Many thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for gifting me a digital ARC of this wonderful book by John Scalzi. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 5 stars!

The moon has turned into cheese. Now humanity has to deal with it. Just how's that going to work? Do you question your faith in God, in science, in everything you thought you knew?

I love John Scalzi. In the same vein as The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain (both 5 star reads for me), these books explore humanity when faced with the unthinkable. They are funny, thought-provoking, sci-fi light books and his latest is my favorite, I think. I loved how it explored reactions from different people from all walks of life in almost a connected short story style, as we followed scholars, pastors, students, writers, government officials, and those billionaires who want to go to space. This was perfection!

What if the moon suddenly turned to cheese? That's the basic premise of John Scalzi's When the Moon Hits Your Eye. Taking a slightly different approach than most stories, When the Moon Hits Your Eye is told via the perspectives and experiences of a variety of people as the world attempts to understand why the moon is suddenly cheese. Often humorous, a bit serious, and occasionally emotional, When The Moon Hits Your Eye is another great satirical read by John Scalzi. Having perspectives ranging from Billionaires to school kids to cheese shop owners, there's definitely a perspective that every reader will be able to relate to. Filled with vaguely absurd humor and wit and a unique take on humanity's response to a radical and bizarre event, When The Moon Hits Your Eye is a fantastic read that many will enjoy. Thank you to Tor and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

John Scalzi’s When the Moon Hits Your Eye is a humorous and satirical take on classic science fiction tropes, infused with the author’s signature wit and accessible prose. However, while the book offers moments of cleverness and amusement, it ultimately falls short in terms of depth, originality, and narrative engagement.

Strengths:
Sharp Humor and Satire – Scalzi’s hallmark snappy dialogue and irreverent humor shine throughout the novel. His ability to poke fun at the absurdity of space travel, bureaucracy, and human nature keeps the story lively and entertaining.

Fast-Paced and Accessible – The book is easy to read, with a breezy style that makes it an enjoyable page-turner. Scalzi’s knack for keeping the reader engaged with quick-witted banter and brisk pacing is evident.

Engaging Characters – The protagonist and supporting cast are likable, if somewhat familiar, and their interactions provide much of the novel’s charm.

Weaknesses:
Lack of Originality – While Scalzi is known for riffing on classic sci-fi tropes, When the Moon Hits Your Eye feels overly reliant on familiar elements without significantly subverting or reinventing them. The story at times reads like a pastiche rather than a fresh take on the genre.

Shallow World-Building – Unlike some of Scalzi’s more intricate settings (Old Man’s War, The Collapsing Empire), this book’s universe feels underdeveloped. The backdrop, while functional for the plot, lacks the immersive detail that would make it stand out.

Predictable Plot – The narrative, though amusing, follows a fairly standard trajectory without many surprises. Readers familiar with Scalzi’s work (or comedic sci-fi in general) may find the twists easy to anticipate.

Conclusion:
When the Moon Hits Your Eye is an enjoyable, lighthearted read that will appeal to fans of Scalzi’s humor and fast-paced storytelling. However, its lack of narrative depth and over-reliance on well-worn sci-fi tropes make it a less memorable entry in his bibliography. It’s a fun diversion but unlikely to leave a lasting impact on the genre.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

As with most books I pick up, I started this one just knowing the bare facts - that the moon turns into cheese (or organic matrix, as NASA would prefer it referred to). I found this book to be utterly delightful and funny, yet thought provoking at the same time. It wasn't until Day 26 when I realized that he was going by days (no, I didn't read the chapter headings), and I like towards the end that the characters really started thinking about how they would spend their last days. That got me thinking, too. I loved all the vignettes, and there were some that were just so laugh-out-loud hilarious and memorable (like the billionaires who were fighting over who got to eat the moon cheese first and old guys in the diner in Midwest America). I also like the obvious caricatures of well-known people. Just so fun.

Note to the publishers: In his afterword, Scalzi mentioned that he would love to put this book, <em>The Kaiju Preservation Society</em> and <em>Starter Villian</em> in a collector's edition box set. Yes, thank you, do it, please! I will give you ALL THE MONEY for that! I don't purchase a lot of books, but I would with that.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

In many ways, When the Moon Hits Your Eye is the kind of breezy science fiction satire we’ve come to expect from John Scalzi, author of Starter Villain and The Kaiju Preservation Society. Its absurd premise is certainly in keeping with those books: the moon has turned into cheese. Now what?

