Redshirts has a concept that no Sci-Fi geek could ever pass up an opportunity to read. In the future, newly assigned starship crew realize that for no apparent reason the captain always takes a junior crew member on away teams, and that crew member dies every time.

And indeed this book starts off well exploring this idea from the point of view of the newly arrived ensigns, with plenty of tropes and references to delight the geek reader.

“In other words, crew deaths are a feature, not a bug,” Cassaway said, dryly.

Unfortunately it then doesn’t seem to know where to go, turning to another trope as the crew go back in time to our present day to find the actors playing them in a TV series; and finally ends weirdly with a third of the pages of the book left to go and a series of codas that don’t really seem to fit the original narrative.

★★★☆☆