First of all, I love John Scalzi's books. I love his blog. I love his Twitter account. I love his sense of humor. 
 When I heard his next novel was called "Redshirts" I was extremely excited. The possibilities of the idea combined with his style and sense of humor seemed wonderful. It practically wrote itself in my head. 
 I read the first chapter excerpts and they were exactly what I was expecting. I wanted more and I couldn't wait for the book to come out. 
 I bought it on the release day and, unable to control myself, read it all in one day... 
 And, for the most part, all of the promise was in the premise and the book in my head was about what I got. No real surprises. Not much humor or twists past the first chapters. 
 Spoilers for the rest of this review. 
 (view spoiler)[ 
 Scalzi acknowledges that his story has been done before and even cites the specific movies and stories within the book. The trouble, particularly with the time travel part, was that it had been done before as well. It's kind of a reverse Galaxy Quest. There is also a story in an old Star Trek anthology where the cast of the show gets transported to the real Enterprise (and vice-versa) because of an anomaly that connects our world with the alternate reality where Star Trek is real. It was a fun story and so is this, but there wasn't much to interest me in rehashing it. It wasn't as fun, for example, as his "reboot" of Little Fuzzy. 
 For that matter, the joke is a little old. Even the new Star Trek film made fun of the phenomena during the skydiving scene where the guy in the red suit doesn't make it. 
 The ending of the main book was a bit predictable (although the surprise in the penultimate chapter and the JK made me laugh). 
 The most redeeming feature of the book were the three codas. Seriously. They all made the story have some real meaning beyond the "piss take on Star Trek". They were actually moving and interesting (particularly the last one). 
 What they said to me wasn't "Wouldn't it be funny if stuff in books and TV shows actually happened somewhere?" it was basically instructions to writers, directors, and actors (particularly writers) to give life to all of their characters and to realize they were all important and to examine the ethics of enjoyment of reading and watching things where we cheer on the main characters as dozens (or hundreds or thousands) of "extras" die all around them. Not extremely profound, but interesting. 
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 So, sadly, only three stars (and 1 of them, in all honesty, because of the codas). Maybe I expected too much. Maybe I read it too fast. Maybe when I inevitably re-read it (I'm a big re-reader) I'll think differently. I hope so.