Operation Bounce House: A Review

Operation Bounce House written by Matt Dinniman and published by ACE Books releases today!

Synopsis:

This Science Fiction novel is set on a colony planet and follows Oliver who just wants to continue living his simple farming life. That is, until Earth decides to destroy all civilization on the planet and does so by turning the genocide into a video game for people on Earth. For a fee, you can design your own war machine and be dropped onto the planet to help kill the “terrorists”. Of course, it’s all a facade and they are manipulating what the players see on their screen in real time. Don’t forget the helpful AI who Oliver’s grandfather programmed to help Oliver & his sister with their schooling. The primary topics/themes of the novel are on anti-war, anti-genocide, anti-racism, and anti-AI usage.

My Review:

Overall, I think this was a good novel, and gave it a 3.75/5 rating. That being said, there were a few things that I wish could have been done differently. For starters, the novel jumps right into the action and stays fast pace the entire time. While that worked great for DCC, it did a disservice to this novel as we never got to develop a relationship with the characters. Which is a problem as the entire story is about war & genocide, so there are people that die that we should care about. However, there wasn't a strong enough connection made so it doesn't hit the way it should which means the stakes don't feel as high as they should have been.

The humor between the gamers is pretty on point with how gamers talk and joke, as with Dinniman's books - did you have to worry about the humor being on point? I loved how the people on New Sonora didn't understand what the gamers were talking about as they joked and talked bad to/about Oliver and his friends.

There is a good amount of info dumping in this novel, which I am not the biggest fan of. I like finding out information naturally, like in DCC we have info dumping but it's mainly by the AI or in the tutorial so it's woven into the story. With Operation Bounce House, it's not woven in and it's primarily because of how fast-paced things were moving.

That being said, I really enjoyed the pace of this novel, and it felt like such a fast read - I finished it in 2 days. I also loved getting to learn more about what was happening on Earth and it's culture the more we got into this book. There were some fun and interesting twists throughout the book, which is why I would love more from this Universe. I do think the story itself is wrapped up pretty nicely and it is a true standalone.

In general, this was a fun, fast paced, exciting story about survival and fighting against oppressors while dealing with genocide and racism. I contemplated giving this a 4/5 rating but think, for now, I'm settling on 3.75.

Thank you to ACE books for sending me a complimentary copy to read & review!

#books #scifibooks #OperationBounceHouse #MattDinniman #DungeonCrawlerCarl