• Walk the Plank

  • The Human Division, Episode 2
  • By: John Scalzi
  • Narrated by: William Dufris
  • Length: 39 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (1,226 ratings)

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Walk the Plank  By  cover art

Walk the Plank

By: John Scalzi
Narrated by: William Dufris
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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.

What listeners say about Walk the Plank

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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Prologue to the next episode

39 minutes ARE YOU SERIOUS?

If you exclude all names, there will be only 20 minutes left

this is just a prologue-side story to the next episode,
so don't waste time and buy episode 2 and 3 at once.

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18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Bad style - at least for audio version

What would have made Walk the Plank better?

The writing style. The narrator having to say the characters name each and every line of dialog... ouch

How could the performance have been better?

I think the performance suffered with what he had to work with.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I couldn't finish listening to it. I suffered through the first series but I just didn't look forward to listening, so I stopped.

Any additional comments?

Just listen to the preview and ask yourself if you can tolerate that writing style for very long in audio format. The story seemed interesting but the dialog was choppy and the poor narrator had to constantly announce the person talking. Maybe this would be a better read vs. a listen because you could just gloss over the names. Thinking about it more, maybe as just text it would be better because there are those times where you read some dialog assuming it is one character, only to find out it was someone else talking at then end.

But in audio format like this, it just drove me crazy. Since the narrator does different voices, maybe they should have cut some of the name announcing out.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Boring Hard-to-Follow Transcript

The narrator did a good job, considering what he had to work with. He had to read the name of every speaker!!! The book is 39 minutes of a boring story that sounds like this:

Brown: Hey, John. How did you like "Walk the Plank"?
Smith: It was pretty boring. I fell asleep listening to it.
Jackson: Oh, no. And you bought the whole series, didn't you?
Smith: Yeah, Steve, I did.
Andrews: Bummer. You bought it too, didn't you, Mary?
Perkins: Yep. I'm going crazy listening to the narrator read everybody's name!
Brown: Man, I bet that really sucks.
Smith: No kidding. Hope it gets better as the series progresses.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

I Was Disappointed

When I downloaded the first book, I got the impression that these were self contained episodes. The first one was over 2 hours in length, and the story seemed to stand on its own.

I foolishly didn't take notice of the length when I downloaded the second. I figured that if these were episodes in the vein of television series' that they would all be of similar length. I was wrong. Not only is this "episode" only 39 minutes long, it doesn't tie in with the first episode in any way at all! There's no context for what's going on here, and it just ends abruptly. It's abundantly clear that this episode DOESN'T stand on its own.

Now, I'm sure that future "episodes" will tie these two incidents together, but that's not how episodes work! These aren't episodes at all, it's all just one continuous book that has been broken down into sections. It's a cheap trick which I imagine is intended to build anticipation but it ends up just being annoying.

Sure, other books often require a continuation of the story, but in those cases they tend to end at some properly dramatic point. They don't just end in the middle of some minor challenge.

There's no way I can give this story high marks - it's incomplete. If I'm a teacher and you hand me an incomplete essay, you'll fail. Same here. The performance was pretty good though, I found no fault with William Dufris.

This may be a riveting story when it's complete, but right now it's not. Cutting up the story into sections like this really ruins the flow. It's complete nonsense.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

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.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

What??

I thought this might be interesting and bought the 1st. one in series. The 2nd. made no sense to me and it is much to short. The story doesn't tie in with the 1st. book No story anywhere. This is not for me.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

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"

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Short Story but Good Listen

A Very short story but this held my attention. This seems like it's gonna be a good saga.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Short Interim Episode

This short, tense installment is written in the form of an audio transcript, and has a bit of a horror theme to it. It works all right, though you could skip it if needed since it doesn't involve the same characters as the first installment.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

The first episode is notably better.

Would you try another book from John Scalzi and/or William Dufris?

yes. Scalzi and Dufris have better stuff published. Dufris isn't the problem here.

Would you ever listen to anything by John Scalzi again?

Yes, but I'll try to be careful how I pick.

Which character – as performed by William Dufris – was your favorite?

N/A

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

This book although claiming to be part of a series did not have any of the characters from the first episode. It could be from a series, since it doesn't stand on its own like it claims to in the "flyleaf" of the purchase page. Its length is that of a "short-short", but it lacks both an ironic or unexpected twist that a good example of that style / genre should have. "Walk the Plank" lacks the wit and skill that one can see in nearly every short story by Saki, for example. I utterly disappointed in this 40 minutes lost of my life. Audible offered to take it back, but I paid money not a credit, so it's not even worth that effort. I plan to give episode 3 a try: it is projected to be longer so maybe Scalzi can put a story out there that at least shows as much respect for the audience as episode 1.

Any additional comments?

I was expecting better stuff because the first episode was really better and could have been followed up with something closer good if not actually excellent. The story has no closure. Sure, the audience knows what happened to a number of characters, but none of the questions for the colonists are answered. I am trying to avoid spoilers here, so I cannot be more specific.

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