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The Human Division (Old Man's War #5)

by John Scalzi (Goodreads Author)

4.06 · Rating Details · 13,619 Ratings · 1,023 Reviews

Following the events of The Last Colony, John Scalzi tells the story of the fight to maintain the unity of the human race.

The people of Earth now know that the human Colonial Union has kept them ignorant of the dangerous universe around them. For generations the CU had defended humanity against hostile aliens, deliberately keeping Earth an ignorant backwater and a source o ...more

Hardcover, 431 pages

Published May 14th 2013 by Tor Books (first published May 2013)

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Community Reviews

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May 21, 2015 Bookwraiths rated it it was ok

Shelves: scifi, library

Originally reviewed at Bookwraiths Reviews

I read The Human Division a few months ago. Since I thoroughly hated it, I tried to return it to the library where I got it from, put it out of my mind, and hope that after a few days/weeks/months, I’d have a more favorable view of it in hindsight. But that hasn’t really happened. Honestly, time has only cemented my personal dislike of this serialized novel, so please understand before you go further that I’m not really going to say anything favorable a ...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Eric rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Sci-fi fans, especially Scalzi fans

Shelves: science-fiction, short-stories, john-scalzi

There are 13 "episodes" that author John Scalzi has broken this book down into, and they are being released weekly for the next few months. Instead of writing thirteen separate reviews, I will review each self-contained episode here, which will, eventually, be a review of this entire work.

'The B-Team'

Well this is certainly off to a hell of a start. Not only does Scalzi give the requisite background information on the "Old Man's War" universe without being boring or summarizing his previous book ...more

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May 02, 2013 Christian rated it it was ok

PART ONE - March 16

Dun Dun DUNNNNNNNNN...

Is how each part of John Scalzi's experiment in Dickensian Science Fiction would end if the author had stuck to Chucky D's well-established method of chopping what we now know as classics into weekly or monthly episodes - "please sir - can I have some more?" Next week, child, next week - assuming you can pony up another 99c for Audible.

But no – Scalzi wants to have his cake, eat it and still have the abs of a Men's Health cover model. The Human Division c ...more

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Mar 02, 2015 Lindsey Rey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, 2015

My favorite in the series so far! Loved all of the diplomacy and the B-team!

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Sep 17, 2015 Krbo rated it really liked it

Originalno ova knjiga je zbirka priča (13) objavljenih u e-obliku tijekom nekoliko mjeseci. Tu su i dvije dodatne.

No nema nikakve brige oko toga, čak je i zanimljivo kako je svako poglavlje (priča) lijepo zaokružena.
Većinom su to različiti slučajevi pa je osigurana visoka dinamika radnje - pred kraj se počinje provlačiti i jedna zajednička tema koja ostaje neriješena. (hoće li ju nastaviti i u najnovijem nastavku ostaje vidjeti no dobra je pa bi bilo OK)

Wilson je zanimljiv lik, a humor je dosta ...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Tom Negrino rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: Scalzi fans, with caveats

I'm an unhappy customer after reading The Human Division in its serialized run. It was clear by around episode 8 that Scalzi would not be able to wrap up all the threads of the story, but (no spoilers) the book ends with an epic battle and no resolution of the main plot, and with smoking guns littering the stage. The day of the final episode's release, Scalzi announced that there was going to be a sequel (or perhaps sequels, given how he's likening The Human Division to a TV series), which he'd I'm an unhappy customer after reading The Human Division in its serialized run. It was clear by around episode 8 that Scalzi would not be able to wrap up all the threads of the story, but (no spoilers) the book ends with an epic battle and no resolution of the main plot, and with smoking guns littering the stage. The day of the final episode's release, Scalzi announced that there was going to be a sequel (or perhaps sequels, given how he's likening The Human Division to a TV series), which he'd just been signed to write, and which therefore may be more than a year away.

I'm a big fan of Scalzi's work; I just gifted a friend with paperbacks of Old Man's War (OMW) and Redshirts. But this time around, the work, and the process of getting the work to his readers, disappoints.

The Human Division is the latest novel in the OMW universe, and for the most part it is enjoyable. I felt that Scalzi has turned up his trademarked Banter-O-Meter a bit too high this time, to the point where many of the characters tended to talk too much alike. For example, if you take lines of dialog from two characters, say Harry Wilson and Hart Schmidt, and place them on a page by themselves, it would often be difficult to know which character was speaking, because they use the same snappy banter style. I like the banter, but banter isn't quite the same as characterization.

