John Scalzi is known mainly for his blog Whatever and his Old Man’s War book series. I truly enjoyed the first book(my review), but the sequels had diminishing returns. The sequels were decent to mediocre and I mostly lost interest in that series. But Scalzi and his publisher have decided to do something different for this newest sequel, The Human Division. They are going to release chapters weekly (starting January 15th, 2013) and then, after they are all released, they will release the full book. The big question is: How is the story? Well, having read the first chapter (The Human Division #1: The B-Team), it’s not bad. Not great, but not bad. Continue to see more.
Similar to a plot point from the first book in the series, a ship drops out of hyperspace and is immediately is attacked by missiles. This is a huge problem, besides everyone on the ship dying, because the ship was on a top-secret diplomatic mission to meet with an alien species. Now the Colonial Union has two things to worry about. First, there is a mole high up in the CU and second, what do they do about the rendezvous? They need to bring in a new ambassador, but they’re not sure who attacked the first ship and if it would attack the second ship (or the alien ship they are going to meet).
The closest ambassador ship is sent and along with them is one of John Perry’s oldest Colonial Defense Force friends, Harry Wilson. Harry’s now tasked with finding the black box from the destroyed ship (if it still exists) and retrieving it, so the CU has some idea what’s going on. And there’s still the negotiation to take place, assuming everyone survives.
The story itself is standalone (assuming you’ve read the previous books in the series) in that it’s a complete story and you don’t need to read any more chapters to know what happens in this little adventure. But, at the same time, there is enough underlying plot that can carry you forward into the rest of the book. This installment is well written and it’s a little fun to jump back to catch up with Harry (who we haven’t seen since the first book in the series, I believe). But overall, it’s just a well-written mediocre story. I’ll probably check out the full book of The Human Division when it comes out, but based on the first chapter, I’m not sure how much I’ll like it.. Mildly recommended.
This post is part of the thread: Old Man’s War – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.