What's it about (in a nutshell):
Antimatter Blues is the second book in a series by Edward Ashton centering on Mickey 7, a member of an expedition to colonize a new planet in a future setting of the human race. Mickey's job is as an Expendable, and it is the job of the Expendable to perform the most dangerous tasks the colonists need to do to survive. Unfortunately, this means that Mickey 7 generally does not survive the job. But in the future, science can replicate him with his memories intact so he can do it all over again.

In this sequel, Mickey 7 recently retired from his position as the Expendable of his fledgling colony, a retirement only permitted because of a fabrication Mickey 7 told during the conclusion of book 1. Now, the very survival of the settlement could come down to whether or not he can figure out a way to save the colony or himself.

It will help if you read this book until after reading Mickey 7 since the first book explains so much you need to understand the story.

My Reading Experience:
Mickey is a snarky son of a gun who always finds himself in trouble, most of his own doing. He is very self-aware of his knack for making a mess of his life, and his snappy and sarcastic dialog makes the story enjoyable and fast-paced. Ashton also personifies the aliens in the story to exhibit a similar quirky wit, providing much comic relief. The themes of personal and community survival under harsh circumstances are explored meaningfully but with a bright-side-of-life sensibility.

Characters:
Most of the focus of the story is on Mickey. He is a well-developed character who explains his decision-making thru flashbacks of his past life in his home world. His bad choices continually create situations that result in more bad decisions, and he knows it. The other characters are solid but not as well developed and mainly serve as reflections of the traits that Mickey wishes he possessed.

Narration & Pacing:
The narration is first person and is very brisk. Mickey and his small task force experience exciting, tense, creative, and sometimes humorous adventures.

Setting:
The setting is the far-off planet Niflheim. It is a seemingly bleak and unwelcoming environment for human colonization, but it is the best they have, and they must try to make it work. The story splits between the settlement in the Dome and the unknown lands outside of the Dome, and neither place is a place you would want to go on vacation. Interactions with several alien species make Mickey struggle with his morality and the morality of the human race.

Read if you like:
• Science fiction adventures
• Characters who don't take themselves seriously with a big helping of sarcasm
• Thinking about what it takes for civilizations to survive while retaining individual independence

Mickey7 is back but he has the Antimatter Blues.

Despite being an Expendable, who was previously just painfully regenerated whenever his missions were too much for his frail human body, he has been accepted into the colony on planet Niflheim. However, some of his actions to achieve that status (made in the previous book) are going quickly bad. Mickey7 said the good aliens had guaranteed the safety of the human base as long as he remained alive. Meanwhile, the good aliens had found the antimatter bomb/energy source that Mickey7 had hidden and traded it to the bad aliens, who really want the humans off their planet. Now, Mickey7 only has two, equally bad, choices: get the bomb back to use as energy for the failing human colony (and burn up his get-out-of-regeneration free card) or wait until the bad aliens destroy the base with the bomb. Watch how he somehow weasels his way out of that dilemma in Antimatter Blues, an original and humorous science fiction novel.

I absolutely adored the first book in this series, Mickey7, so I had to read the continuing saga. While Antimatter Blues is not quite up to the first book, it is still a clever take on the alien planet mythology with believable characters. It’s definitely a series that I will look for each year. 4 stars!

One side note, while this book can be read as a standalone, it is much better if you read the series in order because the plots are inextricably linked together.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

This one lost a bit of the magic for me, which is a bummer cause I LOVED Mickey 7.

I still love Mickey as a character (really ALL of the characters, especially Speaker!). I appreciated the idea of throwing this expendable guy into a leadership position. And I appreciated that he was pretty bad at being a leader. But sadly, those elements didn't necessarily add up for a very compelling read.

The actual plot of this story seemed to have enough meat, (i.e. find the bomb, ally with some creepers to infiltrate some different creepers, the two groups of which are at war with each other). These elements should have been enough the sustain full narrative, but the story still felt a little aimless to me personally.

I can't count the number of times the crew was like, "Mickey, what do we do?" and then Mickey admitted he had no idea and they all went, "Well that sucks." The end. In the end the book felt a lot like the negotiations with Speaker, some verrrrry brief action scenes interspersed with a whole lotta contemplating, chatting, and waiting for something to happen.

For me personally, this approach kept the stakes low in this book. While I was genuinely interested in Mickey's survival in the first book, I didn't really worry about him in this one.

