The Extra: A novel

Extra Trilogy #1

by Michael Shea

Books and films have skewered Hollywood's excesses, but none has ever portrayed one man's crazy vision of the future of big action/adventure films as Michael Shea's The Extra does. As over-the-top as Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles , as savagely dark as Robert Altman's The Player , and more violent than Rollerball , this is the story of the ultimate, so-insane-it-could-only-happen-in-Hollywood formula for success, a brave new way to bring the ultimate in excitement to the silver screen. Producer Val Margolian has found the motherlode of box-office gold with his new "live-death" films whose villains are extremely sophisticated, electronically controlled mechanical monsters. To give these live-action disaster films greater realism, he employs huge casts of extras, in addition to the stars. The large number of extras is important, because very few of them will survive the shoot.

It's all perfectly legal, with training for the extras and long, detailed contracts indemnifying the film company against liability for the extras' injury or death. But why would anyone be crazy enough to risk his or her life to be an extra in such a potentially deadly situation?

The extras do it because if they survive they'll be paid handsomely, and they can make even more if they destroy any of the animatronic monsters trying to stomp, chew, fry, or otherwise kill them. If they earn enough, they can move out of the Zoo--the vast slum that most of L.A. has become. They're fighting for a chance at a reasonable life. But first, they have to survive . . .

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Horror, Satire

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 2010

About the author

For the British author of thrillers and non-fiction see Michael Shea

Michael Shea (1946-2014) was an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction author who lived in California. He was a multiple winner of the World Fantasy Award and his works include Nifft the Lean (1982) (winner of the World Fantasy Award) and The Mines of Behemoth (1997) (later republished together as The Incomplete Nifft, 2000), as well as The ARak (2000) and In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985).

Reviews

[Paul Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shea rules. It's no more complicated than that. Horrific satire that now reads like prophecy. Couldn't put it down. On the hunt for the sequel.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rip-roaring sort-of-dystopian near-future sci-fi that 1) made sense and 2) was a great story. Shea is a screenwriter as well as a sci-fi writer, and you can see that in his meticulously blocked action. It's a lot like Hunger Games for an older audience - in it, reality shows have morphed into "live action" movies, in which human extras battle animatronic monsters to the death in city-size sets that are designed something like video game environments, with caches of weapons and safe hiding places, but also with dummy weapons and hidden portals for monsters to enter.

An older teen might go for this entirely, and, while there's plenty of cusswords, there's no graphic sex, and most of the violence is monster vs. human, not human-on-human.

[Lizz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t write reviews.

This was quite different to the Shea I’ve previously read. The Extra is light dystopia (yeah, I know, but it is), with a complete set of fleshed-out characters, including decent protagonists. The story could’ve been a movie in the 80’s or an episode of The Outer Limits. It was light, like that.

I started the sequel and it’s borderline okay; I’ll pick it up again some other time. The Extra was supposed to be a trilogy, but only two were written. No tears shed over the missing third.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

An expansion of his short story of the same name, THE EXTRA kicks off another 'trilogy', which should make some dollar for Shea - although Lovecraftian themed work is notable, it probably doesn't pay as much as a series.

THE EXTRA isn't bad, but it's really not an improvement over the short story. Fortunately, the basic conceit is so good, it makes for a quick read. But this isn't memorable Shea, sad to say.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I heard of Shea on the podcast, Supercontext, where the hosts effectively sold him as a hidden gem of genre fiction. That may be true for his more horrific works like The Autopsy (The Autopsy and Other Tales), but that's not what The Extra is. It falls firmly in the well-worn tracks of other "death of the proletariat as entertainment" fiction, without bringing much new to the table.

The Extra is a near-ish future science fiction dystopian novel where action movies have come to include essentially blood sport. Advanced AI monsters are developed for each new movie, and the carnage that surrounds the primary story is made up of thousands of extras who volunteer to try to survive actual death for the length of the movie for the chance of a sweet payout.

It's a fast-moving and fun novel, but there's not much of the sense of wonder that brings me to sci-fi. There's also no clear protagonist (just a single POV character whose sections are told in 1st, rather than 3rd, person), which makes the singular title a bit strange. With that said, there are a few sections from the perspective of the creative genius behind the "live action" genre, which presents an interesting sociopathic view of art.

