The Human Division

It's been fun to watch John Scalzi grow as an author over the course of this series. It started off as pretty basic military sci-fi (albeit with a fun protagonist/narrator), and has become a sandbox for him to slowly start experimenting. In this book, he decides to play with structure a bit and composes the novel out of thirteen inter-connected short-stories. I love when authors decide to take chances like this, and I think it paid off big here.

The short stories mostly follow a diplomatic team as they race around the galaxy trying to form unions with other alien species in the wake of the rift between the Colonial Union and Earth. Some of them are longer, some are shorter. Some of the stories aren't about them at all and their relevance only becomes clear later. All in all, I'm impressed with what Scalzi pulls off here. I'm getting excited to read more of his stuff (lucky for me he's nearly done with a new trilogy that I'll be able to dive into when I finish this series)

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