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The B-Team

The Human Division, Episode 1

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The B-Team

By: John Scalzi
Narrated by: William Dufris
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About this listen

Colonial Union Ambassador Ode Abumwe and her team are used to life on the lower end of the diplomatic ladder. But when a high-profile diplomat goes missing, Abumwe and her team are last-minute replacements on a mission critical to the Colonial Union’s future. As the team works to pull off their task, CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson discovers there’s more to the story of the missing diplomats than anyone expected... a secret that could spell war for humanity.

The B-Team is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

Listen to the complete edition of The Human Division, the fifth full-length book by John Scalzi in the Old Man's War universe.

©2012 John Scalzi (P)2013 Audible, Inc. Adventure First Contact Military Science Fiction Space Opera

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While the story is good, but not brilliant, what makes this book is the narrator, he is just INCREDIBLE, from the inflections of his tones during descriptions of actions, to the way that the characters talk, the diversity of the characters, I can't believe how good he is - I would find other books that he reads just to hear how he reads them!



I will be getting the other parts of this series to see where the story goes (quite a good setting), and to see where the characters develop, I'm loving Wilson, especially the way he's given depth by William Dufris' reading



Since this is small & quite cheap, it's a good way to dip into a new story, but a fabulous way to find a great narrator



If the story was more engaging this would get 5 stars, but as it is I'll give it 4, and most of that is from the reading

Good story, INCREDIBLE narrator

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Scalzi is on top form here. This is an involving and suspenseful story which kept me lhooked all the way through. Highly recommended.

Great story, well narrated

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Good interesting short story, good humor, interesting characters and plot. Audio quality is OK, all words are heard clearly. It is well read with different accents given to each character to the extent that the word 'said' need not be used so often and it is used a lot, annoyingly so at times. But still a good listen on my journey to work.

I enjoyed this

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It made me chuckle quite a lot - there's a fair amount of humour in it. This is helped by the narrator who does a good job. As someone else mentioned, the word "said" can become extremely annoying - and it IS unnecessary on quite such a scale. I have (perhaps rashly) bought the rest of the episodes whilst on sale as the length of the stories will be good for a short trip/listen.

Amusing and entertaining

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An interesting story and good characters saved the rather clunky writing and narrating styles.

As previous reviewers have noted there is a lot of repetition of "said" - "[character name] said... [other character name] said..." and on and on for large sections of dialogue. It felt like the author wasn't confident enough that his writing would make it obvious who was speaking and chose to state it with every line so there could be no confusion. Instead it just distracted from what the characters are actually saying and is especially wearying when each line of dialogue is short.

This idiosyncracy also crept into non-dialogue prose: "the object was displayed on the display [... ] he saw it clearly on the display". I'm not a fan of writers who have obviously over-consulted the thesaurus for the sake of it but sentences like that can really distract from the listening experience and jarred me out of paying attention to the story as I mentally winced :-)

The narrator, while good overall, had a strange habit of *really* enunciating some sounds (very hard Ts and Ks) while mumbling others ("earth" sounded like "er").

Despite all this I did enjoy this audiobook and will be purchasing further episodes in the series. Now that I know what to expect from both author and narrator I think I'll be better able to ignore their personal tics and have a more immersive experience.

Good with a few caveats

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The story is simple, but interesting. It reminds a little bit the of the stories of the galactic diplomat James Retief (Keith Laumer).

I'm looking forward on how the authors develops the plot and the figures!

Quite good!

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Scalzi has some great ideas for stories, but his habit of adding he/she said to the end of almost every line of dialogue becomes very irritating.

He said, she said, they all said.

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This is the second audio book/story i have listened too, and i have to say that so far i am rather impressed by audiobooks. I chose this "Book Segment" due to its price more than anything. it was cheap and therefore i could experience another story in this format without it costing a small fortune, less about pointless background and more about "The B Team by John Scalzi Narrated by William Dufris "



Story - In this short story Scalzi provides an interesting (it wasn't hugely original or unpredictable), relatively fast paced, introduction to the "The Human Division" and the "Old Mans War Universe." I felt the story was clever and explained some complicated ideas (How the ships "skip" the idea Scalzi uses instead of warp speed or the jump gates in babylon 5) really well and never dips into complex explanations. Which at least for me, is a real blessing.

my only criticisms really are: 1) i wasn't really surprised by anything and could see how the story was going to pan out. 2) This is probably due to the short story nature i felt that although i got to know Wilson and the other central characters reasonably well (and i hope these characters return through future episodes) i feel the wider universe is still a bit of a mystery to me...



Narration - I agree with some of the other reviewers, William Dufris is a fantastic narrator that captures the mood and feeling of the story and then relays that back, whether it be a conversation or description. i will be looking for other books that he narrates as he is a pleasure to listen too.



I immediately downloaded and listened to the next volume which is even shorter but just as sweet. This series is starting off well i recommend!

Short But Sweet!

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Pretty much a short story, this took a morning to listen to and I quite enjoyed it, I think I'd have enjoyed it less as a traditional book since the constant (and I mean constant) "he said" lines would likely have driven me to distraction. Oddly, read out loud, that works better than it does when you're reading it.



An enjoyable, if very short, introduction to a series.

An enjoyable short sci-fi story

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This is a great short story, in a collection of intertwined short stories.

I will look for more title by this author.

Great mini series

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