Saturday, January 5, 2019

The Observers by John Scalzi

If you look at my bookshelf at Booklikes or check out my 2019 read at Goodreads it would look like a scoreboard for John Scalzi.  The reason is that I started reading the Old Man's War series by Scalzi and the 5th book is The Human Division, which consists of 13 short stories.  I cheated a little and read the liner notes of the 6th book, The End of All Things and all these short stories from The Human Division seem to set the background for book 6.  I see some short stories or novellas after the 6th book so I don't know if there are to be any books after this.  I guess I'll find out later.

The Observers is about a group of Earthers that come aboard the ancient Clarke, a Corvette series ship over 50 years old that is also very small for a CU ship.  While observing, the death of the lead observer happens and now it is up to the 'B Team', introduced in the 1st story of the Human Division, to solve. Lieutenant Harry Wilson, a CDF technical advisor comes o the conclusion that somebody is setting the Colonial Union up for murdering the observer and saves the day.

Harry Wilson is one of the original old farts, a group of 75-year-olds that came from Earth to join the CDF and has been in 3(?) of the books so far and it looks like he will be one of the main protagonists in book 6.

The main reason for this review is if you have read my review this much, then you should know that you should not assume like I did and just think of The Human Division as just a collection of short stories. While you could probably skip this book, a lot of back stories and questions will probably be answered.  But then again, I haven't even started reading the 6th book, The End of All Things.



The Observers by John Scalzi
Book 9 in The Human Division Series
Episode 9 in book 5 of the Old Man's War

No comments:

Post a Comment