.

The trouble starts when he doesn’t die a seventh time, but his friend thinks he does and reports his death. This triggers the generation of a new Mickey, Mickey8, resulting in a duplicate situation. Duplicates are not tolerated, and has the potential to result in both Mickeys being fed into the recycler. At the same time, unexpected lifeforms are found on the planet. They are not friendly. Mickey7 is on a mission to keep both the Mickeys, and the rest of the human population, alive.

As the story progresses, we stay in Mickey7’s perspective. While struggling to keep the secret of two Mickeys, he begins to question if each iteration of Mickey is truly the same person. Is he existing in two bodies at the same time? They are experiencing their world in slightly different ways, does that make them different people? As a reader, I had the same questions. Unfortunately, we don’t get to know Mickey8 well enough to fully explore this question. Overall, the characters other than Mickey7 remain distant to us, rather than becoming fully developed.

While the premise of this story was interesting, it did not feel complete. There is some resolution to the question of multiple Mickeys, as well as to the relationship between humans and the other lifeforms on the planet, but these felt more like turns that were setting up the true conflict of the story. This made more sense when I read the author’s acknowledgments which said this story started as a novella. While the story had been expanded to the length of a novel, it still felt as if it were the introduction to a larger story.

Overall, Mickey7 was an interesting premise that I would have liked to see more fully explored. There are questions introduced here about personal identity and colonization that could potentially support a series of novels.

DNF at 55%

I wanted to love this book so much. The premise sounded so interesting. Mickey Barnes signs up to be an Expendable, which means that he is thrust into danger situations that a normal human wouldn't survive. If Mickey dies, he is reincarnated, so to speak, and is essentially immortal. We start the story with Mickey7 on a fatal mission that leaves him in a situation that his teammates can't rescue him from safely. He ends up making his way back only to find that his team have already had him reincarnated into Mickey8. There should only ever be one Mickey at a time so this is a problem. They struggle to figure out which one needs to be terminated and decide to work things out with both of them. Mickey7 goes on to continue his life as normal while Mickey8 wallows in self pity and complains about just coming out of the tank.

The pacing for this first half of this book is extremely slow. Up until Mickey8 comes out of the tank, I was invested in Mickey7's journey. Then we start to get flashback timelines to previous Mickey's and before he was an Expendable that really bogged down the story for me. They didn't really add much context or depth to the story. And Mickey8 really irritated me. It felt like the two Mickey's were two different people instead of the same person multiplied like it was supposed to be. I didn't find it very believable that his best friend and girlfriend wouldn't question him more. If Mickey8 is how he acts when he comes out of the tank then why is Mickey7 running around like he never died, and his friends don't comfort him more?

Overall, I just couldn't get past the halfway mark on this story. I may come back to it in the future and check out more books by this author in the future.

After many heady reads, I was glad to pick up this book. Within hours I was a quarter of the way into it, not noticing the time that had passed.

It’s definitely in the vein of Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, with questionable, futuristic science and bleak humor. It vaguely reminded me of several old school Doctor Who episodes with its plot and some situations, especially colonization gone wrong millions of light years away from the old Earth.

The twist toward the end wasn’t a twist for me, but at that point I really didn’t care about that. I just wanted to see which Mickey (if any) would pull it out in the end.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

In this entertaining, humorous and thought-provoking novel, Edward Ashton combines a moralistic story and science fiction adventure into a gratifying read with a memorable protagonist.

Fleeing from a ruthless gangster he is deeply in debt to, Mickey Barnes signs on to a crew of a beachhead colonization ship as the Expendable member. Expendable, as in he is assigned the most risky tasks and if he turns up dead, no problem: a new Mickey Barnes is just waiting to be cloned, What goes wrong is that the seventh clone of Mickey doesn't die but is presumed dead so the eighth Mickey comes into being. On a planet where food is being rationed until the settlement can take hold, having another mouth to feed is not an option.