In terms of plot, there's plenty of it, and clearly there was too much for one book to contain. The book slams to a halt after a huge, masterfully written battle, then ends with a brief coda, with all the major plot threads hanging. Since I didn't know in advance it was going to be a multi-parter, I felt as though I only got half a book for my $13.

The Human Division was first available as a buck-a-week serial, and the book suffers from it. Scalzi says its his longest book by word count, yet it felt much shorter; some of the individual episodes could be read in 10 minutes. I think being chopped into so many pieces hurt the overall feel of the book. The book felt smaller than OMW.

I’ve crystallized the big issue I have with the serialization format. I’m fine reading series, either serializations a la Analog magazine in the 70s, where I read a lot of great novels split up into three or four chunks, or current book series, like James S.A. Corey's The Expanse. I was happy to read Leviathan Wakes knowing that it was the first in a series, and the book kicks so much ass it is effectively stand-alone.

The difference between the serializations of the 70s and today is that now we have Internet reviews, which would have alerted me that The Human Division was not a complete novel. Had I known that, I would not have bought it now; I would have waited until the second volume was released. I just did that with the Benford/Niven book from last year. Because of the nature of this experiment in serialization, Tor/Scalzi (I’m not saying maliciously) withheld reader information that I for one have come to rely on. As a result, I ended up as an annoyed customer, rather than a happy one. I look forward to reading the next installment of The Human Division, but I won't buy it serialized, and I won't buy it if reviewers say it doesn't wrap up the plot lines. I signed up to read a novel, not watch Lost (I did watch that, and you see where that got me). ...more

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Mar 12, 2016 Connor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction

Yep, this series is still totally awesome. It's definitely a different kind of formatting, but I really enjoyed the change. I had a couple of areas where I wished I'd gotten a little bit more information, but overall, I loved this. I skipped Zoe's Tale because I'd heard it's just The Last Colony rewritten in Zoe's perspective, but I'll go back and read it eventually.

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Aug 01, 2016 Rob rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, science-fiction, old-mans-war, read-2015, own, author-male

Executive Summary: This might be my favorite book in the Old Man's War universe yet. Though it's not really a book, so much as a collection of short stories. Either way, I can't wait for the next one!

Audio book:William Dufris is a great fit for this series. I really like Wil Wheaton for Scalzi books, but I was really missing Mr. Dufris for Zoe's Tale (though I totally understand why they didn't use him). He does a great job delivering the snark and really just the dialogue in general that I'll c ...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Fred Hughes rated it it was amazing

Author John Scalzi has answered our wishes to read more stories based on the Old Man’s War series with this book of 13 superb short stories in that universe. While each story is a stand alone story our protagonists appear in most of the stories.

The back ground to the stories for those not yet enlightened by the Old Man’s War series is that when you reach 75 years old you can join the CDF and have your consciousness transferred into a young body with enhanced capabilities. The main condition to t ...more

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Aug 16, 2013 Matthew Hester rated it it was amazing

I think Scalzi has just solidified what the future of the publishing industry looks like. Gone are the days where 1400 page epics can wait for years to be released (GRR Martin, i'm looking at you) as consumers want immediate payouts on investments in this instant gratification society we exist in.
While constructing a coherent story that is broken out into individual segments can be difficult, it allows for a unique way to explore aspects of the story that might otherwise been ignored and present ...more

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Aug 13, 2015 Mogsy (MMOGC) rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, war, aliens, short-stories, serials

4.5 stars. Back when I first started getting into reading more sci-fi, John Scalzi's Old Man's War series was a great starting point. The books had just the right mix of space travel, aliens and futuristic technology, but were still light enough not to intimidate a relative newcomer to the genre. Now they still rank among some of my favorite books of all time.

So when I found out about Scalzi's new serialized novel based on the Old Man's War universe, I became all excited and got set to pick up t ...more

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May 16, 2013 Jon rated it it was amazing

Well then, that was a thing.

So, the easy bits. This was typical Scalzi, and I say that in a good way. This was amusing, interesting and engrossing sci-fi in a universe that I already love, by and author I also already love. If you like Scalzi, you'll like this. If you don't, you won't.

There. Now that that's out of the way.

