** spoiler alert ** 
 Right at the end, this book hit me right in the feelings place. Excuse me I need a minute. 
 Anyway, as you can funnily enough tell from the rating I really enjoyed this book. The writing was a little dialogue heavy in places but I think that's a stylistic choice in this instance, considering it's about a group of people who discover they're on a sci-fi tv series. One of the great things though, was that because they were supposed to be on a BAD sci-fi tv show, whenever they were supposed to be "on screen" the dialogue became, shall we say, significant lesser in terms of quality. Stylistic choices like this is what really makes this book, in my opinion. It gets a little loose near the end of the main story, but this was always going to be a hard book to wrap up. 
 It's all very meta in a very self-conscious way, not in that it's uncomfortable with it (it isn't) but in that it's very aware of itself. It's a story about stories, about people who KNOW they're in stories. It isn't trying to make broad statements about the nature of stories or anything (though I think it IS trying to make a point about Bad Writing). It was a little flat, which was about how dialogue heavy it was, but again I think that was purposeful. They were characters on a bad sci-fi show.* Of COURSE they were flat. However, this is my first Scalzi book, so I can't say that for sure. I will be reading some of his others though, (bought one on kindle before I was even done, you're welcome Mr. Scalzi) so I guess I'll find out. 
 I grew up watching Star Trek and Star Wars though and those tie-in novels that get a brief mention? I've read some of those. (They are, by and large, terrible.) So this sort of thing is right up my alley. Take that statement as you will. 
 *They would also be flat on a bad drama, sitcom, procedural. Not just a bad sci-fi show! I love sci-fi, so just want to make this clear.