The Shattering Peace

Old Man's War, Book 7

By: John Scalzi

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

After a decade, acclaimed science fiction master John Scalzi returns to the galaxy of the Old Man's War series with the long awaited seventh book, The Shattering Peace

THE PEACE IS SHATTERING

For a decade, peace has reigned in interstellar space. A tripartite agreement between the Colonial Union, the Earth, and the alien Conclave has kept the forces of war at bay, even when some would have preferred to return to the fighting and struggle of former times. For now, more sensible heads have prevailed – and have even championed unity.

But now, there is a new force that threatens the hard-maintained peace: The Consu, the most advanced intelligent species humans have ever met, are on the cusp of a species-defining civil war. This war is between Consu factions... but nothing the Consu ever do is just about them. The Colonial Union, the Earth and the Conclave have been unwillingly dragged into the conflict, in the most surprising of ways.

Gretchen Trujillo is a mid-level diplomat, working in an unimportant part of the Colonial Union bureaucracy. But when she is called to take part in a secret mission involving representatives from every powerful faction in space, what she finds there has the chance to redefine the destinies of humans and aliens alike... or destroy them forever.

©2025 John Scalzi (P)2025 Audible, Inc.

Some character voices are a bit silly.

Great continuation of a story. My only immediate dislike, which is a little too strong of a word to convey my actual degree of annoyance was the voice actor. Main voice and alien characters sounded fine but adult human male characters felt like the voice actor was a 10 year old boy trying to sound like their grizzled grandfather.

Clicking in the narration is so annoying

It's like scratching on a chalkboard. I realize the text probably had clicks in it, but constantly hearing horrible clicking sounds makes listening to this SO UNPLEASANT I must shout. Read the text version instead. Narrators: Please don't do this to us. Authors: Please clue in your narrators if you can to not continually torture their listeners. I understand the clicks are supposed to emphasize that an alien is speaking, but it is not worth this suffering.

The story was good, the narration was bad

When the narrator uses the 'Marion(sp?)" voice she attacks "p" and "b" consonants so hard that it sounds like she's literally spitting on her mic. When she uses the 'Garvin' voice she add's a 'hay-babe' cheek double click at the end of each sentence. When the book scene has both of those characters dialoguing then the recording becomes beyond ludicrous. It's so absurd you're immediately out of the story, and that's what makes it terrible narration.

The narrator's voice is nice without the extras, and the scenes with the problematic character's aren't the majority of the story, but still their dialogue makes up enough of this story that I can say the narration ruined this audiobook.

0/10 on the narration of this one, but if Tavia Gilbert ever enters a beatboxing competition bet my money on her.

Sarcasm and playing dirty save the universe

This is a classic Scalzi book with all the usual laughs and depths. I enjoyed the characters and the problems. I wish for all of us that we could disarm ourselves so neatly of our mass destructive capabilities

The performance

Enjoyed the book. However would’ve appreciated a bit more consciousness focus. Nonetheless it was a great story