Book Review: Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison
Make Room! Make Room!
Author: Harry Harrison
Published: 1966
288 Pages
Reviewed By: Kim
Kim’s Rating: 3 stars
Book Description:
Kim’s Review:
Ok, I think I’ve come to a conclusion: Old book to film adaptations are so ridiculously different from modern ones. This is the second one that I’ve read where the film is actually miles better than the original book! I’m weirded out! I showed Ivan Soylent Green last year and I was reminded how brilliant it was. I mean, Charlton Heston, but even aside from him! That movie is terrifying and so well done! I noticed that it said it was based on a novel, so naturally, I looked it up. I finally bought it and read it … and it wasn’t that great at all!
I don’t want to spoil Soylent Green cuz everybody should watch it, but very little of the story from the book was put into the movie. And the story in the movie is so much better! Some of the concepts were the same; overcrowding, lack of resources, extreme classism, etc. and the setting was well done. I liked Andy Rusch, but mainly because I was picturing Heston the whole time. Overall, I’m glad I read it, but I’d quickly recommend the movie to anyone else!
Purchase Links:
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Audiobook Review: Travel by Bullet by John Scalzi (The Dispatcher #3)
Travel by Bullet
Series: The Dispatcher #3
Author: John Scalzi
Narrator: Zachary Quinto
Published: September 1, 2022
Audiobook: 3 hours 43 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: October 13-15, 2022
Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars
Book Description:
The world has changed. Now, when someone is murdered, they almost always come back to life—and there are professionals, called “dispatchers,” who kill in order to save lives, to give those near the end a second chance. Tony Valdez is a dispatcher, and he has never been busier.
But for as much as the world has changed, some things have stayed the same. Greed, corruption and avarice are still in full swing. When Tony is called to a Chicago emergency room by an old friend and fellow dispatcher, he is suddenly and unwillingly thrown into a whirlpool of schemes and plots involving billions of dollars, with vast caches of wealth ranging from real estate to cryptocurrency up for grabs.
All Tony wants to do is keep his friend safe. But it’s hard to do when friends keep secrets, enemies offer seductive deals, and nothing is ever what it seems. The world has changed… but the stakes are still life and death.
Jessica’s Review:
Scalzi is back with a third Dispatcher novel and Quinto narrates again! And this one is a recent release too! This new novella seems even more real because the pandemic is brought into play and affected this world as well as ours! It affected a dispatcher’s job too, and we get to see this mentioned. And wearing a mask is commonplace in this world as it can be in our world, with people choosing to wear masks whenever they are out.
The world is much darker too with the rich/elite/villains taking advantage of ‘murder’ and the 99.9% chance of coming back by ‘traveling by bullet’, hence the title of this new novella. This world has so much more greed, corruption, and death manipulation than what we have now and if this actually happened I can see our world becoming like Tony’s world.
These novellas are fast paced, and enjoyable! You like Tony, but is he as good as we think? Quinto is the perfect Tony and I really want to see these stories play on tv with him starring!
I hope Scalzi gives us more Dispatcher novellas! This series is one to make you think a lot about this world, and Scalzi has done a brilliant job of bringing us into it.
Purchase Links:
Please Note: This new release is only currently available as an Audible original.
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Audiobook Review: Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi (The Dispatcher #2)
Murder by Other Means
Series: The Dispatcher #2
Author: John Scalzi
Narrator: Zachary Quinto
Published: September 20, 2020
Audiobook 3 hours 33 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: October 12-13, 2022
Jessica’s Rating: 4 stars
Book Description:
In the world of the Dispatchers, a natural or accidental death is an endpoint; a murder pushes the do-over button and 99.99% of the time the victim comes back to life. Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher who’s been taking shadier and shadier gigs in financial tough times, and after witnessing a crime gone wrong, he finds people around him permanently dying in a way that implicates him. He has to solve the mystery of these deaths to save the lives of others–and keep himself out of trouble with the law.
Jessica’s Review:
This novella should follow your reading of The Dispatcher and then continue on. This world is such a strange world where if you are murdered, there is a 99.9% chance that you will come back to life. We still don’t know why this started or the cause, and I don’t think we will ever know. This world has just come to accept this and move on in a new way, the good and the bad.
We have Tony Valdez back and you just can’t help but like him. And he gets in way over his head when he witnesses a bank robbery gone wrong: One of the bank robbers doesn’t come back to life.
This story is definitely of the noir category and a quick read/listen and Quinto is just brilliant and makes the story enjoyable! This is not a world I would like to find myself in, or even find myself in the job of a Dispatcher: There are so many issues with this type of job of being a Dispatcher along with morality issues and the law in general. And just the temptation of becoming ‘dirty’ for money. I hope Scalzi brings us more of Tony and his misadventures of life as a Dispatcher!
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK