The Dispatcher

This was a great novella. Quinto does great on the audio narration and the dialog is classic Scalzi. Loved it!

Gotta give it to John Scalzi in that everything he comes up with is unique and interesting. Zachary Quinto also does a great job of narrating. Overall, a really nice and fun listen and well worth throwing on during a roadtrip.

4 star story. Unnecessary foul language, a Scalzi hallmark, loses a star.

4.5

Great story and excellent narration.

This is weird. I actually really liked the book. But i kinda felt like Scalzi had a great idea and then wrote the rest in one evening amd left it like that. It flows and the general idea is pretty great, however the detective story is rather bland and kinda copy paste type. Id read the next part to see how it develops.

A delicious little snack. Not sure why my brain is just seeing things as Netflix mini series rn. But 100% could see this ZQ as Tony Valdez. Not terribly fleshed out, but will def try the next two and see if Scalzi does any additional world-building there. :)

CAWPILE

C-7
A-7
W-7
P-7
I-8
L-8
E-7
Total: 7.29

Well, that was a fun read. Zachary Quinto really elevated the story with his voice acting.

The Dispatcher by John Scalzi is a fantastic audio novella. Imagine if (almost) every murder victim came back. Call it a miracle or weird science, no one knows why. But a new profession emerges, the dispatcher, who kills the dying to ensure they will get to return. Scalzi has created a truly fascinating and original concept in which he then builds an effective thriller. While this book was mostly bereft of the humor I normally anticipate finding in a Scalzi story, I found this work to be highly compelling nonetheless. Quinto's narration was outstanding. Overall this is a wonderful book! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #bookstagram #thedispatcher #johnscalzi #bookreview #audible

This book essentially must be written to be heard. Audiobook is fantastically narrated with good sense of humour. I liked Scalzi's character building and highly recommend to try the audiobook, it's under 3 hours.

A fun novella with an interesting ‘superpower' concept. Death is over, as long as death is done by means of murder. If you are intentionally killed by someone else you reappear where you were a few hours before, back in the same state that you were at that time. With that in mind a new type of agent is created to ‘dispatch' those on the brink of dying and so therefore allow them to reappear and survive.

An intriguing concept that is played through with a detective noir style in this story, where one of these agents tries to find out what has gone wrong with an attempted dispatch which did not work. The whole thing works really well in it novella format and I can see Scalzi has written at least one sequel that I will have to investigate. The writing is fun and engaging, the murky world is interesting and the characters well written. The reasoning behind this deathlessness is never really fully explained, but that lack of explanation is played with in the text itself. It is an interesting concept, if a bit silly, but taking the whole thing on faith leaves an interesting noir drama with a twist.

Zachary Quinto is NOT a good narrator.

3.5 Stars

Like Scalzi's series ‘Lock In', this features a police investigation in a world that has subtly changed from our own. In ‘The Dispatcher', if someone else causes your death you have a 999 times in 1,000 chance to come back, reappearing somewhere you love/feel safe (usually at home in your bed). Our MC is a dispatcher, which is someone who is licenced to purposefully cause death in order to preserve life. For example, you get hit by a truck and you are beyond saving, they'll kill you in order for you to come back with your body restored to pre-truck status.

At the time of the story, dispatchers have been around 8 or 9 years and the phenomenon of returning has been happening for maybe a decade so there's a whole lot of industries taking advantage of dispatchers in different ways. One has gone missing and Tony Valdez (our protag) is convinced to consult with a detective in charge of finding the missing dispatcher.

This isn't a in depth mystery, as there's not enough time for it, but this is a great introductory story for this slightly-altered world that Valdez inhabits. It raises some interesting theological and moral questions along the way that add to the interest. I'd definitely consider a longer novel set in this scenario.

On the audiobook performance, Zachary Quinto has an excellent voice for this sort of work and the performance was great.

A 3.5-star. The premise is intriguing: people who are murdered get to come back to life again, hence dispatchers are employed by the state to kill those who are dying from.accidents to enable them to live again. Within this setting, John Scalzi has created a plausible missing persons (and possible homicide) case involving a billionaires wife and a missing dispatcher. Interested enough to follow through on the sequels within the series.

Very light-weight novella doing Scalzi at his peak: genre-blending noir and scifi with snappy dialogue and easy reading. It's designed to be an audiobook, and probably better in that medium, but I'm busy and this is a 30 minute read v. 3 hour audiobook?

Interesting story, excellently read by Zachary Quinto.

I won't lie. I got this because of [a:Zachary Quinto 2888302 Zachary Quinto https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] and the length. I like short ABs for commuting etc. It didn't disappoint.The gist of the story is that in a non-too-distant future outright murder becomes virtually impossible. Murder victims started reappearing naked as jaybirds at home shortly after the deed was committed. The reason or the how of this phenomenon is never explained but that didn't bother me. It's only been about 10 years since the reincarnations started and these explanations take time. (See The Leftovers, Lost, Les revenants.) However plucky humans have been quick to benefit from the murder loophole creating the profession of Dispatcher. Yes. It's exactly what it sounds like. When someone is in a near death situation a Dispatcher legally “murders” them so that they can go back to where there life/body was a few hours or days before. Dispatchers are licensed and regulated like an EMT worker, but sometimes also move around in less wholesome environments. And the question remains: how do you kill someone when murder has become, in a sense, obsolete? I enjoyed this short novella. In many ways it reminded of the [b:Among the Living 5603414 Among the Living (PsyCop, #1) Jordan Castillo Price https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1375991614s/5603414.jpg 5774782] universe: utterly familiar but entirely different from our reality. Also it takes place in Chicago. I liked that the author made the principals diverse without shouting from the rafters. I like how he got around the “telling” by making the MC have to reasonably explain his profession and the different twists and turns to a police sergeant in the course of an investigation. Overall I freakin' loved Zachary Quinto's narration; not too showy or performed. Just right. I'd absolutely recommend this little morsel to anyone but particularly to the mystery/suspense fans. Its a treat.