This was, as Scalzi has said in several places, somewhat of an experiment. The individual "episodes" (chapters) were released weekly, and the intention was for them to stand al ...more

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Jul 27, 2016 Tudor Vlad rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

The Human Division felt different from the other Old Man’s War novels, there was a tonal shift which was to be expected after The Last Colony’s ending. It does not follow any of the original characters, but instead we get to follow new ones. The main character in this book does appear in the original trilogy and it took me way too long to figure out who Harry was. The book has an interesting format, it feels almost like a conventional science fiction television show. The book is divided into thi ...more

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Nov 11, 2014 Ashley rated it really liked it

Shelves: addictive, sci-fi, essays-and-stories, class-gender-race, space-opera

Consider this experiment a success, I think.

The Human Division is the fifth novel set in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe, but it can be read on its own if you are so inclined (although I highly recommend reading the first three books–they are wonderful).

The experiment I’m referring to is that The Human Division was initially released as thirteen separate ‘episodes’ at set intervals, and then collected together in ‘novel’ form and released as a hardcover. I say this was an experiment because Consider this experiment a success, I think.

The Human Division is the fifth novel set in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe, but it can be read on its own if you are so inclined (although I highly recommend reading the first three books–they are wonderful).

The experiment I’m referring to is that The Human Division was initially released as thirteen separate ‘episodes’ at set intervals, and then collected together in ‘novel’ form and released as a hardcover. I say this was an experiment because it was–Scalzi has stated on his blog that Tor was the driving force behind constructing the novel this way and that they collected data during the entire process, presumably to see if publishing novels in this format is something that should be done more of in the future. I’m not sure of the economics behind all this, but I’m definitely on the side of ‘yes’ in terms of story. I mean, I don’t want every novel to be published this way because that might be agonizing for me (I waited to read this until I could read all the episodes at once), but it was a fun experience as a rare occurrence.

Serialized novels aren’t exactly a new idea, to be clear. It was THE THING to do back in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Charles Dickens published most of his stuff that way, and Vanity Fair was famously published serially over several years (much to my amusement–my favorite bits of that novel are when Thackeray ‘talks back’ to his readers and gets all sassy with them). I believe Middlemarch was also published this way, but I could be misremembering. (It’s interesting to note those two novels in particular because they’re both so incredibly LONG–reading them serialized would have made them seem much, much shorter). The Human Division is like those novels, in that it generally follows the same characters over the course of the collective story, but it’s also more like a lightly serialized television show than it is a true serialized novel, which is one of the reasons the thirteen bits were called ‘episodes’ instead of ‘chapters.’ Both Vanity Fair and Middlemarch tell one long story mostly only split into sections by years of their characters’ lives. The Human Division tells thirteen different stories that could technically be read on their own, but like with a TV show, play better when you experience them as a whole, and in the intended order. They have contained storylines and often follow different characters, but the whole thing connects together and concludes in the last episode.

As for the plot, well, it’s a space opera, and it’s got aliens and spaceships in it, so yay! But mostly it follows a team of diplomats who work for the Colonial Defense Force (an organization that has been colonizing space and keeping Earth isolated while using it as a source of colonists and soldiers, who leave Earth at age seventy-five and are given new genetically engineered super soldier bodies in exchange for ten years of service–you know what, just read Old Man’s War). Anyway, thanks to the events in the third Old Man’s War book, Earth is now aware that it was being used, and it’s pissed. The division in the title is literal: humanity is split in two, and the consequences reverberate through this whole book. Our B-Team diplomats have to deal with it, and a bunch of other shit the CDF throws at them, and it’s funny and exciting and I liked it.

Long story short: it was fun, and I liked the new format. Excited for the sequel, The End of All Things, which Scalzi is writing now, and which should be out August of next year. The only downside until then is that I’m finally out of new Scalzi books to read, and that is sad. ...more

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Feb 14, 2014 Alex Ristea rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, hardcover, series, science-fiction

I read this hardcover edition all in one go, but really it's a collection of short stories that reads like a novel.

As is the nature of short stories, sometimes the reader feels too distant from the story, but thankfully The Human Division is closer to the novel form.

That being said, I was impressed by how Scalzi took advantage of the medium, and changed his writing style between stories. There was some clever authorial experimentation, and it worked.

