Spaced Out (MBA #2) by Stuart Gibbs

Ok, I'm amazingly shocked that in all my writing of the Crossover, I completely forgot to review this! Here are my thoughts on Stuart Gibb's latest book, Spaced Out.

Summary: So Dashiell can finally talk to Zan, an alien from the planet Bosco (it's not it's real name, but saying the really long list of letters, numbers and characters would be boring), and is trying to explain to her what life on Earth is like (for research of course). Shortly after his encounter with Zan (and a fight with the dreaded Sjobergs), Nina Stack, the commander at Moon Base Alpha, disappears. Naturally, they have to search everywhere but no, Nina Stack was not simply in the bathroom for a couple of hours and no, she's not in her room sleeping. The realization comes around: If she's not in the base, she has to be outside the base. You can only survive so long with a space suit before the oxygen runs out...an you die. OR what if she isn't out there, because someone...killed her?  And through all of this, why are the Sjobergs, instead of yelling at everybody for being so loud, in their room, all day? During the investigation, things start to unravel, which leads to the question, who tried to kill Nina Stack?

What I like:  First off, I'd like to point out that while I normally hate science fiction, this is a Sci-Fi novel I personally adore. It's one of those Science Fiction novels that you could see happening, with stuff we already have today (self-driving cars, smart watches, etc.) A moon base in the future isn't something that far off. I also like all the little plot-twists and the events that make you think you're on the right path to solving it, but in reality Gibbs is just leading you down a completely different path. I really appreciated that there were different cases that needed to be solved. You didn't focus your book thinking where the heck is Nina Stack. You had to think about these other oddities, why they'd happen, and what they meant to the resolution. I just loved the complexity of this book.

What I didn't like:  There were a couple of things I didn't appreciate, but the one major thing I'll talk about is the ending. Ok so I don't know if this gives anything away, but I felt like the ending was like Space Case. While the ending was a surprise, the book really never mentions anything about the ending and there was no incoherent way you could figure out what happened to her. For example, in Space Case, the book mentions Garth Grisan like once. And then he turns out to be the murderer! (By the way, if this is a spoiler for you...then why the heck are you reading a Spaced Out review if you haven't read Space Case! Go read it!) In Spaced Out, the ending is sort of similar to that, but I guess if you decided to pursue this one really random path, you could get it.

Rating on 'the scale': 9.0 out of ten

Why? Most likely it's because of the resolution. I have a huge bone to pick with it. Other than that, I really love this book. The plot, the character development, the really cool shiny cover, I love it a lot. I just don't think it tops other books that I enjoy (SS series, FJ series, other random books) so it gets a solid nine. Which is really good, but not the best.

Related: Space Case & any space books (You can see how much I read Sci-Fi because I know everyone is going to yell at me for not knowing space books but oh well.)