The End of All Things

Old Man's War, Book 6

De: John Scalzi

Narrado por: Tavia Gilbert, William Dufris, John Scalzi

Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi returns to his best-selling Old Man's War universe with The End of All Things, the direct sequel to 2013's The Human Division.

Humans expanded into space...only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. The Colonial Union used the Earth and its excess population for colonists and soldiers. It was a good arrangement...for the Colonial Union. Then the Earth said: no more.

Now the Colonial Union is living on borrowed time - a couple of decades at most before the ranks of the Colonial Defense Forces are depleted and the struggling human colonies are vulnerable to the alien species who have been waiting for the first sign of weakness to drive humanity to ruin. And there's another problem: a group, lurking in the darkness of space, playing human and alien against each other - and against their own kind - for their own unknown reasons.

In this collapsing universe, CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson and the Colonial Union diplomats he works with race against the clock to discover who is behind attacks on the Union and on alien races, to seek peace with a suspicious, angry Earth, and to keep humanity's union intact...or else risk oblivion and extinction - and the end of all things.

©2015 John Scalzi (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Tavia Gilbert and William Dufris are disarmingly genial as they trade off narrating chapters. Gilbert, in particular, manages to convey a bird-like alien perfectly in her section, and Dufris is fully believable even as a disembodied brain in control of a spaceship." ( AudioFile)

Great new Scalzi book

I was thrown by the introduction at first. I was jogging to the audio version and was initially concerned that I had started out of sequence with the wrong version of "The Life of the Mind." Don't worry. The book flows as one story from 4 different perspectives and the alternate version of "Mind" is at the end of the complete story. I very much enjoyed this return to the Colonial Union. Hopefully Scalzi will one day let us readers know what happens to Lt. Heather Lee, Harry Wilson and the rest of his characters.

great series

this was a fantastic series. funny well written and great speakers. loved all the additional content at the end too.

A Good Ending

I liked this book a lot, though at times it felt a little slow. I loved that Scalzi uses first person.

I thought the performances were good individually, but it really bugs me when character, race or planet names aren't consistently pronounced between narrators.

It's a satisfying end to the Old Man's War series, but not my favorite Scalzi book due to lack of fart humor.

Filling in the blanks.

This does a good job of filling things in. if you've read everything else in the "Old man's war" universe, read this.

Overall

I have thoroughly enjoyed this relatively short series of books encompassing "Old Man's War". The one notable exception being Zoe's Book (not so much)... though I did like the last quarter of Zoe's Tale.

I will add this series to my "Reread" list.

Cheers!

A Fair Wrap Up

The story was decent wrap up to the issues at hand and I really liked the first story and the narrative voice of the protagonist. The the basic narrative that humans are one of the worst players in the galaxy, which was first introduced in the second book of the series wasn't believable then, and it isn't now no matter how much the author informs us that it is true. That takes much of the punch out of what we're supposed to think while reading this. This isn't to mean that the Colonial Union is a righteous organization, it clearly isn't. The performance of the voice actors was a mixed bag on account of different parts being read by different people. I believe William Dufris has done the prior stories and he performed very well. Tavia Gilbert was much less enjoyable to listen to. Her pacing and inflections for many of the characters was all wrong and she made all of the men sound ludicrous and impossible to take seriously. She wasn't intolerable to listen to however, I've definitely heard worse.

Changing the narrator was a mistake.

Let me just say the story was strong and interesting, sadly the producers destroyed the consistency.

Changing the narrator half way through the book from the person that has narrated all previous stories and saying it's because the character speaking in the story changes to a woman is silly. the entire series has hours of narration of female characters by a male reader.

Sadly prophetic

With the extra ending and previously released chapter, this book is basically a short story set in the OMW universe. I guess the series really is over except for the contractual obligations as this so obviously is. The performance was great as usual, but the new material wasn't really worth the credit. Expect to see this one on sale, and wait for it.

Why the change in narrators?

There was a very jarring change in narrators after the first third of the book. After hearing William Dufris in the beginning I didn't like Tavia Gilbert at all. This really soured my enjoyment of the entire middle of the story. William Dufris returns for the last third.

More inter galactic political intrigue

Old Man’s War was a great book. It was a nice update to Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. I never did read the third and fourth books of the series (which I should). Scalzi rebooted the series with Human Division and continues it with The End of All Things.

These two books are short story collections that tell the story in snippets from a variety of perspectives. That is not my favorite method. But Scalzi is a good writer and in spite of the fact that I am not a fan of short stories. These are well done. They give the idea of some of the wide ranging fiction of George RR Martin or Neal Stevenson without the 900 pages of text.

Most of the time I write reviews soon after I finish a book, but it has been nearly 2 weeks since I actually finished The End of All Things. And while I know the story and can remember the major arc, it is a fairly forgettable. The problem with the story story collection idea is that it usually lacks the character development as it bounces around. And while several of the characters have been in several other books (Harry throughout), I just don’t really love any of them.

I enjoyed the audiobook and I will certainly pick up other Scalzi books in the future. I am not sure there was anything here that entices me to either go back and finish the previous books I have not read, or to pick up future books in the series. Maybe it is my distance from the books. When I finished I thought it was a fine book. Good summer fluff. But with some distance, I don’t think it is any better. And except for writing this review, I really have not thought about the book once since I finished it.