At the end of Mickey7, the first book of the series, Mickey had hidden an antimatter bomb outside the colony dome and convinced the creepers, the indigenous intelligent species, to leave the colony alone. Returning to the dome, Mickey resigned as the colony's Mission Expendable. Time passed, and Mickey was still alive doing general grunt work on reduced rations. Not a great life but it was life.

Then, one day, he thought he saw himself down a corridor being hurried along to engineering. Every time he was hurried to engineering he ended up dead in various horrible ways. Some quiet investigation turned up that there had been a copy of him decanted--maybe even more than one.

Marshall, the colony commander, called Mickey in for a meeting. An event that usually meant Mickey was in trouble or soon would be. Evidently, the colony was in trouble and they needed the bomb Mickey said he gave to the creepers because now the colony needed it to fuel their reactor or things were going to get real ugly, real soon, as a long, bitterly cold winter approached.

Mickey's prevarications were coming home to roost. He was going to have to retrieve the bomb from the creepers since he was their friend and bring it back home. Simple enough task except that what he'd told the commander at the end of the last novel wasn't exactly what had happened. Now Mickey had to negotiate with an alien species, end a war, save the colony, and most importantly not die.

Antimatter Blues is a fitting and well written sequel to Mickey7. Nearly non-stop action from beginning to end, snappy dialogue, misunderstandings, relationship issues, some philosophic subtext, and a smidgen of romance—how could you go wrong?

This sequel to Mickey 7 feels very much like a sequel, and it's hard to tell how well it would work for readers who haven't read the first in the series. The relationships among the mission members were interesting, and carried the plot for me. While the action trying to retrieve a bomb to fuel the mission's power source were suspenseful and exciting, the different kinds of creepers and their internal conflict became confusing in battle. The dialog among characters was authentically irreverent, and made them all the more believable.

I loved mickey 7 and was so excited to read this one and it did not let me down!! So good! So creative and unlike anything I've read before. I loved all the characters and how much Mickey got developed in this sequel. Edward Ashton is officially on my auto buy list!

Thank you netgalley for the earc in exchange for an honest review.

I was almost scared to read this, because a lot of second books in series fall flat, but this was just as good as Mickey7. Anyone who loves scifi should give this a try. On my list of favorites.

I guess I needed to read the first book in the series to know what was happening in this one. So I really didn't follow and some things were like loose ends to me.

If I have to review this without considering the story, I would say writing style is good.

Ebook received for free through NetGalley

I read the last book so I was able able to jump on in. This time around I couldn’t get into it and then saw the audiobook was available. Switched to that and loved the characters, the novel story idea, the voices, and how the end is opened ended for future stories. Overall a good read.

This series is one of my favorite SciFi series! I enjoy that it's set on another planet and the characters interact with aliens while also being full of humor. This book in particular felt like The Martian with less science thrown in your face. Mickey is still my favorite character from this series, even though he's a bit self-centered and rude. The first book is being made into a movie by the creator of Parasite and I am very excited to see it!

I received an ARC copy of this book via #Netgalley.

I really tried to get into this one but had a hard time getting through it. I think you need to read Mickey7 first before this one.

Loved it. Amazing. It was super fun and really interesting. I love the micky7 series so far. I really think this is going to be a super interesting series. I’m a big fan.

I enjoyed this book even more than the first Mickey7 book. I almost didn't request it, since I enjoyed the first one, but wasn't sure I wanted to read another series. Boy, am I glad I did. The same great characters, and an even better story with pacing so good I didn't want to put the book down. Hopefully there will be more Mickey7 books.

This was good but not for me. I liked the story. The characters were ok. I thought this would be something different than my usual read and it was but I don't think I'll read it again.

- I absolutely loved Mickey 7 (the first book in this series)! This book continues the saga of Mickey and his friends on Niflheim and I am all for it!

- The thing that I love the most about this book is the snark! The story and the characters are full of sarcasm, camaraderie, cynicism, wit, and dare I say… care and love? These characters do care about each other, whether they show it outwardly or not, and I loved the interaction between everyone.

- The continued character development for Mickey was fantastic.

- This book contains a lot more interaction with the native lifeforms on Niflheim, particularly one they called The Speaker. The Speaker was a fantastic character to add to the Mickey 7 cast!

- This book does take place after the events of the first book, so I’d personally recommend reading them in order for the full experience.

- The story is fast-paced and fun. The world-building is amazing! The action is realistic. The dialogue is witty and relatable. I’m really loving this series – and I’m not a huge fan of sci-fi! Seriously though… you really should read both books in this series! They are so entertaining!

Thank you @NetGalley and @StMartinsPress for an eARC and a physical ARC of this book, which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

The sci-fi novel Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton is a follow-up to the first book in the series, Mickey7. If you haven’t read Mickey7, I highly suggest you read that one first to get to know the human characters.

I enjoyed this book, especially how it expanded to tell the story of the other sentient beings on the planet. Just like in real life, along with the seriousness of the challenges at hand, the characters still have a sense of humor.

I am a library associate and received an advanced copy from #NetGalley.

I read this book not knowing that it was the second book in a series, and in my opinion, it can be read as a standalone. (Although I intend to read the first book as soon as possible as I love a good marooned-on-an (almost) barren-planet book.)

Mickey Barnes is the main character. He is the 7th Mickey, as he has died six times already, and a new physical copy of him fished out of the tank, complete with all of his memories from the previous Mickey's last upload.

