Amadan na Briona

Oy, I like John Scalzi, but his writing doesn't always click with me. I give this book 3.5 stars, which I round up to 4 'cause I like the author. I suppose his books could best be described as "sci-fi comfort food"; entertaining, lightweight, nothing that makes you think too hard. The Android's Dream seem to be trying to mine Douglas Adams territory with a mix of space opera and humor; the humor worked okay, but at the expense of the space opera.

Basically, it's the future, and Earth is part of an interstellar Commonwealth which is kind of like a galactic UN except people actually listen to it. Earth's closest allies are more like "frenemies"; the reptilian Nidu, with whom Earth once fought a war. The novel begins with an Earth diplomat wreaking vengeance on the Nidu for their (indirectly) killing his father, which causes a diplomatic crisis that can only be settled by the Nidu being provided with an extremely rare breed of sheep... which turns out to be, through a series of bizarre genetic experiments, a person who doesn't know she has sheep DNA.

It turns out there are rival factions in both the Earth and Nidu governments who don't want the "sheep" to survive, which triggers an interplanetary chase with plenty of action and wisecracks in a story that could have been written for a Will Smith movie.

Not bad, certainly entertaining, but it never quite let me take the story seriously, while never quite being funny enough to make me laugh out loud.