It was a reasonably fun read, and I may seek out a few of his horror tales, but I won't be continuing this series or breaking my back to track his work down.

[Carl Barlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a few extrapolations of short stories into novels that didn't work - the padding was visible a mile off, punches were pulled at greater length, that sort of thing. Shea's The Extra -and thankfully- is one that does work.

This is a near-future action fest set in a Hollywood taken to extremes (I know, that's saying a lot). Morality goes out of the window, and real-death on a terrible scale is all the public wants to see: so, offer the poor by their thousands cash to put their lives on the line for the camera as they battle against giant robotic spiders programmed to hunt and devour.

Action is the focus here, certainly, but -this being Shea- the word-building is also noteworthy, as is his obvious love of his characters (common throughout Shea's oeuvre) . A retro eighties feel to proceedings only adds to the goodness (the short story all this is rooted in was an eighties effort, contained in the superb Polyphemus collection).

If you're after a quick, breathless, and above all thoroughly entertaining read, you can't go far wrong with The Extra (the first of a trilogy, and some of the last fiction Shea published before his very untimely death).

[Tom Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read the short story, The Extra, in Shea's collection Polyphemus. It presents A Clockwork Orange American-style -- a near future world that's radically impoverished and the quickest way out is to perform as a film extra. The catch being that Hollywood spectacles now rely on filming the actual, gory deaths of as many people as possible. Micheal Bay movies but where and when you see spectacular carnage, it's for real.

This book expands that story and presents an ensemble of characters, from tough street youths gambling their lives for a comfortable future, to the egomaniacal director who can't help himself (much to his detriment). It was a blisteringly fast read, highly kinetic, and a lot of fun. Shea's usual painterly, rich style of prose was made lean, resulting in a different kind of reading experience from him, but just as visual and grotesque as his other works.

Apparently, this was the first book in what would was planned as a trilogy, but from what little I could find out about it, the third book was never written.

[Sam Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

                 

                 Okay, the rundown is as follows: This is a book that moves. It's not a slow book, or a book that gives much time to settle down and take a breather, it just shouts "go" and runs off without you, hoping you catch up. It's a book written like an action movie, and it delivers on that premise. If anything's too illogical or silly, all one has to do is go "It's just a show, I should really just relax." and enjoy the ride as is. The characters are colorful, the dialogue is good, but where the book really shines are the cinematic action sequences that run throughout, from running down a skyscraper in the opening sentences to the tense fight through the corridors of an office building at the end. 



                  The problems set in when the whole world feels way too safe. Safety is a good thing sometimes (see last' week's review), but the issue I have with the book is that I never thought the characters were in any danger. It's the kind of action that you never feel hits the point where the heroes are ever out of options, in fact, they handle themselves amazingly well. The book's biggest sin is that it feels cozy and predictable, and by feeling cozy and predictable, it does itself a disservice. You should never completely feel the heroes are out of danger, just that whatever it is, they will eventually overcome it. Also, I am worried as this is supposedly the first book of a trilogy, yet it came out three years ago and is pretty much wrapped up in a single volume. There are also some character arcs I question, but more, as always (with spoilers) below. 

                          Hey, Players! Ready to earn those big clacks?

- The Announcer

               I found this one through a very familiar way. It was on the shelves of Montclair Books way back when, and happened upon it in the "new books" section. I didn't have enough money, so I left it right there where I found it. It did intrigue me, though, so I spent the next two years trying to get it out of the library, only to find that there were no libraries nearby that had it. I'd been burnt on "future game" books before, after all (lookin' at you, The Hunger Games...though that's another review entirely), and so I wasn't too jazzed on the genre. But something about the praise quotes from the kings of B-movies, as well as the endorsement from my personal entry for king of geeks, Patton Oswalt, gnawed at me a little. Then when the book became so hard to find, well, anywhere, instantly my curiosity was piqued all the more. So I went looking for it.

              But every time I found it, I either didn't have enough money, or there were other things I wanted to get. So for a while, it drifted around. Finally, I looked through my current public library on a whim...and it was sitting there on the shelf, Astonished, I picked it up with an armload of other books, and got to reading it the very moment I finished NOS4A2. And it is...really something.



