And so we meet again on our episodic journey into the universe of the Old Man’s War series which continues with the release of Walk the Plank, the second chapter of John Scalzi’s forthcoming novel The Human Division. Last week we got a little more than we bargained for with a longer opening which set the stage for new and returning readers. A routine diplomatic mission resulted in a disaster that led to the activation of the B-team and a character introduced in the novel Old Man’s War got to take center stage. This week we get…
Aw geez, if I tell you much of anything it will dissipate the tension of the story! If I say “pirates” and “hostile planet” does it say too much? 🙂
There has been much talk that John Scalzi was influenced by his television work on Stargate Universe and that could be seen in The B-Team with an opening that gripped the reader early on and did not let up until the climactic finish. Walk the Plank takes a dramatic turn in that it is presented in the form of a recorded conversation between a small group of medical staff and a severely wounded man who seems to have appeared on their colony from out of nowhere. The Tor dot com website quotes John Scalzi regarding the format of this week’s episode:
“It offered an immediacy that a more formal, conventional structure wouldn’t allow. I wanted the reader standing right in the middle of the events—as close as you can get without being in first person. A dialogue-only presentation allowed for that.
Also, you know, I like playing with rules. One of the big ‘rules’ is ‘show, don’t tell.’ Well, I wanted to test the proposition that telling could be just as engaging as showing.”
Walk the Plank is significantly shorter than The B-Team. It was fun to wake up Tuesday morning to see the episode waiting for me on my Kindle and it went by all too quickly. Some interesting elements were unveiled and while there were a few lines of dialogue that felt awkward (mostly in the form of cues for the reader that the conversation was taking place in one hospital room setting), the story told by the wounded man built tension nicely. As readers we are asked to accept each chapter, or episode, as a stand alone story and yet it is hard to level too much criticism at what was a weaker story by comparison to the last with the knowledge that details revealed here will come into play in important ways as the overall story unfolds thus affecting the reader’s assessment. I believe this is one of those deceptively simple stories in that there are things mentioned in subtle ways that will be woven into future installments in greater detail.
This is so much fun, I’m glad to be along for the ride.
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Previous episode review: The B-Team.