It's a more serious look at the issues starte ...more

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Jul 12, 2013 Ric rated it liked it · review of another edition

This latest entry into what will probably turn out to be a long-running multi-publication series (that started with the entertaining Old Man's War) is vintage Scalzi. Mr. Scalzi, who apparently hasn't found a gag line that was beyond inclusion in his books, sprinkles The Human Division with his brand of humorous, irreverent, quirky and inventive story-telling. Whether for marketing purposes or for novelty, the author has chosen to piece this book together from episodes of short story length that

...more

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Feb 01, 2016 Fantasy Literature rated it really liked it

4 stars from Kat and Marion: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

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Jul 13, 2013 Tim rated it liked it

The BEST I can give it is a 3. What we have here is a TV show (that has never been made) presented in novel form. Each chapter an episode, and the flimsiest of thread connecting them into a seasonal arc - that was left unresolved. The last chapter comes up short as the cliff-hanger episode.

And now its been green-lighted for a second "season" - Scalzi's own words. Is it his goal to break out a TV show (probably Syfy - ugh) by introducing this text and then saying to the powers that be "Look, bui ...more

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May 16, 2013 Karl rated it really liked it

I finished the book in two big gulps in the evening. It certainly reads fine straight through, except the episodic nature of the original 'chapters' is a superior delivery mechanism for this book. If I were to read it again, I'd put it down after each 'chapter'.

The story was an excellent addition to the universe overall. There wasn't much space in the serialized editions to review characters and events, which means it kind of dives you straight in to the universe. I'd recommend re-reading the p ...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Jared Millet rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, space-opera, aliens, short-stories, military

"When I was your age, television was called books." Now we've come full circle to a book structured and released episodically like a television program. The Human Division isn't a serial in the traditional sense of a novel broken up into chunks with cliffhangers. Instead, most of the chapters stand on their own as complete short stories while contributing to the whole. So did it work?

Oh, yes.

As for the story itself, I'm not going to say much. It's the fifth in the Old Man's War series (yes, I sk ...more

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Nov 24, 2015 Paul rated it did not like it

Shelves: science-fiction, did-not-finish

I wanted to finish this book, but I just couldn't go on. I did not hate the book, but I "did not like it" and had to rate it one star. The characters are flat and undeveloped. The dialogue sounds like the conversations you hear walking through a middle school. And the clichés! I think Scalzi needs a better editor, or a good advisor. The plot could have been something, but it wasn't. Looks like I'm hot and cold with Scalzi. I rated Old Man's War and Fuzzy Nation high, and Red Shirts low.

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Sep 19, 2015 Matt Smith rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2015, sci-fi

Being that this is like the fifth John Scalzi Old Man's War Universe book I've read this year, I feel myself growing battle weary and perhaps a mite burnt out on Scalzi's writing.

This isn't a slam on his books themselves. I think Scalzi is probably the preeminent populist science fiction writer out there right now. His style clearly resonates with a lot of his fanbase and he's good enough to keep churning out these really solid books (all of these books save Zoe's Tale have been four stars). But Being that this is like the fifth John Scalzi Old Man's War Universe book I've read this year, I feel myself growing battle weary and perhaps a mite burnt out on Scalzi's writing.

This isn't a slam on his books themselves. I think Scalzi is probably the preeminent populist science fiction writer out there right now. His style clearly resonates with a lot of his fanbase and he's good enough to keep churning out these really solid books (all of these books save Zoe's Tale have been four stars). But I personally find myself struggling with his style, the way he writes with this really folksy voice and about mundanities like food and drink (seriously there is so much food and drink in this book), or how his characters talk. It all comes across as cutesy and playful and perhaps a bit too quippy.

However, this book really cements Scalzi as the heir apparent to the Star Trek mantle. I can't think of a science fiction franchise that was more in tune with exactly what I like and want out of Star Trek itself. Sure he did Redshirts, but that was a send up of Trek and what Trek stands for as an institution. Here, Scalzi runs a new episodic ebook format to convey a brand new telling of this vision of the future with new characters new scenarios, and lots and lots of diplomacy. To be honest, this plays very, very much to his strengths. Giving the option to tell a series of (in places somewhat loosely connected) ministories, Scalzi shows exactly how his Trek would work better than anything he's done before. And where his certain structural proclivities have let down otherwise great books in the past (the werewolves in The Last Colony for instance), here we get more excuse for telling all the great stories Scalzi has in mind. You want an episode about negotiating a peace treaty for a civil war? Great. Or how about unraveling the mystery of the unmanned spaceship? He's got that too. And all of these little mini sprints mesh very, very well with Scalzi's style and format for these books. I mean, my favorite part of Old Man's War is when John Perry is finally in the CDF and going out on a different mission every chapter (until it becomes more long form emotional towards the end), so I was destined to like this.

