The Ghost Brigades

This is a nice followup to Old Man's War. Scalzi again creates a great ride, that is deeply enjoyable and with great characters.

It helps to have read Old Man's War, but you could pick this one up and start here. This story takes place a few years after the events in Old Man's War. Jane Sagan is a Lt in the Ghost Brigades and assigned to the Kite. She uncovers a plot against the Colonial Union, and that there is a traitor helping out the enemies plotting against the Union. Most of the story follows the rather unusual method they use to track down the traitor... Very well written, held my attention throughout.

A fun listen and worthy successor to "Old Man's War". Scalzi writes his books with a very Heinlein'esque feel...in a good way.

If you liked OMW, then you'll like The Ghost Brigades. It's fast paced sci-fi military action with a mystery element. The protagonist is compelling & sympathetic. Some characters from OMW also play an important part.

This novel is down to earth, to paraphrase a trite and incorrect saying I guess, shoot 'em up Si Fi. I agree with other reviewers, though, and think I'd rather have read this novel instead of listening to it. Some authors,who do an excellent job of writing tight dialogue as Scalzi does, use "He said", " She said' a lot. A lot... A lot.... It gets redundant and a bit tiresome to listen to but isn't bad when it's being read...Lee Child's Jack Reacher books are the same way.

However, as I did download the book, I continued to listen and finally got accustomed to the redundancy as annoying as it could become. I know this is the terse way Scalzi writes and I enjoy hearing William Dufris narration during the exciting parts sufficiently that it's worth listening.

Neither of the protagonists from "Old Mans War" follow us into "The Ghost Brigades" and it took a bit of a getting used to for me but I quickly grew to appreciate the new character, who was as well developed a character as John Perry over the books length and who I really connected with.

A new secondary character is introduced as a child in the end of this book, Zoe, who becomes important in the winding up of the series. The book becomes quite complicated as regards who is related to who about 2/3 of the way thru the book and it's important to keep things straight. If you can.

I also really really like the way Scalzi writes the characters of his aliens. They aren't faux humans but instead are actually alien in thought, mental processes, culture and looks as any alien I've read previously. It's simply superb and I admire the individual books and the development of the series. I think I'm going to be sad to have it end-and have already bought the last 3 books.

And about those books. The ending of "The Ghost Brigades" is an ideal place to listen to Scalzi's hour long short story, ""The Sagan Diary". This was written after the series was finished to fulfill an obligation and fleshes out the character Jane Sagan, who is reintroduced in "The Last Colony" , is written from the female first person point of view and, IMO, is one of Scazis best pieces of writing. He does a fantastic job of interpretation a woman's deepest thoughts as she writes her diary, including a slightly steamy sexual chapter. Not to be missed.

John Scalzi..your writing is really beginning to grow and I hope you have years of excellent work ahead of you.

This, the second novel in the series, suffers from a number of flaws that make it a difficult audiobook to get lost in.

"Old Man's War" walked the reader through alongside the protagonist while he discovered a strange universe. In this book everything is told to the reader directly, not revealed. Recapped in painful detail for anyone who read the first novel. The main character is not particularly engaing, and characters stand around monolgueing like villians in a Bond film. I could not finish it.

The phrase "special forces soldier" is repeated a million times, and must die.

The text is great fun and the narrator does a very good job. My one and only complaint is more about the John Scalzi's style of writing. His repetitive use of "he said", "she said" can very be passed while reading, isn't so easy to ignore when read aloud. It was noticeable the whole way through but only near annoying a few instances.

John Scalzi's style of writing does not make a good audio book. Every sentence starts with or ends with 'he said' or 'she said'. To the point where I dreaded conversations.

...and Woman to "Switch" bodies, fight random wars around the universe and engage in extremely casual sex with multiple partners. Drawbacks? well only if you call getting a beat down by your dead wife who does not recognize you a drawback.

kept me on my toes and enthralled from beginning to end. This is the kind of book that I wish I could erase from my brain so I could enjoy it for the first time again.

No skips in audio file, no hiss and medium bit rate as normal with Audible. overall very good recording.

Great book, well read. However, the end was so weak that it ruined it. It was built up to an impossible situation for humans, so bad in fact that the author could not think of a good way to get out and so it was a joke (at one point one man fights off a whole planet of aliens!).

Yes, its a great book

I love this book as much as book 1. Books 3-4 are the same story but from different points of view and its not a great story at that. This story is great and it throws you right into the heart of the CDF's best technology and explains it all from the inside out.