It had been much too long since I had read an Old Man’s War book. I bought this one for my brother when it came out a couple years ago and hadn’t gotten around to reading it myself. With the latest installment of the series having just come out a few weeks ago, I figured it was time to get caught up.
This book was so much fun! If you’ve ever read anything by John Scalzi, you know what to expect. His main characters are all pretty much the same (white/green, male, middle class, nice guys with a sarcastic sense of humor – so, Scalzi).
The first three books of the series (Old Man’s War, Ghost Brigade, and The Last Colony) all focus on John Perry as the protagonist. The fourth book, Zoe’s Tale is a retelling of The Last Colony from the perspective of Perry’s adoptive daughter, Zoe. The Human Division leaves Perry entirely and mostly follows his friend, Harry Wilson. They met and became friends when they both left Earth at age 75 to join the Colonial Union (CU), which gave them new bodies and a 25% chance of survival after 10 years. Once they had completed 10 years of service, they could choose to leave the service or remain active.
Twelve years after joining, Wilson is still active, but he’s doing less fighting aliens and more science stuff. Due to some bad policies that became public knowledge, the CU is doing some serious backpedaling. Instead of fighting aliens in order to gain new territories, it’s trying to use more diplomacy and actually get along with everyone. This is not the CU’s preferred method, but it doesn’t have a whole lot of options right now.
My brother, who read the book before me, described it as more a series of short stories than a novel. I can see where he got that idea, especially given the fact it was published in serial form online before the book came out, but I disagree. The book definitely still maintains a cohesive element. We watch Wilson and his pals go on a number of diplomatic missions that may seem fairly unrelated, but they all maintain the underlying tension of “We really need everything to go right or the human race may go extinct in a few decades.” Everything that happens in this book relates directly to things that happened in the previous books of the series and their consequences.
Scalzi’s writing is as crisp as ever, although I still wish he would use fewer dialogue tags. He recently stated on his blog that he will be doing just that, so I’m really looking forward to the latest installment of the series to see if that holds true. Even if it doesn’t, I’m still looking forward to reading his new book because I want to see how (or if) the CU gets itself out of this mess. If it doesn’t manage to smooth everything over, I’m anxious to see if things will go as badly for the human race as everyone says they will.
What about you guys? Any other series you’ve been reading that lives up to expectation? I want to hear all about it!
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