              The Extra starts with Curtis, the lead narrator, talking about how he and his friend Japh got into the movie business sometime in the mid-future. The story begins with them pushing a book cart through the large multi-story apartment building they live in, a sprawling urban area known as the 'Rise. Curtis and his big friend Japh run a book cart for themselves. They sell books from the massive urban slum known as The Zoo in the 'Rises, and make a meager living that way to pay for the rent and an apartment for Curtis's relative, a place which Curtis calls "The Windows". One day, after a mix-up leaves several gangers seriously injured and possibly one person dead, Curtis and Japh decide to go out to the Zoo to find books, where they meet Jool. After saving Jool from being harassed by some Zoo punks, they wind up causing her even more trouble, and the three of them decide to avoid the heat (and make the money to survive since their business is trashed) by signing on as Extras in the new film by Val Margolian.



               And then things get weird.

          

                Being Extras means that you get paid a quarter of a million dollars in cash, tax-free. But there's a catch. See, in the future, extras are live-action people in live-action monster movies. The APPs (Anti-Personnel Properties) are big robot monsters programmed to kill the Extras. To get the 250,000 dollars in cash, all you have to do is survive to the end of the shoot. Somewhere in the range of eight to twelve hours against homicidal monsters programmed to kill you in gruesome ways, and you get a quarter of a mil to walk out. But there are bonuses, too. For every APP you kill or help kill, you get an extra 175,000 dollars bounty, dropped right there for you by an operator in a floating skiff. 



                   On this particular shoot, they have their nastiest APPs yet-- gigantic poisonous spiders (Spoilers be damned, it's right on the cover there). But on this same shoot, the skiff operators have finally gotten fed up with watching people die. The Director is on to them and wants to film himself there in the action stopping the operators, as he's insane and doing this for motives even he doesn't fully understand. And his equally-insane assistant wants his throne. Jool, Japh, and Curtis; along with Curtis's friend Cap and a demoted assistant director-turned-skiff operator named Kate have to navigate a city literally built to kill them and flooding every second with more of the gruesome robot spiders. But with luck and a full-on uprising on the hands of the higher-ups, they just may be able to turn this around...



                    Okay, the action in this book is amazing. Every set piece is tightly written, the stakes are put right up front with a series of dogs getting poisoned and turned into husks by the spiders, and the last half of the book is a no-holds-barred tumble to the final chapters and the end of the shoot. Shea knows how to frame his action sequences, and it really shows: His characters fight well, and while there's not much of a sense of danger, there's a sense that they're actually fighting for their lives, or at least doing a good job of faking it through the storyline. In particular, the opening fights against the spiders (before they get their weapons and a good position on the set) are breathless and I really rooted for them to succeed. I could see the action the way he plotted it out and described it, and it really worked. It's cinematic, which fits the theme of the book. And if it had my attention for every improvised spear-thrust, every tense gunfight, every moment where the spiders suddenly erupted and people went scrambling for weapons. It's a book with a lot of power and a lot of moving parts, and it handles them all really, really well.



                  The characters are also really well-developed. They have motivations outside simply doing what they do, and eventually, it really shows. In particular, the main factions and the major players are all introduced very early on and in fairly short order, leading to a familiarity with the people involved as they go about their various plots. The dialogue also serves...it's natural, it fits all the characters well, and it sounds like the kind of things one would hear in an action movie. Especially Cap's dialogue, which sounds like it's coming out of Samuel L. Jackson, with only half the uses of the word "motherfucker". 



                  Finally, the plotting is also tight. By framing the novel from several different points of view, Shea manages to explain how the lucky breaks his characters have are all logical (to a degree) within the story-- the operators have a method of thinning the killer robots, so the director goes down to investigate, and the assistant immediately floods the streets with the reserve robots so that he can up the chances of killing and make a nice demo reel. Knowing the cause-effect chain actually helps to mitigate some of the more illogical decisions that are made. And by the end, there are logical causes. For most things.



                   But when there aren't is when the book loses me. There are a lot of lucky coincidences, and there's an issue with that. Especially since while in a movie, the logic would be easily hand-waved as not seeing all the action on-screen, but in a book, the author can actually sketch out the various motivations. Shea plots very tightly, but he falls short when he leaves some things completely up to chance, and some characters survive through illogical coincidences that aren't plotted out. 



