Listened to the audiobook with William Dufris – the narrator was not the problem. 

Oof, sometimes you decide to try out something new (”that’s a Hugo nominee, what’s the worst that could happen?”), and then this happens. Old Man’s War was definitely not for me.

I could list quite a few things I disliked – like the plot really only getting rolling in the final quarter of the book, or the completely unearned Marty Stu-ness and paper-thin character of the protagonist.

I could bring up that whenever the protagonist runs into a challenge or a possible antagonist, they are simply removed a couple of pages on.

I could mention that whatever is happening is constantly interspersed with lots of long combat scenes that are completely tensionless and are just no fun to read – Old Man’s War feels like a 14-year-old having a power fantasy while playing a shooter video game.

I could bring up that Old Man’s War seems to be glorifying violence (or attempting to make violence funny?).

I might wonder why this novel’s attempts at humour constantly fall flat (though I might have the answer which is that I just don’t find alien gut splattering the pages laughable).

I could continue, but I think I got my point across.

Old Man’s War got under my skin in more than one way, but perhaps the most frustrating is that it forgets its premise about a third of the way in – the novel starts with some mystery on how old folks will be fit to fight a war – but once that mystery gets resolved, the fact that the characters are supposedly all 75 years old stops playing any role in the story. That’s frustrating, but it is especially annoying because of the book’s title, which makes it at least appear as though it would matter.

Overall, the novels just drips in poor sci-fi B-movie energy.

Old Man’s War felt like Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, but without any of the originality or the (admittedly, deeply problematic but still) philosophy;

It felt like Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers movie adaptation without any of the irony;

It felt like Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon without any of the thought spent on any of the implications of the possibilities introduced by the sci-fi elements of the plot;

It even felt like Warhammer 40.000 without any of the shameless over the top grimdark bullshit that makes that setting compelling.

In short: Old Man’s War just felt extremely derivative, a rehash of old tropes with nothing new to add – and neither the plot nor the characters can save it since those, too, are unoriginal in the extreme.

Looking at some of Scalzi’s other writing, I see a couple of satirical takes on well-worn sci-fi tropes. I’ve seen people online argue that Old Man’s War somehow satirises Starship Troopers. Perhaps I’m not smart enough to get it, but I don’t get how taking a trope, playing it straight, but removing the (again, admittedly sometimes icky) philosophy is satire. But perhaps more importantly, that has also already been done: the Paul Verhoeven movie adaptation of Starship Troopers exists (and existed at the time Old Man’s War was written) and it does not feel that dissimilar, just a lot more scathing.

I disliked Old Man’s War rather badly, so I’m not continuing the trilogy – but I am still open to giving Scalzi another shot. Perhaps I should find something that is more explicitely a satire and see if that works for me?