Mechanical Failure

3 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum bibliosanctum/2016/06/30/As sci-fi spoofs and humorous novels go, Mechanical Failure was a lot of fun. When I read parts of this book aloud to my husband, he chuckled and said, “Kinda feels like Terry Pratchett in space.” Trust me, coming from him, that’s a great compliment. Personally, I think I would liken this more to something like Spaceballs, which just goes to show what a tricky genre it is. What’s funny and what’s not can be so subjective, and p [...]

A comedy military SF novel with a lazy but competent protagonist returning to a ship gone mad.Sergeant R. Wilson Rogers returns under duress to the Meridan Patrol Fleet, which in his experience had been a quiet lazy post filled with corruption and graft and a very laid-back life style. But now it's all different. There are droids everywhere, everyone is being cross-trained in specialties that they're not suited for and everything has become a model of manic and insane efficiency. There's somethi [...]

3 painfully-funny starsSo much corniness abounds in this book. If you've ever been in the military, you may be able to relate to the exploits of (newly promoted) Ensign Rogers. If not, you'll be shaking your head in amazement that a military force is able to function like this.While it's very similar in vein to sci-fi/humor classics, The Stainless Steel Rat and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the humor becomes quite tedious after a while.

Like many people, my first thought was that it had a bit of a Hitchhiker goes military feel, or whatever humorous sci-fi you want to compare it to. Deet gave a bit of a less depressed Marvin edge to some things, and Rogers had a real Ford Prefect sense to him. But it wasn't as satirical or cleverly silly or as wittily clever, thought that's obviously an impossibly high standard. Zieja tried for the satire, and for the silly, it's certainly picks on at lot of dumb things the military does. But it [...]

(Audiobook) Mechanical Failure is a farce in space. The obvious reference would be “Spaceballs for Military Science Fiction”.Unfortunately it read to me like a young adult novel packed to the brim with groan inducing “Dad jokes” and juvenile humour. This book tries way too hard and attempts to make up for the lack of quality in the joke writing with quantity. It is a bit like listening to a standup comedy special that generates 2 wry smiles in a whole hour of sweaty, earnest performance. [...]

A comedy of incompetence. Does a pretty good job of remaining funny for most of it.

Amiable comic space opera, featuring a military con man who is (almost!) conned himself, but pulls the fat from the fire with the help of a droid with slight damage to its profanity circuits ("I really don't have the processing power to deal with your MALE BOVINE EXCREMENT.") and a pair of dazzling female marines.Many memorable lines, such as:"You see? You see?" Dorsey said, shaking his head. "They're going to take our asses! We're not going to have asses!"The man wasn't just a bureaucrat; it se [...]

Super fun read, if you like your heroes more Flashman than Flash. Poor Rogers can't seem to catch a break, and for damn sure can't seem to find a good card game to practice his cheating skills. Instead, it looks like he's going to have to - gasp! - work for a living. Zieja seems to have graduated from the Douglas Adams School of Writing Humor - if it's not over the top, it's not funny enough. Some of it fell flat for that reason, but overall, I'd say the humor worked more often than not. If John [...]

This was funny enough, but was way too try-hard in attempting to emulate a combination of Douglas Adams & Terry Pratchett with a dash of 'Red Dwarf' - legit, from the moment Deet the malfunctioning droid showed up, I kept having the most vivid 'Red Dwarf' flashbacks that only reminded me a) just how old I am, & b) how long it had been since I watched it. Knowing that Joe Zieja is the voice for those Spotify ads made me read this entire book with his (overly cheerful) voice as the narrati [...]

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.---No duty was too great that R. Wilson Rogers couldn't find a way to shirk it.This is the essence of Wilson Rogers (don't ask what the R. stands for) compressed into one sentence -- an engineer for the Galactic Navy during the longest peacetime in Galactic Memory. As a result of all the peace, there's not a whole lot for a Naval ship to do -- nor for the men assigned to it. So, Rogers and his fellow crew members got up to a lot of nonsense -- [...]

Purchased at my favorite local Indie bookstore, Page 158 Books on White St in Wake Forest, NC, for our Scifi BoTM club.I especially love it when a story demands I read it all in one setting. I started this at 10PM, expecting to fall asleep after a chapter or two and pick it up later. I finished the novel around 5AM the next morning, reading it straight through the night.4+ stars. Starts out as implausible campy satire, and its good at that. Had some full body laughs in every chapter. Entertainme [...]

Not too bad but unfortunately with most modern novels reads like a screenplay. Having read Douglas Adams and being a fan of Red Dwarf this is a poor imitation of these, also visual comedy and slapstick don't work to well in a novel wit the author going for a Police Squad/Naked Gun vibe which is more of a visual medium. The author admits that his serving in the military for 10 years was his inspiration so he would have found this funny just didn't come across a shared experience. Went on for too [...]

This book is a manual of ineptitude, a kind of reversal of the confederacy of dunces. It's Buck Rogers gone rogue with a brain injury and being dropped into Mel Brooks' History of the World. Roger Rogers is an ex-soldier turned smuggler, a perennial sandbagging, underachieving individual always on the lookout for the next quick buck and/or con. A con gone bad ends up with Rogers being reconscripted into military service where he bungles his way to promotion after promotion. This is a farcical sa [...]

(Full disclosure: I copyedited this book. In truth, that means absolutely nothing, because I'm not paid to have opinions about the books I work on. :D )Imagine the Stainless Steel Rat books' Slippery Jim diGriz as written by Terry Pratchett in full Discworld mode but in space. That is what this book is. I'm not exaggerating when I attest that I giggled my way through this copyedit. So [EXPLETIVE] much fun (and no, GR did not censor that word; it's an inside joke from the book, and it's the very [...]

