review 1: An entertaining cast of characters and fun variety of alien races, but the ending felt far too abrupt. I spent a while clicking to see if there were more pages to the story. I liked the sly way the story addressed issues of diversity, without getting preachy about anything. Much is made of how little platform candidates besides the main character have, but the reader never gets a sense of the main character's platform. For a "political junkie," he doesn't seem very knowledgeable. He seems to want to win the election for the sake of being elected to public office, which lowered the stakes for me, turning the story mostly into a humorous exercise. Spoilers follow: The story ends at the moment the main character wins the election, so in that sense the conflict arc is resolved... more. However, there's so much conflict set up with the other candidate who wants to eat pets that I didn't feel all that was resolved by the win -- especially not when the last exchange of the story amounts to "This isn't over." I was a little too inclined to agree. review 2: John Scalzi can certainly bring on the humor when he wants to. In this short story, the human Dave decides to run for city Council in the most xeno-diverse district in the city. It seems most of his neighbors are of half a dozen alien species, and a human hasn't represented the district in almost five decades. As he launches his door to door campaign, both his less than supportive husband and his campaign manager (whose only in it for the college credit) ladle on large scoops of sarcasm. It's all good, mindless fun, with some witty dialogue that's often laugh out loud funny. less