Yet I found myself both surprised and delighted by John Scalzi’s approach to the material. Rather than telling a single cohesive narrative, he structures the book as a mosaic of interconnected (though often completely independent) stories. Each chapter marks a succeeding day in the event (“Day One,” “Day Two,” etc.), but the focus isn’t on a singular plot. Instead, Scalzi explores the many ways people might react to such an inexplicably bizarre event. It’s almost best to approach When the Moon Hits Your Eye as a collection of short stories orbiting a hilariously dumb central premise.

Scalzi wisely opens the book with perspectives from the scientific community and key government figures, efficiently setting the stage while delivering exposition in an often hilarious way. He has fun juxtaposing characters grappling with existential dread against no-nonsense officials who skip straight to problem-solving. These early chapters reminded me of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, and that’s about the highest compliment I can give.

Once the groundwork is laid, the novel bounces between perspectives that rarely repeat. Some characters and narratives intertwine, while others stand alone. What’s clear, however, is Scalzi isn’t interested in telling a story about an Armageddon and our heroic efforts to understand and prevent catastrophe. Instead, he’s interested in the ways people, industries, and institutions react to uncertainty. How might Hollywood capitalize on the situation? How would religious leaders reinterpret the event? How would their congregations respond? How do personal relationships shift under the weight of the unknown? For a book built on such a ridiculous premise, When the Moon Hits Your Eye feels surprisingly well-researched and insightful, offering perspectives and concepts I didn’t expect.

Among the many stories, two stood out as my favorites: the drama surrounding rival cheese shops in Wisconsin and a brilliantly absurd retelling of a disastrous Saturday Night Live taping that is as funny as it is perceptive.
While I didn’t laugh as uproariously as I did while listening to Wil Wheaton’s fantastic narration of Starter Villain, I still found myself smiling and chuckling throughout. The book doesn’t quite stick the landing. The final chapters didn’t resonate as strongly for me—save for a couple of genuinely touching moments—and I couldn’t help but wish Scalzi pushed the emotional envelope even more as he hints at going for something more profound before opting for whimsy.

Still, When the Moon Hits Your Eye delivers exactly what it promises: a light, clever, and thoroughly entertaining read. If you go in knowing what to expect, you’ll likely enjoy it as much as I did.

WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE by @jscalzi was a 5 🌟read for me!

This speculative fiction (which is a genre I need to read more of I realize) takes on the idea of what would happen if our moon turned into cheese randomly one day. Each chapter is told through the eyes of different characters and how it affects their lives: astronauts who were training to go to the moon, an author who previously wrote a book about the moon, brothers who are cheese shop owners, the US President and his administration, etc. Each POV was unique and some even funny.

I didn’t know what to expect when going into this, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was as scientific as it could be without being dry. And some chapters surprisingly made me emotional, especially toward the end when it seems the moon-cheese will cause the end of life as we know it.

This book doesn’t take itself too serious and neither should the reader but it’s also so wholesome in a way that I’ve been thinking about it since I finished it. I even recounted the storyline to my husband - which I only do when I find a book either interesting and thought proving or ridiculous and annoying lol. This book was definitely the former.

This was a great read, and I’d highly recommend it if you like absurd and what-if type books.

Science Fiction legend, John Scalzi's latest takes a nod from the classic crooner song That's Amore and wonders what would happen if one day the moon didn't just look like Swiss cheese due to its craters, but one day actually was cheese. When the Moon Hits Your Eye, is an epistolary novel with bits of ephemera including newspaper articles and transcripts of presentations by experts that occurred when the moon went from being rocks to suddenly being made of cheese.

Most of the novel occurs close to when the change happened, but starts fast-forwarding in time towards the end of the story. The many perspectives range from astronauts to religious leaders, which gives added reality to such an outlandish premise and how different people would come to accept the new way of the world. There are some very funny sections and very cheesy puns and also some very touching moments. My favorite day/chapter was about a woman who has always wanted to be a writer since she was a young girl, but got so trapped in wanting her novel to be perfect she kept rewriting and workshopping the same few paragraphs over and over; the moon incident finally gives her the nudge she needs.

This may not appeal to some hard Science Fiction fans since the cheese moon's behavior is only loosely reality based, but for those that like to see a master story teller's imagination take flight, this will be a delight.

I think when I was a kid, there was a running joke the moon was made of cheese. I never knew where the joke came from, but this book takes that idea a step further and speculates on the idea of the moon suddenly turning to cheese and the world reeling from the sudden celestial change.

