"Equilibrium.'

As well as the creativity of his stories, I love John Scalzi's often dry humour and his use of conversation to both develop character and forward the story (and this time with only a brief 'he said, she said ' overload). The whole feels vibrant and puts the reader in the heart of he tale, skilfully guiding a way through the intricacies of mind games. Just brilliant and such a pleasure to read..
The End of all Things comprises four novellas set in the Old Man's War universe as the Union is falling apart, humanity itself threatened and the Conclave is being undermined by the new upstarts, the ruthless Equilibrium. The titles are:
- The Life of the Mind
- This Hollow Union
- Can Long Endure
- To Stand or Fall
Plus John Scalzi himself introduces a short, alternative version of The Life of the Mind, an unfinished snippet quite different from the original or is it, really?

Narration is split between the really excellent William Dufris, who performs the first and fourth stories with clarity, wit and unmistakable individual character voices, and David Gilbert, who reads stories two and three. She reads well but, unfortunately given the high level of conversation she needs to perform, she is unable to provide the much needed differentiation between protagonists, thus making her sections more difficult to follow. This, combined with a slight nasal twang and general lack of verbal colour, caused this reader to have to rewind and re-listen as my mind wandered into long, non retentive blocks.

Above all, this book of shorts reminded me of the earlier John Salzi novels and made me determined to go back and revisit them. It has been too long ...
Recommended.

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Vintage Scalzi

I am giving the narration five stars but the book was so compelling I finished almost all of it on my Kindle. The ending is a bit trite, but I can forgive that because the narrative and characterisation are so good throughout.

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Brings the series to a close

As others have noted, this is a sequence of four interlinked stories told from different perspectives. They do bring the series to an end. I understood but didn’t enjoy the change of reader for two of the stories so gave only 4 stars for performance.

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great finish

enjoyed this series a lot and finished well with all characters getting a good amount of screen time.
narrated well all the way through.

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A final stop to a great series!

It was good to reach the end of the story arc of this great series of adventures of humanity in space. I didn't give it five stars simply because I wasn't sure if I liked the jumping around or patching together of different segments with different readers. I preferred the continuity of one reader and one story. This almost felt like an end-filler packaged with bits and pieces from the cutting room floor (which the final chapter actually was). Nonetheless, the story did have an ending, and it was a good one. I enjoyed my time with all the characters. The whole story concept was well-thought-out and an enjoyable. If you like space adventures with human (and alien) interaction beyond physical fighting, the series is a creative journey of space travel, politics, diplomacy, cunning and intrigue, and emotion and relationships.

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A series of vignettes

A series of vignettes from the Old Man’s War universe that untidily brings the series to an end. OK but one for the completists. As Scalzi very honestly acknowledges in the bonus audio from him at the end - including an alternative version of a story included in this same volume (!) he struggled to write this saga to a conclusion , and manages, but only just. A quiet ending.

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Good, but not the best of this series

I love the Old Man's War series and have read most of them twice. This one was a bit bland compared to the rest, though it was also good, but it may also be that I've just read too much of this series. It seemed to cover a lot from some older books under another angle. The most interesting part was the brain in a box part.
One thing that tends to stick out is that in many cases the the characters seem to meld together or act alike. It is not so much what they do, but how they get to their conclusions. Also the tempo how people react, seems superfast compared to real life people, but this may also be the "fault" of the reader. At the same time who would like to listen to a book where you have to wait for next sentence for several seconds. So after all it was a good listen and I'll be waiting for the next one.

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Excellent series of books

Could not stop listening this series once I had them all in my library. Brilliant Sci-fi, great universe (which I'd like to hear more of). Great narration for all the books.

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To finish up the saga

Performance: Changing narrator after a few chapters is incredibly jarring. A narrator sets the tone of a book, makes or breaks the audiobook. I'd rather have a new book started with a new narrator than a few chapters in. In this case we went from William Dufris to Tavia Gilbert so the contrast is stark. Not that Tavia Gilbert is a bad narrator but she is a very different one.
Story: it finishes the saga up and when you've come this far you will want to listen to the conclusion. The story is short and the audiobook has been padded with alternate story lines making it seem longer than it really is.

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ok

still good to hear story's from the other charters but it didn't really work for me

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