I kind of liked The Android’s Dream and Redshirts by John Scalzi. A couple weeks ago I needed some light-ish reading so I picked up Old Man’s War, and the jaws closed on my wallet.
It’s the first book of a multi-part space-opera series. The aliens are mostly satisfactorily evil, the solution to the impossibility-of-coherent-space-opera problem is clever, and the people in the stories are interesting.
There are irritants — for example, the only character so far to suggest, you know, talking to the aliens before shooting, is reviled as a blowhard and quickly disposed of. But still, good story, clever premise, and I confess to enjoying space opera.
But... there are five books in the series, and they’re priced pretty cheap on Kindle, and Amazon one-click ordering is right there, and... well, I defy you to finish one and not immediately buy the next. I’m on the third volume at the moment.
Fortunately, I’m a little late to the game in that I didn’t get sucked into buying The Human Division, the latest in the series, piecewise in thirteen fragments.
I’m not actually mad at either Scalzi or Amazon; I’m getting good entertainment value for money. But I am in awe at the effortlessness with which successive instalments of cash are being whisked out of my wallet. In the hands of someone evil, this could be dangerous.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Bud Gibson (Jun 02 2013, at 12:11)
The interesting thing is that the source formatting for these books is based on web standards. Kindle8 is "derived from" html5 and css. Yet, monetization is achieved via a proprietary distribution system. The way to make money off the web is to put a fence around it. That's always been the way, but this one seems particularly effective.
[link]
From: Zellyn Hunter (Jun 02 2013, at 17:04)
Ouch. This just happened to me with the Thursday Next books...
[link]
From: Kevin Marks (Jun 03 2013, at 02:31)
The real trap of the Human Division was the 13 weekly installments that fill up your kindle browser.
[link]
From: Lucian (Jun 03 2013, at 04:22)
And the it all fails horribly if you happen to not live in the US :( For example, "The Android's Dream" is not available for me to buy.
I really, really hate such arbitrary limits.
[link]
From: Jim Robinson (Jun 03 2013, at 05:12)
But Tim, it should be clear to everyone that John Scalzi *is* evil. Just ask Wil Wheaton. :)
For myself, I delayed looking at the book until the complete set of 13 chapters were available for purchase as a single unit, though I now see reviews that indicate the final chapter may end on a cliff hanger...
[link]
From: Andrew (Jun 03 2013, at 10:16)
If you liked Old Man's War I highly recommend Forever War by Joe Haldeman. For my money a much deeper and more satisfying look at what life would be like for a regular human soldier in an interstellar war. Or just wait until Ridley Scott gets done with his movie adaptation.
[link]