If the author did a third, I'd probably still read it, but I hope it'd be a Mickey and Speaker road trip kind of story, cause I'd read the hell out of that!

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the first book, Mickey7, and this was an entertaining and quick extension of Mickey's adventures.

I love Ashton's writing style. It is punchy with great character integration. A little of Enders Game meets Nelson DeMille. There is plenty of tension building storyline and unexpected outcomes to keep you turning pages.

If you are looking for an entertaining escape from daily doldrums, humor mixed with adventure, and something that is nothing like what you've read before, this series is a great one to pickup.

Edward Ashton's Mickey7, the previous book, introduces us to the seventh iteration of Mickey - the Expendable of the colonizing mission. Last book, Mickey was trying desperately to avoid Mickey8 when the Dome thinks the former has died; spoiler - he succeeds. Ashton continues Mickey7's story by taking us through his relationships with Nasha, Berto, and the Creepers, the native sentient population.

I'd almost call this a heist book mixed with Armageddon, the classic Bruce Willis movie. There's a small, tight group heading out on what could be a suicide mission if diplomacy fails. It's a classic "one last job"- the colony is running out of fuel and need the bomb Mickey got rid of in book 1. There's a whole lot of "but wait, there's more" as the job becomes more and more challenging.

It's not just sci-fi or action though. Ashton makes the reader examine what makes us sentient/human and what is the meaning of loyalty.

These would be amazing adapted to film and I'm definitely picking up Ashton's backlist.

A great follow-up to his last book Mickey 7. The story continued from the previous title and used the same characters. The plot was full of action and suspense as the struggles of the colony continued. I enjoyed this book immensely and am anxious to know if he will continue this storyline or not. I hope the author does. A great read.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I am such a huge fan of Mickey's story and the unique environment that he is in. This sequel was everything I could have wanted from a continuing story about our beloved expendable. I hope to have more stories in this world at some point in the future.
I received an advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review via NetGalley and the publisher. Thank you.

A strong continuation of the Mickey 7 story about what happens next on their planet are wraps up the main unresolved thread that was left at the end of the first book.

I am looking forward to more Mickey tales.

Oh sigh. I'd forgotten how much I struggled with Mickey 7 when I requested this. Sci Fi isn't my genre but these two books have the benefit of being genial with a likable protagonist. That said I got lost once again, in the details. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARc. Wasn't for me but I know, just know, that Ashton has a lot of fans who will be pleased.

Antimatter Blues is the excellent sequel to Mickey7. Mickey Barnes is still alive after a risky gambit in the previous book positions him as an invaluable resource to the colony. Two years later when his word is tested, he must scramble to save the colony. The creepers are not quite what they seem and new enemies lurk on the untested planet. Mickey must use his knowledge of failed colonies and every alliance he has in order to save everyone he loves.

Mickey Barnes is the type of character that you can’t look away from and not for the usual reasons. Mickey is not a knight in shining art, not a morally gray hero, at the end of the day he’s someone who wants to come home to his friends and partner. It is so fascinating to watch him navigate through the ethics of being a former Expendable and how he carves out an identity beyond that. Ashton does a frighteningly good job of imagining what an Expendable might be put through, what type of choices a colony commander might need to make, and what cutthroat politics might exist in a dystopian future.

Mickey undergoes a lot of character growth, particularly as he eludes being recycled into energy for his colony. I loved his alliance with the creeper colony (especially Speaker!) and appreciated how far he was willing to go for his friends, family, and crew. Readers will enjoy seeing familiar crew members from Mickey7, new creatures, and more of the planet on which the colony has landed. I really enjoyed Antimatter Blues and would recommend it to anyone who seeks high-stakes action, dystopian adventure, and lovable characters.

Antimatter Blues is available March 14, 2023. Thank you to Edward Ashton, St. Martin’s Press, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on Instagram, Goodreads, Amazon, Storygraph, and Barnes & Noble etc

It's been two years since Mickey managed to talk his way out of being his colony's Expendable by claiming to have left an antimatter bomb in the keeping of a local sentient species with whom he has established diplomatic relations. None of that is true, but it kept the colony commander from chucking him into the matter recycler for being a clone. If the colony is to survive the next winter, though, it needs that antimatter back. Once again, Mickey has to tap dance furiously to stay ahead of the consequences of his poor decision making. Fast-moving and entertaining.

