Review: Did I download the right book?
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 03 19, 2013
I thought I was downloading yet another installment in John Scalzi's exciting series "Human Division," which chronicles the adventures and intrigue surrounding the schism between Earth and the Colonial Union. What I got instead was a weird, dry, short, out-of-place snippet about Hart Schmidt's rich family.I've read every single book and short story by Scalzi - and I've even read most of the archives of his famous blog, Whatever. This was the first time I was bored while reading a piece of Scalzi's fiction. It actually took some effort to keep reading (as opposed to giving up and going to sleep).Every now and then, Scalzi mixes genres and tries something different in his books. For example, the second half of "Fuzzy Nation" seemed like a half-baked episode of Law and Order, what with all the legal debates, the omnipotent judge, etc. One of the codas at the end of "Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas" made me wonder if Scalzi didn't secretly dream of writing a romance novel that wouldn't feature any science fiction at all. (And maybe he will, at some point.)Judging by their commercial success, both of those novels were successful despite (or perhaps because) of these genre-mixing experiments. I don't think this will be the case with the 10th chapter of "Human Division." It's a pretty great, safe way to experiment with a new genre because fans (such as yours truly) will download this chapter no matter what. Even so, it feels like a sucker punch. This chapter doesn't advance the story one bit, it doesn't feature a single alien, it doesn't explain what exactly is going on with politics on Schmidt's home planet (did the new developments have something to do with Conclave?) - it doesn't feature anything except for a dull and mind-numbingly boring expose of the irrelevant personal life or an irrelevant background character.I'm not the kind of reviewer who would complain about losing 99 cents. I just wish I could get back the time I'd spent reading this week's chapter...