This book explores what would happen should the moon turn to cheese and all of the moon fragments on earth also turn to cheese. There are some rich people who want to be the first to eat a piece of the moon. There are scientists trying to figure out the ramifications of how it would affect us since this new moon is a bit bigger in size even if the same density.

I really enjoyed the multiple perspectives and narrators as we follow everyone from school kids to politicians and billionaire CEOs. It's a humorous, satirical read on people and their reactions when something fundamental (like the moon) suddenly changes. Scalzi is quite master of his craft when it comes to this level of wit and tongue-in-cheek humor. It's just a light read full of craziness. I highly recommend.

This story was as bizarre as I hoped it would be. I was hoping it would be funnier than it was, but it remained a very interesting and absurd story about a world faced with the fact that the moon turned into cheese.

We don’t exactly ever follow the same characters throughout the story, which was an aspect I did not exactly like, but there was some interconnectedness between some of the groups of characters. The aspect of this that I really enjoyed was the fact that we got to see through the eyes of many different types of people and explore just how they might react to this phenomenon and the impending end of the world.

There was some social commentary on billionaires who want to go to space and have bought their way into the government's pockets…sounds way too familiar.

“It’s not fair. But it’s the world that we’ve made for ourselves, isn’t it. Or at least the world that we let those who we elected decide was the one we should have.”
The whole concept of the story is funny in an absurdist manner and I think that works well. If you prefer plot over characters, you’ll definitely take a liking to this story.

“The world will not end in fire, or in ice. It’ll end in cheese. Suck on that, Robert Frost.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫✨

Thank you to @torbooks for the ARC. All thoughts are my own.

Overall, we enjoyed reading When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi. Here at the Green Team of the Legendarium Podcast, we are big fans of John Scalzi's works. We've read and enjoyed both The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain.

Similarly, we had fun reading When the Moon Hits Your Eye. With such a ridiculous premise of the moon actually turning into cheese, we knew we were in for a wild ride.

In general, we loved the individuals we got to know throughout the book. It seems Scalzi was more interested in exploring the reaction of humanity and individual humans to such a large event of the moon turning into cheese and the consequences that came with it than the logistics and sci-fi exploration of why / how the moon turned into cheese. In some ways, the storytelling was reminiscent of something like World War Z by Max Brooks. We get different methods of storytelling like transcripts and a Reddit AMA. The usage of little vignettes was overall effective in conveying the various perspectives of different individuals as they dealt with the all-consuming event.

However, if you're looking for an immersive sci-fi romp of people trying to determine why the moon turned into cheese and wanting to follow a specific set of characters, you'll be disappointed. It's just not that kind of book.

Seems like Scalzi had a particular path he wanted to go down from the get-go and perhaps some specific commentary he wanted to convey about human nature.

To hear more of our spoiler-free discussion check out our podcast episode here: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/MzXyaALwLRb
Our full spoilers episode will be releasing on Mar 30, 2025.

Humans on Earth were just going about their days, living their lives, walking the dog and making dinner again and trying to decide what to watch and raising kids and raising the bar and drinking at the bar. And then one day, the moon turns to cheese.

According to NASA, it’s “organic material,” but those who are in the know think it’s cheese. Even the moon rocks on Earth have turned to cheese, which is how the scientists first found out about it. Now, when you look up in the sky, the moon is bigger and brighter than it’s ever been, and no one’s quite sure how this will affect their lives moving forward.

There are the astronauts who are not at all happy because their upcoming trip to the moon has been shelved. It’s just too dangerous, especially since there seems to be eruptions on the moon’s surface, as the mass of the moon is pressing in on itself. NASA isn’t going to allow a space mission with all those unknowns. But when billionaire tech bro insists that they still allow his spacecraft to launch, with an information-gathering mannequin, they let the launch happen. How were they to know he’d sneak onboard and replace the mannequin, making the journey into space and cheesing off the trained astronauts who didn’t get to go to space.

There are feuding cheese shop owners in Wisconsin, brothers actually, who have held a grudge against each other for years. Now they both hire college students to help out and send the new hire to the other store to spy on them. With the moon turning to cheese, first customers are excited about cheese and sales go up. But then, they seem to resent the cheese and turn on the shops. How will the brothers react?

There is the drunk guy yelling at the pastor as he tries to give a sermon. There is the millionaire who wants to be the first to eat the cheese, without knowing if it’s even safe to eat. There is the political scandal that is cheese related and the lunar eclipse that no one ended up watching. But through it all, there were humans acting like humans, whether that’s falling love or throwing a chair at a comedian who picked the wrong joke at the wrong time.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye is the latest novel from John Scalzi, known for his sci fi and his humor, and this brings them both. He takes the possibility of our moon changing into a different substance and how that would affect the daily lives of Americans, from those who are in the scientific community or in politics to those just trying to live their best life in their small town. He looks at the possibility through many different perspectives, offering a view of humanity from many angles.

