Call it Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead meets Stranger Than Fiction, plus a heavy dose of tv sci-fi, and specifically (I suspect) Star Trek - a small group of new recruits on the starship Intrepid begin to realise that something is very wrong with their ship, leading them eventually to the realisation that they themselves are minor characters in a not particularly well-written science fiction tv show from 2012, that show having created the (future) timeline in which they're existing, with particularly adverse implications for their likely life expectancies, not being stars of the show (*). It's meta and recursive (as it has one of its characters say) but in a way that always makes sense, and in a way that's only part of the effect rather than being its whole point.
It's a good read, hitting a tone that allows it to be comedic and not too heavy while also generating stakes that feel real enough to be exciting, and achieving some genuinely affecting moments with its three codas, all of which elaborate on the effects of the incursion by those ensigns into the 'real' world from the perspective of relatively peripheral characters.
It's a good read, hitting a tone that allows it to be comedic and not too heavy while also generating stakes that feel real enough to be exciting, and achieving some genuinely affecting moments with its three codas, all of which elaborate on the effects of the incursion by those ensigns into the 'real' world from the perspective of relatively peripheral characters.