Antimatter Blues: A Mickey7 Novel
by Edward Ashton
St. Martin’s Press (Mar/14/2023)
Mickey Barnes is an expendable. Or he was until he retired at the end of the first novel, Mickey7. Expendables are the guys who do the dull, dirty, and deadly jobs–the ones pretty much guaranteed to kill you–so that the colony can succeed. You get to come back, more or less; the last upload of your predecessor’s memories are dumped into a newly-printed body, and as you might guess by Mickey7’s number, he’s had the pleasure six times already. He’s died from radiation poisoning fixing the hull of the colony ship in flight while facing down tunnel-boring aliens with an antimatter bomb strapped to his back.

Mickey7 doesn’t die for a living anymore, so when he figures out that the colony administrator has been quietly popping out his clones he gets more than a little concerned. When he sees that power reduction measures are even more quietly taken, he get’s more concerned. So when he’s called to the administrator’s office, he expects to be told that he’s going to have to go all Wrath of Khan and enter the reactor. No wonder he’s pleasantly surprised to find out that all he needs to do is to recover the antimatter bomb he said he gave to the creepy underground aliens as part of the deal to save everyone. Since he lied about that it should be easy to find.

What follows is anything but easy, and will take Mickey7 back into the alien labyrinth where he will face as much mortal peril as he did when he was still expendable. But Mikey7’s got skin in the game now. He’s got a woman he loves, friends that have his back, and a life he really wants to live out. The universe may have other plans.

I’d say this is terrific space opera, but technically it’s a planetary romance. Highly recommended for fans of Heinlein, Haldeman, David Gerald and Martha Wells.

Mickey (in his seventh iteration, mind) is back! I want to say so many great things about this book, which I daresay is better than the first, but ugh, I don't want to ruin anything! I'll try though, yeah? So Mickey is... enjoying some down time, if you will, after being the literal cannon fodder for any and all dangerous missions on their new planet. He was the expendable, after all, and they could just grab a new Mickey out of the Easy Bake Oven when their current one was blown up, or thrown down a ravine, or eaten by aliens or whatever. Mickey, Seventh of His Kind, has had enough though. I mean, talk about exhausting work, right? So when we catch back up with him, things are chill. They obviously won't stay chill, or this would be a weird book.

Mickey finds himself thrown back into danger based on some shenanigans he pulled in the first book, which I won't get into for spoilery reasons. But in this installment, the stakes are impossibly even higher, and the fate of pretty much every living thing depends on Mickey being able to live up to his promise of speaking to aliens. Which he did not know whether was possible. I think in this book, we get to know Mickey even better, and his personally is really well developed, making him even more likable to the reader. We also get to know those around him a lot more, making the missions seem that much more important, since we care what happens.

I found this book to be full of action, too. There was a perfect balance between character and relationship development, and the plot/action bits. It is also chock full of thought provoking bits, and morally gray questions, which I adore. It also is infused with great bits of humor, which break up the heavier plot lines brilliantly. Mickey himself grows leaps and bounds during the course of this one, too. And I think it sets itself up fabulously for a third book, which I don't know if it is happening, but it should. It really, really should.

Bottom Line: I need more Mickey, please and thank you. And more of this hostile planet, frankly!

Just as action packed and cerebrally stimulating as book one, Antimatter Blues continues to give us existential rumination, and this time with another side of moral quandary that has nothing to do with ourselves.

So we’ve got xenophobia, existential dread, species-entangled race relations, the nature of friendship, love, Cold War politics, id, ego and protein slurry. It’s a ride.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my free copy. These opinions are my own.

Antimatter Blues (Mickey7 #2)
by Edward Ashton

Mickey7 is back! Actually he was never gone which is extraordinary. The original Mickey had gotten into so much trouble that he signed his life over to be an expendable. It's as if he no longer mattered at all anymore except when horrible, dangerous jobs needed doing. Then Mickey(whatever) would be sent to be blown up, chopped up, sizzled, pick an agonizing death, to fix what needed fixing. Each time a new Mickey is made, he remembers everything the other Mickey's went through. This Mickey expendable situation looks to be the worst idea hapless Mickey ever opted for and he'd opted for some really bad ideas in his original form.

So Mickey7 found a bribe that got him out of the chain of expendable Mickeys and he's lived a nice life for the last two years. He tends to rabbits and does odd jobs and sleeps with his girlfriend every night and some days. He's the only human in the entire colony that doesn't have an important job and that means
Commander Marshall would love to turn him into food bars. He'll hold off if Mickey will go get the thing that he has been holding onto that keeps Commander Marshall from killing him. That thing is the only thing that can keep the colony alive so Mickey7 is inclined to turn it over anyway.