                    Also, the book is very safe. The characters never feel like they're in any danger whatsoever, and in the end, everything works out more or less all right. Well-- one guy loses his hand, but other than that, of all the named characters you meet? There are maybe two casualties. The last thing anyone should think of a dystopia is "That sounds cool, I'd like to live there", but with Shea making Margolian's death set feel more or less safe as long as you're a main character, that's exactly what happens. I know somewhere in the back of my head that I'd get killed, but it plays out like an adventure film. Even the people I thought would act a certain way acted in the much safer one. 



                   But in the end, the book is an adventure film. As much as any book could be one. It's enjoyable, and I'd definitely suggest it, especially since this month marks the start of the summer season, and it's a good, quick summer read. Also, since the second book in the trilogy comes out this August, a book titled Assault on Sunrise, it's not like you have long to wait for more adventures from the Extras. So pick this up. Inter-library loan it, buy it used...I don't suggest buying it new or on ebook (mainly because Ebook is a terrible format), but definitely give this one a look.





NEXT WEEK:

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami



and then:



Go Mutants! by Larry Doyle

People of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Coverage of AnimeNEXT



and More.

[Heather Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Extra” is WILD! A Hollywood producer makes “live-death” films-using extremely advanced electronically controlled mechanical monsters as villains, a few stars and TONS of live extras who are there to die live on film-preferably as graphically as possible. Very few of them actually survive the shoot so why do they do it? Because Los Angeles has become a giant crime and poverty filled slum called the Zoo. The extras are paid a large amount with extra bonuses for killing any of the monsters trying to kill them. If they earn enough, they can move themselves and their families out of the Zoo…..assuming they can survive! So much fun! The story follows a few of the extras and some of the film production staff as the extras battle for their lives and the staff decide where they stand morally. Great satire of the whole Hollywood film system! Super entertaining read!

[Stormcrow Hayes · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was absolutely terrible. I would like to write a longer review explaining why, but after just finishing the book, I feel as though I've already wasted too much time on it already. My biggest gripe was the unnecessary switch from first to third person for no reason. Not that there aren't much bigger problems, but this one bothered me because it felt so pretentious and pointless in a book about people fighting giant mechanical spiders.

[David Bruner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patton Oswalt made me read this.

This book was a fast-paced, violent story taking place in a distopian Los Angeles.

I had a great time reading this one.

The director reminds me of what I imagine James Cameron is like though.

[Marmie7 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one took awhile to get going, but once it did it was wild! Full of action, gore, and humor, an overall fun ride. Likeable characters add to the storyline. Other than dragging out the beginning, a good story.

[Walt O'Hara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review based upon the Blackstone Audio version of THE EXTRA by Michael Shea, narrated by William Hughes.

Reading (or listening to) a Michael Shea novel is a rare treat for me, because Michael Shea doesn’t exactly crank novels out like a factory. So when they do appear I snap ‘em up promptly without much further ado. THE EXTRA caught me by surprise.. I was browsing the audio book section of the U.S. Army’s online library (no kidding!) and there it was, so bang, zip, it was downloading to my Ipad 2.

To say Mr. Shea is “variable” in his style is not entirely accurate, but in the past, he has written in a sort of old pulp pastiche style not unlike a Weird Tales writer from the 50s– almost baroque with his language, florid and very descriptive– my favorite example of this is the outstanding NIFFT THE LEAN series, which I recommend highly. NIFFT is a sort of dark hero/rogue in a humorous, Fritz Leiber vein. There is also THE QUEST FOR SIMBALIS, which is set in Jack Vance‘s DYING EARTH world, and THE COLOUR OUT OF TIME, which is a not-very-subtle homage to Lovecraft. Even with all this hopping about between genre homages, I find Shea’s literary style both instantly recognizable and a joy to read. Shea loves language, that much is obvious, and if he can add in a twelve letter adjective where a five letter one will do, he certainly will do it. This can make his writing a little dense for the newcomer expecting a slam bang adventure novel. Like a good Gene Wolfe or Tim Powers story, Michael Shea’s fiction must be consumed by the sip, not the gulp, like good Tennessee bourbon. You will appreciate them all the more for putting in the effort.

