Customer Rating: 
Summary: go audible, it's a different world.
Comment: No, I haven't read it. I bought the audible version and was blown away! Now i love to read, but some books are just better when well read in audiobook format. I've read books then purchased the audio version and let me tell you, when it's good it's great! This was an outstanding audiobook, the narration was superb and the characters really came to life. There are some books that are ruined by bad narrators, and even more that are enhanced, this one has been played so many times that my mp3 player groans in disgust. I drive for a living so audiobooks are an important staple for me, with a library of over four hundred titles i have multiple ipods in service, this book is on each.
If you've already read the book, try it at audible. It's an addictive habit.
Customer Rating: Summary: Old Man's War, Good Indeed
Comment: The question you need to ask yourself about this book isn't whether you should read it, it's why haven't you read it yet? Old Man's War is very nearly a perfect Sci-Fi book. Everything is in place, and artfully done.
The book starts out be clubbing you over the head with its incredibly compelling main character, in the best possible sense. John Perry is so relatable, so human, that you might wonder partway into the first chapter whether you've accidentally picked some sort of biography instead of a work of Science Fiction. John doesn't go out of his way to explain gadgetry or how his world is different from yours, he just lives his life, and lets the explanation come naturally.
The universe that John Perry eventually involves himself in is very well thought out, and always intriguing. There are twists and turns, and conventions are constantly thrown out the airlock. I would rather spoil as little as possible, so the short of it is that this is fairly hard Sci-Fi on a galactic scale, with plenty of starships and war. Throughout that, however, there's always a healthy sense of character and the overall universe. The technology is in place to further the story, and not the other way around.
There have been numerous comparisons to the Robert Heinlein, and in my opinion those comparisons are both completely on and completely off. They're on in that Scalzi is incredibly capable at adapting modern-day politics and drama into a more futuristic setting. This makes for not only compelling reading, but something that seems eerily possible. The comparisons are off in that Scalzi doesn't go off into pages and pages of thinly veiled political rants- much more of the book is direct experience, with a lot less space spent on treatises and exposition.
Old Man's War is my favorite Sci-Fi book of the year, and I say that after having just finished works written by both Heinlein and Larry Niven. Scalzi easily equals either of these genre heavyweights. I immediately picked up the two sequels, The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony after reading this book, and I can assure you that you might as well do that yourself, because you're going to want to finish the whole story arc. There are two spinoff works, The Sagan Diary and Zoe's Tale, that are not critical to the main arc, and that I can't recommend as strongly.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who's at all interested in Sci-Fi.