I loved this book. I could not rush through it, as I was savoring every single page as it came. And that ending? Wow. I am not going to say what happens, obviously, but it’s powerful in today’s world. I think not everyone will like it, but I think it’s funny and perfect for this story. I am a fan of Scalzi. I come for the humor, whether it’s making fun of a beloved sci fi television series or intelligent cats running a crime ring. And When the Moon Hits Your Eye did not disappoint. I highly recommend this one if you need an escape from the real world for a while.

Egalleys for When the Moon Hits Your Eye were provided by Tor Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.

I mean it’s John Scalzi so you know it’s going to be good right? I haven’t read everything by him but I haven’t found a dud yet…. I admit I was skeptical of the premise. I don’t know why having the moon turn to cheese struck me as just too far out there when I’ve been reading almost entirely sci-fi and fantasy since I was a grade school kid but it sounded weird to me. You’d think after a lifetime of reading impossible things I wouldn’t bat an eye at just about any plot device… But he pulls it off! Fun read, not super long so if you’re looking for a weekend’s worth of escapism entertainment try this one.

Scientists around the world are absolutely baffled when they wake up one morning to find that the moon has turned into cheese.

No, seriously, that’s the premise of John Scalzi’s latest book, When the Moon Hits Your Eye, and it’s hilarious. The book follows people around the world as they try to cope with the change. Some are scientists being pressed to find out just what happened and why. Others are capitalists, hoping to be able to use the mysterious switch to gain themselves even more money and keep from falling into financial ruin. Others still are people of faith asking why God would do this/allow this to happen, and struggling to find a place on one side of that divide.

With a mix of (maybe somewhat dubious) science and his traditional humor, Scalzi has presented a fantastically fun glimpse of just how well we would or wouldn’t handle a major paradigm shift. When the Moon Hits Your Eye is out today, 3/25/25. It’s a fun, quick, and ultimately rather silly read, but in times like these, we can use a little more of just that. My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2025/03/25/when-the-moon-hits-your-eye-a-review/

I went into this read not knowing the author's other work. I thought this was going to be VERY sci-fi and I was going to be lost in the terminology. HA! It's so funny, anyone can enjoy it, and I liked that each chapter was a new set of characters experiencing the cheese moon.

What if, all of a sudden, the Moon turned into cheese? We have all heard the story about the Moon being made of cheese, but what if one day it suddenly was? When the Moon is suddenly a large cheesy globe in the sky, the people of Earth are thrown into a situation they never expected to find themselves. For some it causes existential crises. For others it helps them realize their biggest goals. And for a few, it creates a bit of an annoyance for their normal day. When the Moon becomes cheese, many will ask how or why it happened, but most will ask "What kind of cheese?"

First of all, I really loved this book. It was a lot of fun to read. Much like 'The Kaiju Preservation Society' and 'Starter Villain', Scalzi took a crazy premise and threw a great cast of characters into the situation and showed us how they would react. This book had a little bit of everything: Comedy, Romance, Suspense, and Sci-Fi. Following the different characters around in this wacky situation left me wanting to read more about all of them. The different formats throughout the book were great with the story. I enjoyed it all the way through and I would highly recommend this to anyone wanting a fun read.

* Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This was worth reading just for the thought experiment of an absurd situation playing out, even if not all chapters worked as well as others.

I’m going to try to avoid all of the puns that have to do with cheese as much as possible here. Believe me, there are enough of them throughout this book! I wanted to read this because I was really game to give Scalzi another try after I liked Old Man’s War years ago, then didn’t love The Kaiju Preservation Society. I’m coming down on the side of quite liking this book, with some reservations.

But mostly I wanted to read it because this blurb starts like this:

“The moon has turned to cheese.
Now humanity has to deal with it.”

So, I mean, who can resist that? Not this reader.

That’s about it. The moon turns to actual cheese, or, as the space agencies insist on calling it, “an organic matrix.” I imagined Scalzi sitting around trying to think up a fun idea for his next novel and coming up with the most absurd thing, and this is a pretty good one.

There are some interesting through lines in the plot, characters that recur and drive the narrative, but some chapters serve as a mini-episode that never reappears, like a short vignette. On the whole, it works, but when writing this way, it's natural that some stories work better than others, and occasionally I found my eyes skimming the page a bit, particularly when the prose was dialogue heavy. The humour worked for me, because it's all about the cheese and I was so completely in for that that I didn’t mind if it was cheesy. He balanced it with some genuine poignancy.