THE EXTRA (2010), wellllll, it pretty much turns everything I just said about Michael Shea on its ear. Gone are the long and thoughtful baroque dialogues, adjectives and pithy asides. Gone is the murky fantasy setting. Gone is the insidious lurking evil… replaced by a modern dystopian setting in a future Los Angeles, where Live Television events have become a billion dollar killing art form, hiring thousands of extras who risk their necks (and many are deliberately slaughtered) in hopes of earning a big cash reward for surviving the movie shoots that employ them. In this future, movie extra work will most probably get you killed, but if by some chance you make it, you will earn enough money to escape the grinding pressures of poverty in future Los Angeles.

Perhaps THE EXTRA was written as a tongue in cheek observation on our societal addiction to increasingly violent forms of entertainment mixed in with Reality Television. It’s hard to say, but the setting was close enough to our own here and now to make a casual reader wonder just how far from reality this story gets. I’ve never been very optimistic about the public taste..

The story is told with multiple points of view: Curtis, a “Riser” who is essentially the lowest rung of the middle class, living in high rise urban arcologies called Risers. Maggie, who is from the lower rent “Zoo” district, poverty ridden and determined to make something of herself for her family’s sake, Kate, an Assistant Director disgraced to a position of “paymaster” on one of the rafts that rewards extras for making Kills against the robotic beasts used in every movie as killers– and Val Margolian, the Supreme architect and director of the movie being shot during the story.

This is a new Michael Shea. No leisurely storytelling pace, no arcane forces at work, just a fast-paced, well written story about Dystopia and what a small group of people had to endure to escape it.

My verdict is easy.. I loved this novel. EXTRA shows great imagination and decent worldbuilding. It will hold up to repeat readings. The Audio Version by Blackstone is quite good. William Hughes does a great job with dialect and voices. A good listen!

[Stefan · Rating 1 out of 5]

In The Extra, a near-future science fiction novel set in a dystopian version of Los Angeles, Val Margolian is the creator and most successful director of a new genre of action movies, in which crowds of real people are cast as extras and have to defend themselves against movie monsters. The action is real, and so are the deaths. Whoever manages to kill one of the monsters, and anyone who survives the shoot, gets a huge cash reward. Naturally, with rampant poverty in LA, the expression "cattle call" takes on a whole new meaning, with thousands of people applying to become cannon fodder for this new blood-thirsty form of entertainment, and only a small percentage surviving with enough cash to move out of the urban jungle and on to a better life.

The Extra combines elements of The Running Man and The Truman Show, switching from the ground floor perspective of some of the extras, who use inventive ways to try and stay alive, to the director and some of his minions who look out over the entire spectacle.

Even though the novel moves at a fast pace, I found it hard to maintain interest in the story, mainly because most of the characters are flat and barely rise above the cliché level. The extras are predictably plucky, inventive, and gutsy, but unfortunately most of them speak in a street slang that started to grate on my nerves right from the start because I found it entirely unconvincing. The studio employees are a slightly more varied lot — one of them siding with the extras, and another one having an epiphany about the cruel nature of the business when she is bumped down from her lofty position of assistant director to get a closer look at the real action. Unfortunately, this interesting character is then balanced out by her colleague and lover who is a stereotypical rich, spoiled villain, and a couple of the movie's stars who, in a bout of generosity, take it on themselves to distribute additional money to the extras.

I should mention here that the extras actually receive their cash bonuses during the shoot from paymasters who literally toss bags of money from the sky to the lucky few who managed to kill a movie monster. I realize that this was necessary to generate some interesting action scenes for the novel, and possibly meant to be a painfully literal metaphor for trickle-down economics, but it's such a preposterous and unrealistic idea that I had real trouble taking the novel seriously after I encountered it.

At just under 300 pages, The Extra is thankfully a fast read, filled with battles, action scenes and snappy dialogue. It seems almost tailor-made to be turned into a movie, and as a matter of act, if your taste runs to action movies, The Extra may be right up your alley: it's just as entertaining as a Michael Bay movie, and has about the same literary value.

(This review was also published at the Fantasy Literature website - where, yes, we also review SF novels by fantasy authors! www.fantasyliterature.com - come check us out!)

