Walk the Plank: The Human Division, Episode 2

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

(This follows my review from episode 1.) I'm still a fan of author John Scalzi and narrator William Dufris. The momentum of their cred is still strong following my first exposure to Mr. Scalzi's work in the Old Man's War series. (Mr. Dufris can do no wrong in my opinion, since I've followed his work since the Destroyermen series. So his cred has lifetime membership as far as I'm concerned.) :)

But, now 2 episodes into the Human Division, I have to say I'm still not a fan of the "episodes" experiment. And, since the summary promised that these would be "...a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe..." then on the merits of this being a "self-contained" short story, I have to rate it fairly low. Call me old fashioned, but I still like my stories to have a beginning, middle and end. This one was all middle.

I know, I know... the storyline gets picked up again in Episode 3. I get that? But again, as a "self-contained" short story, this didn't do it for me.

That said, am I buying Episode 3 next? Absitively. But then again, I'm a fan.

Tip: If you get Episode 2, then you might as well go ahead and get ep 3 in the same online session.

I'm assuming this will tie in with the story at one point. A different group than were in the first short. I like to read these as a pallet cleanser in between books.

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"

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?

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

SHORT - LIKE A LONGER LISTEN

YOU REALLY FELT THE PAIN - THE STORY

LEFT ONE WANTING TO KNOW THE FATE OF THE COLONY - I ASSUME THEY ALL DIED A SLOW DEATH.