It all starts out with a sense of bemusing fun, but cheese isn’t as stable in outer space as moon rock, so all sorts of terrible things start to happen.

There are so many good quotes, but I think this sums up much of the book nicely, in the words of the fictional American President Boone:

“I don’t know how to talk about this in a way that doesn’t fundamentally sound ridiculous.”

This novel sparked some fun dinnertime conversation and I’m glad I read it!

Thanks to Tor Books and Netgalley for a gifted copy.

When the Moon Hits Your eye by John Scalzi
Ever since covid I find myself saying “well that would never happen” a lot less when reading books about things that probably would never happen. For example, the moon turning into a giant wheel of cheese. That would never happen….right? And people would have rational and appropriate reactions…right?
In this book, each chapter explores a different person and how the moon changing affected them and their life. For example, how did the moon changing to cheese impact the astronauts who were supposed to visit said moon? What about feuding cheese shop owners? This was an interesting exploration into the human condition and how we act when the unthinkable happens.
I was sort of expecting this to be a book that follows a cast of characters throughout this journey, but really only a few characters are actually in multiple chapters. This narrative allowed this story to be a wide view look at how different people from different backgrounds might react.
Overall, I liked this book. It’s going to be perfect for people who love a character-focused story line and are less concerned about plot development. I think I just went into this book expecting something different than what it was. But I still found this to be an enjoyable read. I recommend reading it by moonlight.
Than you to the publisher for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book followed a lunar phase and we had different points of view for every chapter. This was humorous and satirical and everything I didn't realize I needed in a book. I was laughing, snorting, rolling my eyes, and smiling. If you don't like a ton of POVs this isn't for you. I will say I have a new interest in the moon and will pay closer attention to it from now on.

Thank you Tor and John Scalzi for the gifted copy I got at NYCC!

When the Moon Hits Your Eye
John Scalzi
Publishing Date: March 25, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was my first book by John Scalzi and I had no idea what to expect going in. But I like what I found!

This book was pretty ridiculous 🤣 What would you do if one day the moon turned to cheese? How would you spend your time if you knew the world might come to an end in two years?

This book was random and silly and also made me feel things at points. Each chapter is a day in the lunar cycle and most of the chapters are from the POV of a different character. They almost read like short stories as most of the characters we don’t see again after their chapter.

The puns were cheesy, the plot was outlandish, the overall vibe was quirky. Throughout much of the book I found myself thinking, “I am really enjoying this and I have no idea why!” I’m still not entirely sure why this kooky book worked so well for me, but it hit right and I really had a good time reading it. I’ll definitely be back for more by this author!

If there is anyone who can take a ridiculous idea like the moon turning to cheese and make it into a book that was funny, absurd, silly, heartwarming and thought provoking it is John Scalzi. When the Moon Hits Your Eye is a collections of stories set in a world where the moon has turned to cheese and how various people across the United States deal with that in a ‘day in the life’ kind of fashion.

We start off the lunar month with the discovery the moon is wrong and made of cheese. Every chapter is a day focusing on a different set of characters and how they are coping with this new discovery. While there is a little talk of how this happened, that is not the focus of the story. It has more to do with how it impacts peoples lives and what they think of the phenomenon. Each chapter is a day in the lunar cycle leading up to a lunar eclispe.

I enjoyed how every chapter had a different focal PoV. From the NASA astronauts whose mission to the moon got scrapped, to a cheese shop with a long standing family feud, the guys down at the local diner, a writer who accidentally became famous due to the content of his just released book and so many others characters and how the moon changing has effected their lives. Each ‘a day in the life’ had something I enjoyed in it that added to the overall whole of the book.

Scalzi says in the afterword that this book finished up a group of stories that include The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain. You do not have to have read them to enjoy When the Moon Hits Your Eye, however they follow the same concept when he was writing them of “ordinary people dealing with an extraordinary high concept situation in a modern setting”.

I enjoyed this book so much more than I thought I would. The chapter stories with the various characters were fun. Billionaires fighting over who will be first to eat a piece of the moon, friends in a group chat talking about the eclipse party they can’t make it to, NASA explaining how the moon is now volatile with volcanoes of molten cheese and so on. Just a lot of great and fun stories, even a few emotional ones.

If you are a person that can live with some loosey-goosey science to have a good time this could be just what you were looking for.