{"id":3505,"date":"2017-04-25T15:35:55","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T15:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/?p=3505"},"modified":"2017-04-24T15:41:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T15:41:01","slug":"mechanical-failure-by-joe-zieja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/book-review\/science-fiction\/military\/mechanical-failure-by-joe-zieja\/","title":{"rendered":"Mechanical Failure, by Joe Zieja"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Mechanical-Failure-by-Joe-Zieja.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3521\" src=\"http:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Mechanical-Failure-by-Joe-Zieja-166x250.jpg\" alt=\"Mechanical Failure, by Joe Zieja book cover\" width=\"166\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Mechanical-Failure-by-Joe-Zieja-166x250.jpg 166w, https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Mechanical-Failure-by-Joe-Zieja.jpg 332w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 166px) 100vw, 166px\" \/><\/a>Genre: Science Fiction<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>Publisher: Saga Press<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>Published: 2016<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>Reviewer Rating:\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-244\" src=\"http:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/uploads\/2001\/11\/threestars.gif\" alt=\"three stars\" width=\"36\" height=\"13\" \/><br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>Reviewer: Joshua Palmatier<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Have you read this book?<br \/>\n<span id=\"post-ratings-3505\" class=\"post-ratings\" data-nonce=\"b68c5a9510\">Why not rate it! <img id=\"rating_3505_1\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"1 Star\" title=\"1 Star\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(3505, 1, '1 Star');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/><img id=\"rating_3505_2\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"2 Stars\" title=\"2 Stars\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(3505, 2, '2 Stars');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/><img id=\"rating_3505_3\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"3 Stars\" title=\"3 Stars\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(3505, 3, '3 Stars');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/><img id=\"rating_3505_4\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"4 Stars\" title=\"4 Stars\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(3505, 4, '4 Stars');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/><img id=\"rating_3505_5\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"5 Stars\" title=\"5 Stars\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(3505, 5, '5 Stars');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/> <br \/><span class=\"post-ratings-text\" id=\"ratings_3505_text\"><\/span><\/span><span id=\"post-ratings-3505-loading\" class=\"post-ratings-loading\"><img src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/loading.gif\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" class=\"post-ratings-image\" \/>Loading...<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This is the first book of a series of humorous SF novels. \u00a0Sort of a spoof of serious military SF.<\/p>\n<p>Premise: Roger Wilson Rogers has managed to get out of the military and start up a smuggling career, but unfortunately one of his runs goes horribly wrong and rather than get sent to a labor camp for prisoners, he agrees to rejoin the fleet &#8230; as an officer! But once on the ship, he realizes that things have changed since he was last here.<\/p>\n<p>Droids appear everywhere, along with inspirational posters, not to mention that everyone has been transferred to jobs they aren&#8217;t qualified to do. \u00a0Where&#8217;s the beer hour? Where&#8217;s the shuffleboard? And what&#8217;s all this talk about preparing for war?\u00a0<span style=\"text-indent: 0em;\">Rogers is afraid he&#8217;s bitten off more than he can handle, like, actual work. \u00a0But can he figure out what&#8217;s going on before the enemy fleet attacks?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This was a fun read, although it does take a while to get things set up for the humorous ending. I&#8217;d say about half to two thirds of the book is Rogers exploring the ship, meeting people, and setting up the plot elements that make the last half to a third so much fun. But once the action starts, the book speeds along at a fast clip.<\/p>\n<p>The main character is fun to follow and the side characters are a blast as well. \u00a0A few of the plot elements are too over the top, but it&#8217;s really just a roller-coaster ride throughout.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re into humorous SF with a military slant, definitely check this out.<\/p>\n<p>Joshua Palmatier\/Benjamin Tate<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.joshuapalmatier.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">www.joshuapalmatier.com<br \/>\n<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.benjamintate.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">www.benjamintate.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: Saga Press Published: 2016 Reviewer Rating:\u00a0 Reviewer: Joshua Palmatier Have you read this book? This is the first book of a series of humorous SF novels. \u00a0Sort of a spoof of serious military SF. Premise: Roger Wilson Rogers has managed to get out of the military &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":3521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[588],"tags":[74,1060,822,47,1061],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3505"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3522,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505\/revisions\/3522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}