Walk the Plank

The Human Division, Episode 2

By: John Scalzi

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Wildcat colonies are illegal, unauthorized, and secret - so when an injured stranger shows up at the wildcat colony New Seattle, the colony leaders are understandably suspicious of who he is and what he represents. His story of how he’s come to their colony is shocking, surprising, and might have bigger consequences than anyone could have expected.

Walk the Plank is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

Listen to the complete edition of The Human Division, the fifth full-length book by John Scalzi in the Old Man's War universe.

©2012 John Scalzi (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

I like these! 😱

5 is great.
4 is good.
3 is OK.
2 is bad.
1 is awful.
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Walk the Plank is a pirate and survivor story with a dash of early settlers in the frontier.
Typical good Scalzi. 😱

Not a fan of screenplays disguised as literature!

This audiobook is not so much a book but a oral presentation of a screenplay. I was not impressed!!!

Episode 1 Was Better.

Episode one had a lot of interesting events in it... that would happen in any "TV Show", but the second episode is talking about something different and has no mention of the first episode's events.

as a 39 minutes book, it wasn't bad, you get to know some of the weird actions that occur and start to think "Whats going on?", but that wouldn't do until you read the next books.

So overall it was ok.

P.S.
Its really hard to review a less than an hour book.

Great series, needs label editing

Any additional comments?

The series is nice as a serial release, but , really, couldn't the titles be synced up to download properly on an ipod (I'm sure other devices will choke on chapter titles embedded in the album title) . I had to spend 30min experimenting how to edit titles/albums to get a sequential download (into my device). In a few short weeks, they are all going to be available and MOST people will want all copies, and be able to listen back-to-back.
My solution, in case others need it:
1 edit all titles to have episode numeral as 1st character
2. edit all album titles to "The Human Division"

Brutal Ending

Walk the Plank is another short story set in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe but not focusing on the military. I only read the original book in the Old Man’s War series, but really like the short story, The B-Team so I was anxious to see the diplomats in action again. Much to my surprise, there were no diplomats in this tale which features an injured survivor from an act of piracy who is being interrogated by officials of the colony that the survivor was bringing cargo to. The story is harsh and the ending is brutal, providing a window into the kind of risks many of the new colonists have to endure to start their new lives.

What Was He Thinking?

Well.
That was certainly a bit of unpleasantness my day could have gone without. I realise this was just one chapter of the Tales, but it was a poor move for Scalzi to offer this ultra-short fragment as a stand-alone if he wanted to pique new readers’ interest in the entire work.

And why did he use a screenplay format for this chapter alone? It was difficult and annoying to hear the constant repetition of character names. Makes me think that he was cleaning out old files to flesh out a cohesive book and was too rushed or lazy to rewrite this so it “melded” with the other tales. I am still a Scalzi fan, but not everything he does is of equal calibre.

Great listen in the car

Turning into one of my favourite authors, I liked this. Just the right length to listen to on a car or train journey. Really liking this series,

Ridiculously short

This review is longer than the book. Especially since Audible makes me add these 8 words.

short and good

2nd part of a series that actually didn't seem very connected to the 1st. I enjoyed it and look forward to a longer 3rd episode.

A true difference

I must say that I truly enjoy John Scalzi's work. I have every book of his available on Audible. I really enjoy his “Old Man’s War” series of books, but there is one thing that irritates me. Scalzi overuses the word “SAID”. In all of his books, it is “John said”, “Jane said”, “John said”, “Zoe said”. It is never ending. There is no other word that is used more in his books than the word ‘SAID”. Now, for the first time, there is a written work by John Scalzi without the word “SAID”. It was so refreshing. I feel free.

However, it didn’t last. The remaining episodes go back to the “SAID” monotony. There was a flirtation with the word “ASKED”, but “SAID” won out.

Did I say mention that this is a cool series? This episodic adventure is a nice departure from his other works. I like that he has expanded on the “Old Man’s War” universe. As someone who has had 15 surgeries in 15 years, I’d go back in the military for a new body. This is fiction, right?