Imagine a world where people only die of natural causes and suicides. Murder victims wake up at home in their beds. Dispatchers hang out at hospitals in case an operation goes south so they can “dispatch” the patient back to life. Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher. When one of his colleagues goes missing, the cops start asking him about side jobs and the darker aspect of his line of work. This was a pretty interesting short. It was a very quick read. I received a copy of this book from Net Galley.

Okay, this was a freebie and that no doubt colors how I view the novella. Also, I listened to it as an audio-book. Moves quickly and while the author asks for a fairly large suspension of disbelief, the characters are strong and their arcs are engaging. Nice nugget of pop science fiction.

Executive Summary: A fun short story, and this from someone who doesn't normally like short stories very much. And hey, you can't beat the price!Audiobook: I was familiar with Zachary Quinto the actor, but this is the first time I've listened to an audio book read by him. He does a good job, adding a bit extra to the story I thought. If Mr. Scalzi does more of these, I hope they are able to get Mr. Quinto to read them too.Full ReviewI picked this one up several months back because: 1) I like [a:John Scalzi 4763 John Scalzi https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1407277112p2/4763.jpg]2) Can't beat the price (free!)I kept meaning to get to it, and kept having other group or buddy reads to listen to instead. I finally managed to sneak it in between some other stuff.The core idea was pretty cool. What happens if anyone whose murdered suddenly comes back to life? Well most of the time at least. Enter the dispatchers. Paid professionals whose job it is to “save” your life by murdering you. There is no way that would ever get abused, right?The book is written as a mystery/detective novel of sorts. It's probably more urban fantasy than science fiction. There wasn't anything ground breaking here really, but I really enjoyed the idea behind the story, and since it's a short story, it was over quick.I'll probably pick up the next one (if there is a next one) depending on the price, but I'd be content if this was just a one-off too.

A short but good story. And the narration by Zachary Quinto is very good indeed.
I hope Scalzi will develop this world some more.

I had finished my audiobook for the week, so I decided to get this (free!) short one to entertain myself. The story is quite interesting, if not fleshed out to its fullest, and enjoyable enough, but nothing quite more than that. I definitely wouldn't be against reading more books from this world though.

Essentially it's a mystery set in a world where people can't be murdered... technically. You come back from the dead only if you've been killed and your body is reset to a few hours before your death. Dispatchers are people who are hired to effectively “end people's lives” so they can easily come back if they've, for example, just broken their neck.
Tony Valdez is our main character who starts assisting the police when a fellow Dispatcher disappears.

The Dispatcher is currently free on Audible, so if you're interested, go get it!

Too short to give a higher rating.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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Last year, when he was in Boise, I heard John Scalzi read the first chapter of this book and I've been waiting for this ever since.

It's an Urban Fantasy set in a world where natural or accidental death is possible, but if you're murdered there's an almost 100% possibility that you'll come back to life. Huh? Yeah – heckuva hook, right? There's no explanation for this, it just started – and it may just end at some point. But in the meantime people are taking full advantage of this.

Tony Valdez is a dispatcher – insurance companies and individuals have started hiring dispatchers to “dispatch” someone just before they die, so there's a good chance – a fantastic chance, really – that they'll survive. One of Tony's coworkers has disappeared and a Chicago police detective has drafted him to help her track down his colleague. To find him, they have to look into the dark side of the dispatcher trade and the desperate lengths some will go through to extend the lives of their loved ones or themselves.

It was a fun book to listen to, a story that drew you in and drug you along to the gripping end. But once it was over, and I started thinking about it, all sorts of questions came to mind, not really plot holes, just things that weren't adequately addressed. I think a lot of it was length, if this had been a novel, some of them wouldn't have come up. The more I thought of it, it was almost like this novella was Scalzi's attempt to prove a point/win a bet that, yes, he can write UF. A strongly written, convincing story that entertained from beginning to end – but there was just no heart to it, it just seemed like a writing exercise.

Quinto did a bang-up job – I think I only thought of him as the actor once or twice – he nailed every bit of this. If that whole movie star thing doesn't work out for him, he could have a future doing this sort of thing. I should probably give this an extra star just for his work.

Very entertaining, a great experience – just don't think about it too terribly much.

Really fun story, which moves at a brisk pace, and presents a mystery that does not cheat. Should Scalzi write another story in this world, I'd definitely check it out, and should it get optioned for a film, I'd certainly see it in theaters.

which is also available for free from Audible this month, giving all the more reason to check it out now.