The Human Division - John Scalzi

   2013; 493 pages.  Book 5 (out of 6) in the “Old Man’s War” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Military Sci-Fi; Science Fiction.  Overall Rating: 6*/10.

 

    One of the Colonial Union’s (“CU”) spaceships has disappeared!

 

    Okay, that’s not totally unheard-of.  The galaxy is a humongous place, with lots of civilizations and lots of commerce, so it’s not surprising that there are lots of space pirates preying on far-flung commercial freighters, easily avoiding the too-few patrolling military vessels.

 

   But this spaceship was different: it was carrying a top-tier CU Ambassador to a top-secret rendezvous with an alien race called the Utche to open negotiations concerning mutual defense.  The CU ship arrived first, and while waiting for the Utche, suddenly vanished!

 

    Of course, it’s also possible they were ambushed by some unknown enemy and vaporized into nothingness.  We better send a replacement ship, with a replacement ambassador there right away.  It’s vital that we commence developing that treaty with the Utche.

 

    And while we’re in the neighborhood, let’s do a search for the missing ship’s “black box”.  If we find one, it’ll be a sign that someone obliterated the ship with a loss of all hands aboard.  And then we'll have to figure out who did such a dastardly deed.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Human Division is the fifth, and penultimate, book in John Scalzi’s space opera series, “Old Man’s War”.  Its main focus is the galactic rivalry between the Colonial Union, mostly humanoids, and the Conclave, a vast confederation of several hundred alien races, almost all of them non-humanoids.  Surprisingly, at least for those who aren’t reading the series in order, Earth has yet to commit either of the two alliances, ever since finding out that the CU had been using them as a "breeding planet" for a very long time.

 

    Due to the book’s structure (more on this later), there are a whole bunch of characters to meet and greet, but the six main ones are Wilson and Schmidt, Coloma and Abumwe, and Egan and Rigney.  I found the friendly banter among all of them immensely entertaining.  The character development of both the major and minor players is excellent, and thanks to the diverse makeup of the Conclave, we are introduced to more than a dozen fascinating extraterrestrial species, albeit often in just a cursory manner.

 

    The two main plotlines are: a.) who is manipulating the enmity between the Conclave and the Colonial Union, and why?; and b.) will the Earth and the Colonial Union kiss and make up?  The book’s title alludes to the latter plotline.

 

    I liked the “talking baseball” dialogue used to determine if certain suspects were indeed Earthlings as they claimed.  I chuckled at what tripped them up – they thought the Chicago Cubs had yet to win a World Series after more than a century of frustration.  In Scalzi’s timeline, the Cubs had triumphed two years earlier, thus tripping up the suspects.  In actuality, although the “Cubs curse” was still in effect when Scalzi wrote The Human Division in 2013, they won it all in 2016, which invalidates this portion of Scalzi’s story.

 

    The ending is suitably tense and exciting, but also disappointing in that it leaves both main plotlines unresolved.  Further, the overarching storyline about life-and-death in the “Old Man’s War” future, hasn’t been advanced one bit.  I agree with other reviewers, The Human Division is really just an anthology containing 15 short stories, all set in this galactic world that Scalzi created.  The book’s title should be something like “Tales of the Colonial Union”.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Idiosyncratic (adj.) : peculiar; individual; distinctive.

Others: Legerdemain (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 1,517 ratings and 668 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.08*/5, based on 30,280 ratings and 1,653 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I’m ruminating on my life, and karma,” Wilson said.  “And what I must have done in a previous life to deserve being spit on by an alien species as part of a diplomatic ceremony.”

    “It’s because the Farnutian culture is so tied to the sea,” Schmidt said.  “Exchanging the waters of their homeland is a symbolic way to say our fates are now tied together.”

    “It’s also an excellent way to spread the Farnutian equivalent of smallpox,” Wilson said.

    “That’s why we got shots,” Schmidt said.  (pg. 12)

 

    “We just got our new mission assigned to us.”

    “Really,” Wilson said.  “Does this one involve me being held hostage?  Or possibly being blown up in order to find a mole in the Department of State?  Because I’ve already done those.”

    “I’m the first to acknowledge that the last couple of missions we’ve had have not ended on what are traditionally considered high notes,” Schmidt said.  Wilson smirked.  “But I think this one may get us back on the winning track.  You know of the Icheloe?”

    “Never heard of them,” Wilson said.

    “Nice people,” Schmidt said.  “Look a little like a bear mated with a tick, but we can’t all be beautiful.”  (pg. 220)

 

“How do we feel about ghosts?” (…) “I prefer my dead to stay dead.”  (pg. 348)

    Other than the major issue of the “anthology” aspect of The Human Division, which we've already discussed, the quibbles are minor.  The writing is clean - just 7 cusswords in the first 10% of the book and no R-rated situations that I recall.

 

    Some of the episodes – specifically numbers 2, 10, and 11 – are really tangential to the main storyline.  Episode 10 is particularly irrelevant, chronicling Hart Schmidt’s going home to spend the holiday “Harvest Day” with his family.

 

    There are a couple typos – soliders/soldiers (pg. 86) and It it/If it (pg. 444) which is embarrassing for a publishing-house-issued paperback.  But we’re talking about Tor Books here, and their proofreaders have a long history of shoddy editing.

 

    It was nice to see General Gau show up as a recurring character, but sadly, neither John Perry nor Zoe make even a cameo appearance.  And lastly and leastly: the goat dies.

 

    6 Stars.  I get the feeling that The Human Division was a literary experiment by John Scalzi.  If so, then for me as well as a number of other reviewers, it fell flat.  Plotlines go unresolved, dozens of pages are wasted on tangential stories, and there’s not even any continuity from one episode to the next.  What saves this book, however, is John Scalzi’s writing and storytelling skills – the guy is one heck of a gifted author.  I have one more book to go in this series; here's hoping it isn't subject to any writing tomfoolery.