When Mickey7 returns from his presumed deadly mission and discovers Mickey8 in his cabin, the only solution is for one of them to be recycled. Therein lies the problem, neither of them is willing to sacrifice himself so the other may live. In a small community it is nearly impossible for the two to coexist and sure enough, the duplicates are soon discovered. What follows is an engaging tale of what the colony faces in a hostile environment and the who is to survive being recycled, Mickey7 or Mickey8.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Mickey Barnes. He is an irreverent, funny and insightful person in all of his incarnations. Following his lives and the perils of colonizing a hostile planet where death lurks behind every snowbank, is surprisingly delightful.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advance copy of this terrific book. It will be published February 15, 2022.

Cloning has always been a fascinating topic for me, and the concept of Expendables is a new one. The combination of the two made this book irresistable.

No doubt about it – Mickey7 has a crappy job. He knew what he was in for when he took it, but dying doesn’t get any easier. He retains his memories (he uploads periodically), but every death has also been painful and occasionally messy. I immediately liked Mickey. His voice reminds me of Mark Watney in The Martian – snarky, self-depracating, and humorous. He also breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the reader, something I especially loved.

Things aren’t going so well on the colonization mission. Food is in short supply, rations are being cut, and vegetation is dying. They’re also being threatened by local lifeforms, the Creepers. Think centipede-like creatures but a million times bigger. And they tear people to shreds and eat them. Mickey’s existence is threatened even more when Mickey8 is taken from the tank after Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. Multiples are forbidden to exist at the same time. Many of the crew are kind of weirded out by clones, and most of them steer clear of Mickey, anyway. A religious group of Natalists on board consider clones to be soulless abominations, and it doesn’t help that Mickey’s commander is a believer. To say the two of them have a tension-filled relationship is an understatement.

This novel wasn’t exactly what I’d expected. I was prepared for more action and exploration into the Creepers, but the majority of the story focuses on the Mickeys keeping their dual existence a secret – which, of course, is impossible. Especially since he/they have a girlfriend. The story brings the Theseus’ Paradox into play (a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object), something that was really thought-provoking. I also enjoyed the stories about the different colonies throughout history.

I’ve seen comp titles of Dark Matter and The Martian (two outstanding reads), but I can’t say Mickey7 is exactly like either of them. I’d categorize this novel as light sci-fi filled with loads of tension, a little action, a splash of romance, and a healthy serving of humor.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Mickey7 is a special story. It’s not entirely sci-fi, it’s not entirely thriller, but it’s rather a fascinating fusion of philosophical conundrums in a science-fiction setting with a machine-gun pace of a solid thriller.
Mickey Barnes is an expendable; he has signed up to be the cannon fodder in scientific planetary explorations where the human touch is needed. He has died 6 times so far but wakes up in a new clone each time engineered from his body tissue. When an incursion with an alien species goes bad, he is rumored to be dead. He makes it out alive only to realize he has already been cloned. Mickey7, meet Mickey8. Only one can actually survive. Edward Ashton takes readers on an enriching journey with fantastic characters and exciting dilemmas with one big question; what makes you YOU?
Edward Ashton’s prose is beautifully elegant. The narrative digs deep into the feelings of Mickey Barnes and his unshakable circumstances that made him sign up to be an expendable. Even with interstellar travel and far too futuristic elements, Ashton explains every single detail in layman’s terms with vivid and familiar descriptions for every reader to visualize in the highest mental resolution possible. The first-person POV is fun and regal, establishing a strong connection between Mickey Barnes and readers where it naturally feels as if Mickey is talking to us.
I went in without knowing the nitty gritty of what to expect and perhaps this is the best way to dive into this book to be completely surprised by the sheer scale of the poignant storytelling with nuanced messages and parallels that hit you late at night and keep you in a perpetual state of marveling at the brilliance and ingenuity of this exquisite world that Edward Ashton has created and filled with life. No wonder Hollywood has already started the process of bringing this book to the big screen.

Full review posted with blurb image on: https://www.bestthrillerbooks.com/kashif-hussain/mickey7-by-edward-ashton