The name of the ship is right. It is Awesome. Even better if you can get the audio to hear alongside the book. This novel is hilarious. It has adventure, androids, space pirates, unrequited love, and an excellent way of cursing without cursing. Need I say more? You have to read this!

Fun and with good moments of hilarity. The story meanders a bit, but comes to a satisfying conclusion

I'd give it eleventy stars if I could, and if the author would supply me with a bottle of Jasker or two

I had a lot of fun reading this book.R. Wilson Rogers is a slacker and a deserter (he ran away from the military with a military spaceship). After inadvertantly causing a smuggling fleet to be destroyed, he's re-enlisted in the military in charge of the newly created droid forces. The military is very different from when Rogers was last in - there's no more beer hour, the food is awful, and people are preparing for a war. The start of the book is basically Rogers blundering around and being unha [...]

This definitely took some "getting in to" but once I had got over the slightly cheesy writing style I ended up really enjoying this book. It's not massively original, the humour is a little cliche BUT honestly it comes together in a really nice way and I started really getting behind the characters later in the book.While the story is a little predictable it takes lots of fun side treks, and a lot of the characters (while silly) are fun in different ways and I think Zieja does a great job of mak [...]

Call Function: OutputEnd-OutputA fellow military member strongly recommend the second book this series. But since I am a bit of a completionist, I had to read the first book before that won. I was a little skeptical because I had never heard of this series before and I really enjoy parody/funny novels (You know.Red Dwarf, Hitchhikers, Living as a Vegan, Microsoft Office Starter Guide, etc.). Impressions: For the first 30 pages or so, I was doubting I was going to actually like it. It took a litt [...]

A very good debut that shows a lot of promise both for this Joe Z and for the rest of this series. I very much recommend the book to anyone interested in the military - both military SF and the real-world military - as well as anyone who enjoys humor.My caveats are few. Sometimes the humor feels forced and the situations a little too preposterous, which impacted by sense of suspended disbelief. This is especially true early on before the driving force of the narrative is revealed, and late in th [...]

Comedic space opera. Not normally my thing, but an extra half point for actually making me care enough about some of the characters despite the type of farcical visual humour that would play better in a visual medium than it does in writing. I prefer my humour dry and witty, and this is a lot more in your face. It might also be telling that I cared more for the robotic sidekick Deet than for the, uh, "hero", but maybe all it tells is that I am a misanthropic prick. ;)The author has apparently ma [...]

If, as Tom Stoppard said, "There is an art to the building up of suspense," it is lost on Zieja. The book has no discernible conflict for the first 150 pages. It doesn't slowly present questions which leave the reader wanting more. It offers heavy handed juvenile humor the reader has to push through. Zieja uses adverbs as frequently as articles, somehow feeling this creates humor: "'Uhhhhhh' Rogers said analytically."The book's only redemption is in the last quarter or so, when the characters wh [...]

Mechanical Failure is a fast-paced space adventure featuring reluctant hero R. Wilson Rogers. The novel opens with Rogers pulling a big con so he can resume his favorite pastimes of drinking and gambling . The con literally blows up, and Rogers is busted. Forced to re-enlist in the military, he’s assigned to a giant space ship, where he is astounded to discover that galactic war threatens to end 200 years of peace. Promoted in spite of his blunders, he unearths a diabolical enemy planning to t [...]

Slow to start but well worth it in the end. R. Wilson Rogers was a sergeant, then a scam artist, then ends up back in the Navy as an ensign. After that things go weird. The flagship, named MPS Flagship, isn't how he remembers her. The Beer light, not making that up, wasn't on after 12 and had in fact been entirely removed from the ship. There was saluting, inspections, and unmotivating motivation posters everywhere. The food was terrible, morale was low, and no-one seemed to be in the job they w [...]

This is the first book of a series of humorous SF novels. Sort of a spoof of serious military SF.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 as an officer! But once on the ship, he realizes that things have changed since he was last here. Droids appear everywhere, along with inspirational posters, not [...]

More 3.5 stars than 3, but here we are.The book is humorous at points, but tries a little too hard in others. Generally, the story works, but part of the problem with any 'zany' type of story is that you never quite know when to take things seriously. This undermines the actual arc of the story, though it doesn't hurt the characters too much.It's a fun read, but you may also find yourself rolling your eyes at points. It's a dangerous tightrope, there types of stories, but the author mostly pulls [...]

Review originally published on Erlebnisse: erlebnisseweb.wordpress/2**I received a copy of Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja from Agent Sam Morgan in exchange for an honest review**ANGELIC FECAL MATTER*, this book was awesome.I first discovered this book was a thing when I saw it being advertised on Twitter by a few agents and writers I follow. I checked out the blurb and knew it was a book that I wanted to read. So when I got the book in the mail from Sam, as part of a care package of books to re [...]

A friend recommended that I buy this book because he knew I'm fond of space opera.At the first reading, it reminded me of Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series and of Red Dwarf. It's a bit of silliness set in the space military.I figured out pretty early on who the bad guy was but I enjoyed getting to that point. I grew especially fond of the barber.I hadn't realized that this was the first book in a trilogy when I bought it. I hope the next two books come out soon.

I think the idea of a space adventure were the tech and administration do not function quite as planned has a lot of potential. This book however, takes the premise in a bit more juvenile direction then I anticipated. There are a few jokes mostly critiquing current military culture and regs, but a lot of the humor is just absurdist and silly. Makes for a decent young adult book I guess.