Review of Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman
- The Bossy Bookworm
- Jun 10
- 2 min read
Operation Bounce House is a fast-paced, bizarro, humor-filled science fiction novel featuring robots, AI, videogames, creativity, plenty of trash-talking, and a scrappy fight for a planet.
Colonist Oliver is a rancher working alongside his sister, playing in a mediocre band called The Rhythm Mafia with his best friend, and courting his serious girlfriend. Communication and travel between Earth and his planet, New Sonora, should soon be established again, and Oliver and friends welcome the advancement.
But surprise invaders bring mayhem, danger, and potential destruction for the community and possibly the whole planet. Their intelligent agriculture robots turn out to be capable of much more than Oliver and his friends realized; the "honeybees" prove essential to understanding the battles and the planet's corporate enemies.
Ultimately the "game" at hand is revealed; Operation Bounce House is a VR wargame in which humans on Earth purchase war machines that appear on New Sonora through the newly opened portal and are remotely controlled. But the players are actually fighting humans on Oliver's planet, and New Sonoran citizens are being wiped out by armored, powerful robots.
The agricultural robots, led by Roger, protect the humans as best they can, while Oliver and friends must be creative, stick together, outsmart the greedy masterminds of New Sonora's destruction, and never lose sight of their own humanity as they battle those who treat them as expendable targets who exist (and die) for VR game entertainment. The power of their trash-talking and of their sleuthed details of Earth players' weaknesses was particularly funny and satisfying.
In the initial scenes I felt unmoored by the robotic honeybees and the voice of Oliver's family robot Roger, but I'm glad I read on. I was ultimately surprised by the depth of the book, in which Roger is far more than he seemed pre-crisis and in which Oliver and his ragtag gang continually adapt, never give up, and come into their own. I laughed out loud at times, I mourned the good guys' losses, and I was entertained throughout.
I listened to an audiobook version of this title courtesy of Libro.fm and Penguin Random House Audio.
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Matt Dinniman is also the author of the eight-book Dungeon Crawler Carl series, the Dominion of Blades series, and The Shivered Sky series.
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