And really, this more or less hit the spot for my eternal "I need good Trek" fix. It had good characters with good ship roles, lots of alien cultures, and strong, strong sci-fi dilemmas and scenarios while still painting a picture of the fallout from the game changing events at the end of The Last Colony.

So if the next book that just came out is more of the same I am quite excited to see just what happens next. ...more

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Mar 26, 2014 Chris rated it really liked it

A lot of fun, but I kept wondering if this was Scalzi's Retief tribute. It didn't work quite as well -- Lieutenant Harry Wilson, nominally an active-duty commissioned nerd attached to diplomatic staff for non-combat duties -- is absurdly, ridiculously, capable. He diagnoses alien technologies, jumps out of spaceships, invents new forensics and military techniques, saves lives and negotiations.

But he is not written or appreciated by other characters as extraordinary -- instead he just muddles alo ...more

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May 20, 2013 Curtis Edmonds rated it liked it

When I was young, I'd occasionally hear my grandfather refer to something-or-other - usually a stray dog - as a "duke's mixture," which I figured out from context meant "a little of this and a little of that." The term refers to a brand of tobacco put out by the Duke family - of Duke University fame, you understand, and there's a large estate near where I live in central New Jersey called Duke Farms. Anyway, this tobacco was apparently made up of pieces of this and that, and the name lives on as When I was young, I'd occasionally hear my grandfather refer to something-or-other - usually a stray dog - as a "duke's mixture," which I figured out from context meant "a little of this and a little of that." The term refers to a brand of tobacco put out by the Duke family - of Duke University fame, you understand, and there's a large estate near where I live in central New Jersey called Duke Farms. Anyway, this tobacco was apparently made up of pieces of this and that, and the name lives on as a description of something that's a muddle of a lot of different things.

To call THE HUMAN DIVISION a "duke's mixture" is too grand. It's a casserole, put together with divergent pieces of leftovers from different meals that had little to do with each other in the first place and don't blend well. Like the battered old ship that plays a role in most of the episodes, it just creaks along, threatening to blow apart at any second.

The thrown-together nature of THE HUMAN DIVISION is, if you listen to its author, a feature and not a bug. It was designed that way, to be thirteen "episodes" that the avid Scalzi reader (I am one, or at any rate I was one) would buy, one at a time. The savvy reader could, if she chose, skip an episode here and there, which is a really great idea for at least several of the episodes.

The problem with the episodic format is twofold. First, the entire enterprise reeks of the recycling tub--as though the novel was a plan for a new sci-fi TV show set in the OLD MAN'S WAR version of future history that never was greenlit, and is therefore eligible to be repurposed as a novel. (I can only speculate whether this is true.) Second, the episodic nature of the chapters sometimes requires that the reader be reminded of certain facts--that the heroic Lieutenant Wilson has green skin, that the Colonial ambassador has a grating personality--over and over again. It might work in an episodic setting, but it's repetitive and annoying in a novel.

The one factor that leads me to believe that THE HUMAN DIVISION is a failed TV treatment is that the characters don't change at all. After undergoing a fundamental transformation in OLD MAN'S WAR, the character of Harry Wilson is static--technically competent, morally upright, kind of a bore. The ambassador is about one strand of DNA removed from the one-dimensional police captain on the "Castle" TV show, and that's not a compliment. A third character serves as a sidekick for both and even gets his own "episode," which you should skip. Not even the aliens are interesting, which is a real indictment.

The writing is, in its own way, a bit of a duke's mixture itself. Scalzi still spends a lot of time on long, expository conversations, which seem to all take place at a certain burger stand on a space station. There are quirky and funny bits throughout, most of which are welcome, but some of which--including one extended and silly set piece involving a Lhasa apso--fall flat. There is fanservice, which is usually defined as knowing callbacks to a franchise's past but in this context refers to Scalzi's own personal (and oft-stated) love of the humble churro. There's also an episode-long swipe at Glenn Beck (unless it's Rush Limbaugh, and it's probably both) which is targeted at that demographic that reads military science fiction and says, "You know, this is okay and all, but I wish that the author spent more time making fun of Glenn Beck."

