Did I have that song “That’s Amore” stuck in my head every single time I picked up this book? Yep. I’m a huge fan of John Scalzi and his latest work he begs the question “how would the world react if the moon turned into cheese?”
Here’s more about When the Moon Hits Your Eye
From the New York Times bestselling author of Starter Villain comes an entirely serious take on a distinctly unserious subject: what would really happen if suddenly the moon were replaced by a giant wheel of cheese.
It’s a whole new moooooon.
One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of an entire lunar cycle, from new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, we follow multiple characters — schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians — as they confront the strange new world they live in, and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives.
Find it on Amazon | Find it on Bookshop.org
My thoughts
“I don’t pretend I can explain the moon turning into cheese. I can’t. No one right now can. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t explainable –it just means that, on this particular matter, we are no different than those humans ten thousand years ago looking at an eclipse.” (pg 77, ARC edition)
This was a much different book than I imagined. While I’ve only read two other books by John Scalzi, both of them had a linear story line that moved across the entire book and gave you a satisfying ending. When the Moon Hits Your Eye comes at you with a different approach presenting the argument of a moon made of cheese and then showing the effects of said news on the human populous.
From stories about politicians having sex with a wheel or brie to a young writer trying to get back into writing her book, the stories within the overarching theme of When the Moon Hits Your Eye gives you a small glimpse into how our world would react to this pretty ludicrous premise. I absolutely loved the small vignettes on people’s lives ranging from those directly involved and those indirectly involved. But there was one small detail that was kind of left out: no one explains how the moon got that way.
I think it’s on purpose that John Scalzi doesn’t go into how this phenomenon happened. It probably would have been a different book rivaling the details of Andy Weir’s stories. So perhaps the moon turning into cheese isn’t the big part of the book. Instead, it’s just a plot device to what happens around the big event.
I thought the characters represented in this novel really captured the depth and breadth of human life. Going into politics, religious beliefs, and science are all represented up front since those are probably the places most people’s minds would go, but then there are the smaller, more mundane folks who are touched by this moon thing in one way or another. From discussions with friends about ridiculous billionaires riding their own lunar landing to the hunk of cheese to two competing cheese shops fighting for retail supremacy in close proximity to each other, there’s more than just politics, religion, and science that would be touched by the events in this book.
And yet, it carried with it John Scalzi’s lighthearted writing style, his ability to find humor in any circumstance, and how he’s able to make you care about a bunch of characters in such a small number of pages. It made me happy to read and while I don’t want the moon to turn to cheese any time soon, I welcome a sci-fi story that doesn’t fully bog you down with “end of the world” doom and gloom.
If anything, this book is an examination of human life at the brink of its end. It’s not about telling cohesive story, but to show you that we all react differently when it comes to disaster and with the rising temperatures and ice caps melting in our very real world, you can’t help but to look at this text and wonder if this will be us one day.
Overall, if you’re new to science fiction and you want to check out how an author can create literary (and funny) prose in a given situation, then I highly recommend checking this one out. Thanks to Tor Books for sending me a copy of the book.
Simone and Her Books 
Leave a comment