Mickey is a hoot. He has a steady girlfriend in the colony and has been working as a farmer, tending to the rabbits which are part of their food supply. Not everyone gets the same food, fyi. It depends on their pay which depends on their status/job in the colony. So Mickey may eat crickets and sweet potatoes, or a leg of rabbit and sweet potatoes. Algae is also on the menu.

One day the leader calls Mickey into his office. The colony is in jeopardy and he needs Mickey and a select group of volunteers to go retrieve an object that Mickey had hidden in the desert.

What follows is an exciting story with a lot of twists and turns. The closest author whose work I could compare this to is Robert Heinlein. I received a review copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher St. Martin's Press, and voluntarily read and reviewed it.

This is the second book in a series and I recommend that you read Mickey7 first. This story is told in first person by Mickey and picks up 2 years after the events of Mickey7. Eventually, his decisions would come back to haunt him. Now Mickey has to retrieve the bomb he left behind and not get killed, yet again, in the process.

I really enjoyed visiting Mickey’s world again. He has an acerbic wit that amuses me. Mickey stumbles into and out of trouble in the most clumsy and luckiest ways possible. He has an end goal but no plan, yet he muddles through it all once again. I spent most of the book laughing. His merry gang of friends/foes are standing by to either help, hinder or provide unnecessary commentary.

Recommended to Sci-Fi lovers looking for something fun and light-hearted.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a copy provided for an honest review.

Mickey7 introduced an Expendable on the Niflheim ice world colony. He died there 6 times, and was revived by technology that regenerates a human body after death, recovering memories saved at regular intervals.

The colony depends on antimatter (now running very low) for its survival. Its leader, Commander Marshall, demands that Mickey retrieve an antimatter bomb from nearby aliens, who turn out to be in conflict with another alien group.

There's plenty of anguish and action before it's all over, and the ending begs the question of whether we'll see more of Mickey in a future episode. I sure hope so.

Published by St. Martin's Press on March 14, 2023

Antimatter Blues is a sequel to Mickey7. We learned in the first novel that a colony of humans is struggling to survive on a world that is inhabited by large worm-like creatures they refer to as creepers. In Antimatter Blues, the humans discover that the worms have relatives living a hundred kilometers to the south. The relatives resemble spiders, but that’s a product of design, as the worms and spiders are ancillaries that serve a leader. Both the worms and the spiders have trouble believing that the humans are not also ancillaries, much less that they traveled from another star.

Mickey7 is the seventh iteration of Mickey’s body. He joined the colony as an expendable, the guy who performs dangerous jobs that might end in death. Mickey7 died six times, each time uploading his memories before the mission so that his body could be dissolved and printed anew. Is each new Mickey a continuation of the original or a different person entirely? It seems like every recent sf novel I’ve read uses the Ship of Theseus as a metaphor, but it doesn’t work well here. New Mickeys are more like a new ship with the same captain (kind of like Kirk taking command of a new Enterprise every time he destroys the old one).

At the end of the last novel, Mickey made an agreement that he would no longer be an expendable. He enforced the agreement by making the false claim that the creepers had seized one of the colony’s nuclear bombs. Mickey also claimed that he was in communication with the creepers, an exaggeration that kept him alive. Now, thanks to a mishap, the colony needs the bomb and its fuel or it won’t survive the upcoming winter. Mickey is tasked with finding it. That should be an easy task except the bomb is no longer under the rock pile where he hid it.

To recover the bomb, Mickey must alternately enter into alliances with the worms and the spiders. Humans aren’t always good at alliances (even with other humans), as the worms and spiders both discover. The novel delivers entertaining action scenes as humans, who have superior technology but much smaller numbers, find themselves fighting with or against worms and spiders. Yes, there is a shout-out to the Spartans at Thermopylae, although the Spartans didn’t have the benefit of superior arrows.

The story is amusing, as Edward Ashton intends it to be. The action is fun. Mickey is a likeable character, as are his friends Berto and Cat and Mickey’s girlfriend Nasha. Each character has a distinct personality with all the depth they require for a story of this nature. The colony’s leader is a jerk, playing the role of a foil who contrasts with the decency of the likeable characters, but even jerks can be redeemed, at least in fiction. The novel’s modest attempts at poignancy are modestly successful.

Antimatter Blues works because it doesn’t overreach. It’s meant to be a comedic science fiction action story and, on that level, it reaches its goal. I would suggest reading Mickey7 before reading Antimatter Blues, but Ashton provides sufficient background to fill in readers who don’t want to bother with the first one.

RECOMMENDED

Much in the same vein as the first book in the series, it struggles with plot and finding any likeable characters.

Did we strictly -need- a sequel to Mickey 7? Perhaps not. Am I damn glad that we got one? Yes. Absolutely. I greatly enjoyed returning to Niflheim and found the second journey just as enjoyable as the first. Wry humor with a good heart in space is a win for me.

As with many things this year, I did not read the first book in the series...but as with so many other books, I did not feel at all lost or confused. 'Antimatter Blues' is a fun sci-fi adventure sequel to Mickey7 and, despite being out of order, I will be picking up the first novel based on how much I enjoyed this one!

Light, funny, and well-written, 'Antimatter Blues' perfectly blends humor and science fiction, a genre that is notorious (in my opinion) for tech-heavy exposition and high stakes- sure the stakes are high in Ashton's novel, how could they not be?, but the writing remains human and easy to digest throughout. At no point did I feel overwhelmed, or lost, or frustrated with tech jargon. The characters are likeable, the dialogue feels real, and I had a fantastic time.

I highly recommend 'Antimatter Blues', and have no doubts that Ashton's first novel is worth a read as well.

And as always, huge thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of 'Antimatter Blues'!