[Winterking · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had so much fun reading this book. I instantly grabbed the next and began reading that the moment I finished.
This story is not without flaws. For me, they were the kind of dystopian setup of Los Angeles, California and the language used. I personally would have preferred if the setting where similar to how things are structured now, but with futuristic amenities added in to establish it is the future. Why? Because I can actually see something like this taking place in our future, where people are killed for entertainment.
The story follows four people who decide to become extras for a “Live Action or Live Death” motion picture. Val Margolian, is the creative visionary behind the forming of this type of film making. He’s the director that unleashes AAPs or Anti-Personnel Properties upon the extras, all the while filming their life or death struggles to survive the shoot. The AAPs take the form of creatures for whatever the script calls for. In this particular shoot the AAPs are made to look and act like gigantic spiders for the film “Alien Hunger.”
The contract is simple; you agree to stay in the sets confines, using only that which is supplied to you on the set as a weapon against whatever is trying to kill you for real. If you kill an AAP and remove it’s tag you get bonus money. If you survive you get to live and get paid.
This is a chance for those living in poverty to get rich quick. That is if they can collect a few tags, fight off other extras and survive the AAPs during the shoot.
Not easy, but is possible.
This was such a fun and exciting story. I just wish they didn’t talk the way they did at the start of the book before filming began. Once it started the characters began speaking the way we talk to one another in this day and time. Why this wasn’t done from the beginning I have no idea. Really other than the two issues I had stated before, I really liked no I love this concept and story execution. I just hope the next book is just as good or better.

[Caressa · Rating 1 out of 5]

In my humble opinion, an author who uses expletives in lieu of punctuation (or nouns, verbs, or adjectives) is trying too hard to be "edgy" or "gritty." I liken it to the teenage girl at the mall wearing a tee emblazoned with "Rebel", who's obviously anything but. If you have to force people to believe you belong to a label, sweetheart, that label ain't you. Actions speak louder than words; and when it comes to literature, words speak louder than expletives.

Michael Shea presents frighteningly possible near-future LA, and an even more chilling new depth to reality tv (again, not too far fetched for a nation that feeds off public humiliation and car chases). The Extra had such great potential for an exhilarating story, but Shea gets tripped up in trying to shock us with swearing & sexually explicit language every time a character opens his mouth (or formulates a thought). I'm not opposed to the occasional well placed F-bomb for effect, but after 80 pages of this dreck, I needed to wash my eyes out with soap. A real pity.

Now has anyone seen my "Redhead who's oddly obsessed with pirates, vikings, loaded nachos, & the post-apocalypse" t-shirt? Oh, wait...

[Jessi · Rating 4 out of 5]

First Line: "That's right, that was us."

In The Extra, the legendary film director Val Margolian discovered that the term "Live Action" could be taken to a whole new level if the extras in the film actually die. And thousands of people sign up to be extras because of the huge payoff you receive if you survive. I found this story especially disturbing because the idea didn't see completely impossible. I mean, really if the population continues to grow and become unmanageable and the distance between the rich and the poor continues to lengthen... This semi-reality, combined with pretty intense action scenes and like-able characters made this a book worth reading. The only thing that bothered me was that the POV switched back and forth from first-person for Curtis, to limited third-person for several other characters.

Tone: Intense, Frightening
Setting: Not-so-distant future, California, Los Angeles, Film set
Characters: Very poor, creative, spunky
Language: Crass, angry, sparse, alternating POVs
Pace: Fast-paced
Other Elements: Gangs, Slums, Murder, Sabotage, Human Rights, Socio-economic issues
Read alikes: Hunger Games, The Maze Runner

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty good book. The premise is that extras in movies of the future will be paid ridiculous sums because most of them will be killed off by whatever the beasty du jour is for that movie. Though unlike The Running Man the masses don't actually watch the carnage and payout, it is filmed as part of an actual movie production, and the public only typically sees the shots which are used in the film. There are two basic plot lines going on here, one following some people who sign up as extras and one following the people who work on the shoot. Neither plot is exceptional, but they are both OK, and that's all this type of book needs.

Minor quibble... The author makes the effort to conceal the nature of the monsters until there's a dramatic reveal to all the extras during orientation. This is completely negated by the fact that there is a giant spider shown on the cover. Doh!