Mickey7 and friends have their work cut out for them though because the thing is not where it was supposed to be. You see, the creepers (not pretty creatures) gave it to some other creatures and now Mickey7 has to figure out how to get it back without getting killed. It's as if Mickey7 doesn't even have to be an expendable to feel like an expendable. His time might be up whether he likes it or not!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC.

Mickey 7 has been enjoying not dying since his adventures in "Mickey 7." He has a nice, boring job cleaning rabbit hutches. Of course, it's too good to last. The colony is running out of fuel, and guess who knows where a big supply is? Poor Mickey.

So, it's off into the wilderness outside the colony to retrieve the antimatter bomb. Unfortunately, it's not where he left it, so Mickey is forced to contact the Creepers to try to get it back. This leads him and some of the other colonists on a hazardous journey across Niflheim, and ultimately forces him to decide between doing what is most expedient for his fellow colonists, and what is right for his conscience. Are the Expendables human, and if not, to whom should their allegiance lie?

This sequel has less internal exploration for Mickey, at least at first. Something I hope is explored in future books is whether Mickey 7 is who Mickey 1 would have been, had he had all the same experiences. This was touched on a bit in the first book, with the differences between the Mickeys.

There's just enough snark, and a whole lot of heart in these books. If you like Andy Weir and John Scalzi, I think you'll like Edward Ashton.

4.25 out of 5 stars.

I received an advance copy from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I enjoyed this as much as the first one, which is to say quite a lot. The plot is engrossing and it's well paced with a good amount of action. Pretty much all the main characters have returned (though when you're colonizing a planet, you've got nowhere to go anyway) and, of course, there's another life threatening issue to deal with. Mickey7 is still a smartass, but he's at least learned a bit since the first encounters with the creepers. And those creepers have learned a thing or too as well. The further interactions between humans and aliens keeps this one interesting.

An eagerly awaited continuation of Mickey7
Antimatter Blues is the continuation of the story of Mickey7, the seventh regeneration of Expendable Mickey, a disposable (but otherwise human) employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. I use the word “continuation” deliberately, because the book does not give a full enough background on the setting or the characters for me to consider it a good choice for someone who has not read the first book, Mickey7. If the description of Antimatter Blues appeals to you, though, I strongly recommend you read Mickey7, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Readers who enjoyed Mickey7 will also almost certainly like Antimatter Blues. The book got off to a slow start but improved as the plot developed, although there were some elements typical of military science fiction that did not really grab me. On the plus side, narrator Mickey, one of the best features of Mickey7, still is front and center. We also learn a good bit more about the natives of Niflheim, the creepers, as Mickey interacts with them in interesting ways.
Where Antimatter Blues really shines, however, is the last section, when Mickey has to struggle with ethical decisions that have consequences not just for humans but also for other intelligent beings and for Mickey himself. I was impressed by how beautifully it was done, and then I got to the most impressive and totally surprising ethical decision of all, and I just said,”Wow!” Many readers felt the ending was perhaps one of the more disappointing elements of Mickey7. I can guarantee you will not feel that way about Antimatter Blues.
I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher.

If you liked Mickey7 you are going to enjoy Antimatter Blues. Mickey returns to save the whole colony …again… eye-roll 🙄 and he isn’t happy about it. While Mickey’s life is no longer ‘Expendable’ he still isn’t well liked, Power problems at the base force Mickey into recovering his only bargaining chip (an antimatter bomb). Nothing is ever easy for Mickey and a simple retrieval mission turns Mickey into a reluctant Diplomat/Negotiator with the planet’s other inhabitants. With the colony’s (and more importantly Nasha’s) survival at stake, the Commander threatening him, and misunderstandings with other species Mickey has his work cutout for him. This is a great quick read and I love Mickey’s realist tendencies and dark attitude, everyone’s gotta die sooner or later.

Please note, I received an ARC copy of this book for review from NetGalley, but that never influences my honest reviews of books or authors.

MIckey 9 is back in an exciting adventure to help recover the antimatter bombs he had hidden (but apparnanetly not too well). He has to reestablish contact with the native species, and finds they're a lot smarter than he thought. The journey to get back what he needs leads him to take his partner out into the planet, and becomes a real action thriller. These are wonderful characters, and the plot potential has now expanded to a much richer story line thatn the simple reincarnation issues Mickey 7 raised. I hope there are some more sequels.