Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Old Man's War was a great read, not only because John Scalzi has a great writing style, but also because as we get older, it would be nice to be able to trade your old body for a new one. So it resonated with me, as I'm sure it did for you as well. A couple of years ago, Scalzi tried something new. Publishing a book one chapter a week at a time. I was so starved for something new in OMW I downloaded the first chapter as I sat down to eat lunch. I was only half done with lunch when I finished reading the chapter. Dang, I thought, that was short. I thought the other chapters would be longer, but instead, many were shorter. Still, I plugged along, spending 99 cents for short chapters, consoling myself that at least the plot was good. But as I neared the end, I wondered how Scalzi would wrap things up because there were a lot of loose ends. He didn't. He ended the book with a cliffhanger, which meant there was at least one more book to come out to finish the story. Had I known that before I started reading it, I would have been able to adjust my expectations. Instead, the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth, as though I'd been cheated. That book was The Human Division. So now we get to the sequel: The End of All Things Rather than being one complete book, it's 4 novellas sold as a book. The first novella reminded me of The Hobbit in that Scalzi painstakingly described the setting for pages and pages. The first time I read The Hobbit, I gave up after the first 50 pages because it was all a description of the shire, but there was no action. Boring described it. Fortunately, I gave the Hobbit another chance and the story picked up after about a hundred pages. So, in Scalzi's book, when the adventure began I settled in for a good read. Which only lasted a few pages. Because that novella had just finished. The other 3 novellas were written in much the same way. The only good thing about finishing the book is that it wrapped up the cliffhanger from The Human Division. But I'm done with Scalzi for the near future. I love his writing style, but I didn't like the way he jerked me around these last couple of years. I get the feeling he was done with the OMW arc a few years ago, but decided to cash on a couple sequels too many. I'm not going to say I'll never read anything else he writes down the road, but I'll definitely read a number of reviews before I give another of his books a chance.