No, not again. Great story, but something would have to be mind blowing for me to listen again.

The character development was very good.

Dead pan deliveries.

Not really. But the motivations of the traitor Butan (sic?) left me surprisingly conflicted. For 90% of it you think this guy is the devil. Then he is painted in a way that makes you wonder if he might be right.

I very much enjoy the Old Man's War series. It's a gleeful stomping of any trace of political correctness in regard to violence. Not really gratuitous, but unrepentantly raw and continuous. And yet somehow, Scalzi manages to insert a solid morale tale into the bloodbath.

I will say though, that some of the emotional connection development between characters can feel like being spoon fed straight saccharin. I'd rather be left to build some of my own inferences without several Nelsonian last words proclamations of love.

I liked it, but I was disapointed that it was very predictable and was not as amusing as the first book.

Is it possible that the story line could get better? At first, I missed the main character from the first book, but soon I was really invested in this new guy. Of course there were many character ties to the first... there would have to be... but for the most part this book could stand on its own and still be great.

Fun, engaging, and even thought provoking. Scalzi writes as a combination of scientist and existentialist philosopher. He writes strong characters with interesting personalities, and makes the story engaging through character development, even more so than event development.

Some people have complained about Scalzi's use of "he/she said." in basic dialogue construction. I have had this complaint in other books, particularly the later books in the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. I have no such complaint about this book. The performance was very good, so good that I did not once notice a "he/she said" standing out.

Simply a fun and interesting read. I've never come out of a fiction book wanting to be a vegan before. Read and find out what I mean.

fun, exciting, interesting

Jared Dirac was my favorite, but mostly because he was the main character. Everyone in Scalzi's books is expendable, so you can't get too attached to the characters. Instead, you get awed by the action, the technology, the fresh concepts...

it's right in line with the excellent job he did on Old Man's War. His voice is well suited for this type of book.

the ending was great.

After reading the reviews, I decided to give this one a try, I was rather disappointed overall with the writer and the book. I did not care for the writer's style, and the storyline seemed disjointed, didn't flow well in my opinion. I don't think I'll try any of his other books.

As others have noted, this might be a good read but the narrator makes it tedious to listen to. I'm about 1/3 of the way through and hope the story line makes up for the narrator. My own fault really for not listening to the entire sample.

I'm about 2 hours into it and feel like just tossing it aside. Given how much I loved the first book - Old Man's War - I'll give it more time; but the narrator is making it very hard. He endows nearly all the characters with a condescending lilt that is just plain annoying. The story is slow to unfold and goes into excruciating detail about subjects that were covered by the first book in much subtler fashion. For those who read the first book - which you absolutely SHOULD do - the combination of boring review and horrible narration is enough to set my mind wandering rather than focusing on the listen. I hope it gets better. Soon.

So I almost didn't get this book, based on what I saw the other reviewers said. I decided to anyway, and couldn't stop listening to it: it's a great story, and the narrator does a good job with it.
Add it to your library, you won't be disappointed!