The one real saving grace in THE HUMAN DIVISION is that Scalzi is very, very, very good at writing about disasters, and there are several of those. The disasters are all engineered by a shadowy, remote force that has no conscience, no weaknesses, and no heart, and is probably run by lawyers somehow but we never find out for sure. Anyway, the thirteenth episode has a very big disaster which I won't spoil for you here, but it's a lovely piece and is as good as the best of the series. It's just a shame that the reader has to dig through twelve other substandard episodes to get to the meat of the story. ...more

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Nov 22, 2013 Beth Cato rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, old-man-s-war-series, 2013

This is so far into the series that it's difficult to say anything without it being a spoiler. Suffice to say, this is another solid volume in a fantastic science fiction story. Scalzi writes deep political intrigue with aliens and humans, with humans often as the most villainous at all... though in this book, that's not quite clear anymore. There's another enemy lurking in the shadows and the ending leaves the issue as a frustrating mystery.

I really enjoy Scalzi's dialogue--he does great banter ...more

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May 20, 2013 Ben Babcock rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, ebook, space-opera, 2013-read

I had trouble describing The Human Division to friends, because the Old Man’s War universe is military science-fiction, but this particularly novel isn’t so heavy on the “military” aspect. Following the events in The Last Colony (which I haven’t read yet), the Colonial Union has to let military operations take a back seat and resort to democracy to get what it wants. The State Department is suddenly important, meaning that even the diplomats who don’t get the crucial negotations—the “B-Team”, if ...more

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Oct 08, 2013 Maddalena rated it liked it · review of another edition

Much as I've enjoyed the latest installment in the Old Man's War saga, it left me both disappointed and eager: disappointed, because the many intriguing threads in the books did not bring a complete resolution, which is left to the next book (or books) in the series; eager because this same lack of resolution means there will be more. And that's a good thing.

As it happens with many of John Scalzi's works, The Human Division starts in a deceptively rambling fashion, the reader's distraction (for ...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Nikki rated it liked it

Shelves: speculative-fiction

And now the serial's over, I will sum up my impressions here. I quickly skimmed through all the episodes again, trying to decide how I felt about how well it all tied in. And I really don't know. Some of it still feels incredibly bitty, sort of gratuitous -- The Dog King, for example, is funny, but I'm not sure how much it contributes.

The overall plot is pretty good, but by the time the next "season" comes out, my surmises and hopes will be so much less present and powerful. I wish there'd been ...more

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Jul 16, 2015 Carlos Gil Denia rated it it was amazing

Libro montado a base de historias cortas y autoconclusivas, pero con un hilo común muy interesante que solo se va entreviendo hasta la mitad del libro.

Consigue dar emoción a algo aparentemente aburrido como es la diplomacia, ofreciendo historias con distintos enfoques, con bastantes centradas en la investigación más típica, solo que en el espacio. Los personajes son realistas, y todo lo hacen con lógica, además de que el autor huye de los "deus ex machina", si un pj tiene que vivir, lo hace porq ...more

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May 29, 2013 Karen Wyle rated it really liked it

I thoroughly enjoyed this latest installment in Scalzi's Old Man's War series. In fact, my only minor gripe arises from the fact that this novel was itself originally published in installments. As the serial proceeded, Scalzi apparently felt compelled to insert reminders of various plot elements, as sequels often do. Over the course of something like fourteen installments, these reminders add up and become annoying. I don't know whether Scalzi considered editing them out for the fully-assembled ...more

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Around the Year i...: The Human Division, by John Scalzi	1	13	Jul 24, 2016 12:54PM
Audio-Bibliophiles: July Whispersync deal roundup: Scott Meyer’s Off to Be the Wizard, John Scalzi’s The Human Division, V.E. Schwab’s Vicious, Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds, Richard Ellis Preston, Jason Sheehan, and more	1	6	Jul 27, 2015 12:25PM
I loved this book	1	12	May 29, 2014 12:23AM

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About John Scalzi

John Scalzi, having declared his absolute boredom with biographies, disappeared in a puff of glitter and lilac scent.

(If you want to contact John, using the mail function here is a really bad way to do it. Go to his site and use the contact information you find there.)

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Old Man's War (7 books)

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Quotes from The Human Division

“Captain Sophia Coloma looked every inch of what she was, which was the sort of person who was not here to put up with your shit.” — 5 likes

“I propose a toast. Here’s to being right all the time. May God and history forgive us.” They all clinked glasses to that.” — 4 likes

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Preview — The Human Division by John Scalzi

The Human Division (Old Man's War #5)

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