{"id":3427,"date":"2026-07-25T18:42:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T02:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3427"},"modified":"2026-07-25T18:42:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T02:42:57","slug":"review-operation-bounce-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3427","title":{"rendered":"Review: Operation Bounce House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a fun book.  I often read SF that&#8217;s speaking to bigger ideas and trying to change minds.  In <em>Bounce House<\/em> Matt Dinniman is telling a ripping yarn first.  For that to work for me, there has to be enough going on thematically that I care about why that yarn is in the realm of SF.  I don&#8217;t mind if that leads to tropes, but I do care why we&#8217;re in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dinniman does a nice job with that.  He wants to talk about gamer culture, imperialism, immigrants, personhood and a bunch of other ideas that fall nicely into SF.  That is a lot to talk about while also setting up a space opera with stakes.  In the end <em>Bounce House<\/em> doesn&#8217;t poke at any of those ideas deeply, but they&#8217;re  creating believable stakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The shallow approach works because he gives us a winning cast of characters in a world that&#8217;s real enough as long as the pace is high.  The pace is high, the stakes are clear, and the whole thing rips along with me in the seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Strongly Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a fun book. I often read SF that&#8217;s speaking to bigger ideas and trying to change minds. In Bounce House Matt Dinniman is telling a ripping yarn first. For that to work for me, there has to be enough going on thematically that I care about why that yarn is in the realm [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3428,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions\/3428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}