The Extra was enjoyable, if not particularly memorable. Three Stars.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a perfecrtly packaged piece of entertainment. A dystopia of grotesque economic inequality and exploitation, a cast of endearing and plucky misfiits out to better themselves and their families and escape their urban prisons, a film industry obscenely bloated with funding and profits, movies of action and spectacle where the exras are filmed fighing for survival against artifical alien monstrosities for rich financial rewards if they survive, a secret resistance within the industry helping the extras, unlikely alliances formed in the thick of battle, deeply moving connections with family and community. Honestly it's rare for a 'people fighting and dying for entertainment' story have so much defiantly uncynical-in-the-face-of-societal-horror heart. The build-up, the setting, the frenetic action, the slef-regarding genius of the director behind it all are all absolutely pitch-perfect, and it all comes in just over five hours of listening time.

[Terry Mulcahy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will not complain about the long hours and boredom of being on a movie set as an extra again. Long 12-hour, 15-hour, or longer minimum-wage days and nights of sitting on my ass waiting for that scene to come up where they'll use me. Drinking coffee and getting snacks from the crafty cart. Reading novels like this. Compared to what the extras go through in this story, I am more like a movie star. The premise is brilliant, the characters well developed, and the action is certainly - to use an old reviewer's term - pulse pounding. It's a tough life these extras have to begin with, and now they have a chance to turn their lives completely around. And, not all of the people directing and running this hell, who have their own agenda, are 100% behind the heartless dictatorial director. The heroic extras provide the drama in this movie as they do their best to game the system. Or die. I loved it. I may never again look at a movie set the way I used to.

[Jeff Powers · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Extra wears it's inspiration on its sleeve. It often feels like the cast of Attack the Block thrown into Battle Royale with Westworld-esque robot enemies. But unlike it's inspirators, The Extra lacks the hard hitting social commentary of any of those films/books. The action feels uninteresting, and apart from some clichéd insight into the character we get a first person POV, the cast of characters is rather uninteresting. The general concept and near future urban setting is intriguing but it isn't developed enough to hold you through the book. I wasn't expecting much from this last minute pick up, but I feel there are far better entries in the subgenre. There is perhaps new and more interesting direction this author could take this concept, but I doubt I will check them out.

[Kristyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm gonna be honest. The first few chapters of this book made me feel...stupid. I mean, I had a clear picture of what was going on, but there were times when I wondered if I had the right picture. I wish I could explain that, but I can't.

I liked this book. I feel like with the story that was told and the length of the book that it should have felt rushed. But it was more like the author let us in on what we needed to know, and all the filler was left out. This left me wanting more. Yes, there is a sequal...but that's not what I'm looking for.

[Isidro · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main idea is brilliant and with potential interesting ramifications (maybe explored in the second related novel), but most of the main characters are not enough developed to make me care about them or feel some empathy for its struggle. As it happened to me in other Shea stories, I've found some passages difficult to read, a bit "ornamented" for my taste.

In any case it was a fun reading if you approach the story as an hommage to 50's scify movies mixed with actual hollywood blockbuster stereotypes.

There is a second novel, "Assault on sunrise", but the story is selfconclusive.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

first, many thanks to goodreads, i was fortunate enough to win this in one of their give-aways.
this is an interesting story, set in a kind of Mad Max-ish California. it lives up to it billing of action filled, gory, and funny at times.
it drags a little in some places but over all a good read... :)

[David Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a bizarrely fun book. It is super simple as far as arc goes. It develops some likable characters and a freaky fun milieu around them. Then the action pops the whole way through. There is even a bit of a deeper issue to think about afterwards. But mostly this is a great ride.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this based on the concept, which is sort of Running Man meets Starship Troopers. Too much jargon too soon made me work too hard to get into the story, and once the action started, it never let up. That could be exciting, but in this case, the characters and story suffered for it.

[Juzella Billy · Rating 2 out of 5]

i really like the premise and the story of this book. but the writing really messed everything up. There are so many POV with very same voices.

i was trying so hard to finish this, halfway through the book and the action began. Then after a few pages another POV showed up. mixed emotions here.

[Campbell Andrews · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Saunders does this kind of thing better. Not much conviction here... by the end, The Extra becomes what it is satirizing.

[Tom Fuchs]

Once you have a handle on the scenario, stylized dialogue and characters the book takes off like a fucking rocked and doesn't let up. Really enjoyed this.

[Joel Walsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

If The Hunger Games wasn't violent enough for you...wooden characters with unconvincing motivation and a laughable premise. YA dystopia officially jumped the shark with this one.