Color me surprised. The first book was the only one I got through. Scalzi's characterizations in that one are singular, in that all of his characters think and talk like exactly the same snark-spewing geeky dude. Even the very few women.

I should look into the sequel, I'd be happy for him if he stretched himself after the first one.

▲ teasnob a day ago | parent | next [-]

I'm surprised you're willing to look into the sequel. After reading Old Man's War I've been unwilling to read any more of John Scalzi's work in the decade+ since then. It read like a teenage boy's wish-fulfillment fantasy, and since I've never been a part of that demographic, it was extremely frustrating to get through that book. With my youthful energy at the time, I slogged through to the end of the book somehow.

	▲	shagie a day ago \| parent [-]
		Have you ever read "Travel by Wire!"? It was the first story that Arthur C. Clarke published. It's... youthful in its writing. Or how about Pebble in the Sky? > Boucher and McComas were disappointed by the novel, saying that despite Asimov's good ideas, "his heavy treatment and routine plot are disappointing. Try to find a copy of The Big U by Neal Stephenson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_U ("When Stephenson's Snow Crash was published in 1992, the book that became a best-seller and vaulted him to fame, The Big U was out of print and Stephenson was content to leave it that way. When original editions began selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars, he relented and allowed The Big U to be republished, saying that the only thing worse than people reading the book was paying that much to read it.") Or Sundiver being a much weaker book than the rest of the Uplift series. Or A Planet Called Treason by Orson Scott Card (which was even worse when I reread it as an adult). Old Man's War was Scalzi's first "real" story... one that he had in the back of his mind to write in his college years. He has matured as a writer since then.

▲ shagie 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The first one was very much written in an homage to Starship Troopers and it was an early work of his. His very first one was Agent to the Stars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_to_the_Stars#Publication... - available online at https://scalzi.com/agent/ ) which was a book that he didn't want to write in that he wanted to make sure he could write as a career before writing the book he'd been thinking about for a long time... it's ok, maybe better than ok, but not great. He didn't want to find out that he didn't have the stuff to be a professional writer with the book that he really wanted to write.

That book that he really wanted to write was Old Man's War. I would put it as a good one, but not a great one. A young man inspired by Heinlein and Haldeman writing military science fiction as his first real book.

His later books get better as he became a more mature writer writing new ideas rather than the story he had in the back of his mind for the past decade. The Ghost Brigades (I believe) is better than the previous (it deals with the special forces). The Human Division and The End of All Things were written as serialized chapters that kind of stand on their own and I believe that format worked quite well with him.

I will note that... he likes snark. I don't recall much in his later Old Man's War books... I think he got it out in The Interdependency (a fun series but you have to be ok with snark and casual vulgarity - the Audible is read by Wil Wheaton (some may be turned off by that alone) who is able to read and handle the snark and casual vulgarity quite well). I will recommend it if one is ok with a very snarky character - it's a political intrigue series.

▲ 3eb7988a1663 2 days ago | parent [-]

  ..the Audible is read by Wil Wheaton (some may be turned off by that alone)

Include me on that list. Man has no range, and a terrible falsetto he uses for women. He managed to get short-listed for the geeky novels I usually enjoy, and for a time, it seemed like I had a 1/3 chance of getting a Wheaton narration.

	▲	shagie 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Collapsing-Empire-Audiobook/B... https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Consuming-Fire-Audiobook/B07H... https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Last-Emperox-Audiobook/B084RP... While I recognize it in other of his audio books... there are a few examples of women in the previews. I don't recall him using a falsetto in those books at all. No, he doesn't have a lot of range... but I don't feel that's necessarily a show stopper for audible books in that I've more than occasionally experienced a reader who did have a lot of range... that sometimes went past the range of the speaker. He reads like an actor where everything it goes from a stage whisper to a slightly increased volume with a drop in pitch... and that often works (for me) compared to readers who its telling Alexa "pause, louder, back 1 minute" to get things that are read in a more hushed whisper.

▲ 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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