I got this hardcover at a local Savers thrift shop. The summary for this one made me think of Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards!, another book that's an homage to the characters whose purpose in the story is to get killed to show the *important* characters (and the reader) how dangerous the situation is... (It also reminds me of the hilarious Star Trek homage/parody film Galaxy Quest, which features a character who spends a LOT of time fretting about his fate as an obvious redshirt!)

The book's a very entertaining set of riffs on the "redshirt" concept, from the early scenes in which the designated victims meet assorted unpleasant fates - even when it requires the combined foolishness of several otherwise-clever characters to make the deaths possible - to the more advanced part of the story, where the redshirts who've realized what's going on find some surprisingly innovative ways to attempt to change their fates. In between, we get to see how office politics might play out in a world where the senior folk are aware of the redshirt issue, and work out how to hide from any interaction with the main cast so as to avoid becoming redshirts themselves.

I think my favorite character was Lt. Kerensky, the "Chekov" expy whose role was to take loads of damage but NOT to actually die; this trait is used by the redshirt team once they work out how the "Narrative" functions, and it's vastly entertaining, if not always very pleasant for Kerensky...

The whole book is full of fiction tropes, some useful and some ridiculous, including bits where people suddenly remember chunks of back-story that are only relevant for the current situation, and which they never knew before (and may have forgotten by the next major incident, assuming they survive that long). And then there's The Box, the magical diagnostic gizmo that will create cures or decipher illnesses - but only at the very last moment.

The story gets even more meta when the characters discover another spaceship with a similar and oddly unlikely mortality pattern to their own: one "Enterprise"...

Despite the levels of complexity - and reality - involved here, the story does come up with a resolution, or perhaps several depending on how you read the multiple codas. Great fun!

[There's a TV Tropes page on the book, with some entertaining tidbits.]

I left this book on the book-swap shelf in the entrance of the City Hall; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]

*** Released for the 2019 Science Fiction release challenge. ***