Review: The “Old Man’s War” Series by John Scalzi

When I got my Kindle, the first book I went for was John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War.  I had been told two things about it: that it was a counterpoint to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and that it was awesome.  What I was not told, however, was that Old Man’s War was the first in a 4-book series; I thought it was a stand-alone novel.

So when I started, I just assumed that I was getting in for a short ride and then moving on.  I was wrong.

But I was wrong in that really good way, you know?  It turns out that the Old Man’s War series now rests as one of my favorite series of all time, having finished the  main trilogy on my Kindle within a week of starting to read.

• Old Man’s War

There’s a lot to love about the series.  The first book—the one from which the series draws its name—is told from the first-person perspective of John Perry, a quick-witted and sarcastic 75 year old.  We meet him as he is joining the army, or more accurately, the Colonial Defense Force (CDF).  Perry joins the CDF because they promise to make him either young again or extend his life for a 2 to 10 year stint in the military, though they never tell him how.

The how is fun: they transfer his consciousness into a green-skinned (chlorophyll in the skin!), genetically enhanced clone of himself.  He then goes off to fight a war in the cosmos that he didn’t even know existed a week prior.

Old Man’s War is a quick, fun read.  We get to learn about John and the CDF’s war at the same time as he is shuttled around, fighting wherever the higher-ups decide more grunts are needed.  Because of the way the narrative is set up, it’s almost like reading a short story collection where each story is told by the same narrator, only a different battle on a different planet versus a different alien race.  It’s fast and frantic; Scalzi does a great job of actually making the aliens alien instead of recolored humans with brow-ridges (sorry Star Trek, you know I love you anyway).

• The Ghost Brigades

Since the first novel was so much fun, I immediately downloaded the second: The Ghost Brigades.  And I was shocked.  Instead of being first-person inside John Perry’s head, it was a traditional third-person narrative following around one of the characters from OMW I figured would be peripheral at best (boy, was I wrong!).  Readers don’t even meet the main protagonist until roughly 1/3 into the book.

It was a clear departure from what made me love Old Man’s War, but I persevered, and I’m very glad I did.  Jared Dirac, the protag we don’t meet for a while, is every bit as interesting as John Perry, just in a different way.  He sees the world in a way that a 75 year old sarcastic soldier cannot, and that really grounds the novel.

One thing I have to praise The Ghost Brigades for is its first chapter.  It was brilliant.  I won’t ruin it for you, but let me just say that Scalzi manages to throw a wrench in the gears even that early on with a twist that I really did not see coming.  It’s wacky fun and makes me appreciate him as a storyteller for being able to do something so unexpected.  Also, what gets me about it is that there is no way that I can think of for this device to be done on film, which makes me smile.  As much as I am a TV/film geek, there’s a reason books are my favorites.

The action scenes are just as prevalent in Brigades as in the first book, and they play out just as well in third-person.  While the first one was mostly action with a little politics thrown in for good measure, the second installment tries to balance the two more.  While never distracting, the political intrigue of the CDF and its interaction with the other alien races becomes a far more elaborate and fleshed-out. (That’s a good thing.)

• The Last Colony

Book 3, The Last Colony has the same kind of nearly-a-spoiler title as The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien, but don’t let that ruin it for you.  We finally get back into John Perry’s head.  Taking Book 2’s cue, Colony puts action on the backburner and focuses almost entirely on interpersonal and political drama.  That’s not a bad thing, either.  There are still plenty of ‘splosions and such, but now they’re not so “hey, look an alien!”ish as they were when they had to set up the conflict in the first two books of the trilogy.

By taking the main narrative away from the battlefield, there is also a great deal more characterization.  The Last Colony is really where the series puts all the pieces together that we were given in the other books.  I don’t know Scalzi’s motivation for writing the series, but I get the feeling that the story he really wanted to tell was the one in The Last Colony but it took him Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades to get there and set it all up.

The Last Colony ends with perfect resolution to the trilogy, but leaves a wide-open door for the series to continue at some point.  Scalzi says in his acknowledgements that he won’t be returning immediately in order to pursue other endeavors, but he may at some point.

• Zoe’s Tale

His “at some point” came earlier than expected because not long after Colony’s release, Zoe’s Tale came out.  It is to The Last Colony what Ender’s Shadow was to Ender’s Game: it is parallel to the events of the previous novel, told through the perspective of another character.

At Scalzi’s behest, I took a break between the final two books because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read the same story twice in a row.  Now, having finished Zoe’s Tale, I can say that it wouldn’t have been a problem to have done so.  Sure, I knew what was going to happen, but the writing and perspective was unique enough to make it all feel fresh and not the cop-out device that shadowing narratives can feel like (I wasn’t a big fan of Ender’s Shadow, unlike 95% of the SF community).

At one point, a tragedy strikes the colony the characters live in and someone dies.  I knew this would happen because I had read The Last Colony. What I did not know would happen is that since the narrator of Zoe’s Tale—Zoe, obviously—was a more involved participant than John Perry was, I would be struck so hard emotionally.  I actually cried a couple of times while reading Zoe’s Tale, and I knew everything that was going to happen before it happened!  And it still made me cry.  That’s good writing.

The only problem I have with Zoe’s Tale is there is a single spot of inconsistency in the narrative.  Normally, I would say “meh” and move on, but it was used as such an important plot device—for Zoe and her boyfriend to break up—that it really bugged me.  You see, Zoe’s boyfriend Enzo had to prove he was different than other testosterone-fueled boys his age.  To do so, he sent her poetry via their interlinked PDAs; he wooed her with his words.  When they landed on their new colony, the colonists could no longer use PDAs.  So the Zoe makes a point to say that he still sends her poetry via his best friend, and this said best friend begrudges it.

But then a while later, Zoe gets mad at Enzo.  Or Enzo gets mad at Zoe.  I can’t remember.  And they start to fight.  She claims that he’s changed since their move because he hasn’t written her a single poem since they reached the colony world.  She goes into great detail about it, and eventually uses it as a trumped-up charge to break up with him.

“Wait,” I say. “What?”

I even went back and found the passages to make sure I wasn’t just misremembering.  But nope.  This major plot point was inconsistent and that bugs me, given how intricate and detailed the rest of the universe is.  It seems like someone, somewhere would have been able to notice that it makes the story lose a tad of its humanity and poignancy.

Or I could be misreading it entirely, and it was done purposefully to show how irrational and shortsighted teenage love-angst can really be.

Whatevs.

• Conclusion

If you haven’t been able to tell, I think these novels are fantastic.  Whether or not you’re a fan of military SF, there’s something in these books for you.  I settled in for a one-shot novel but found myself in a four-book series that I was sad to have come to an end.  I hope John Scalzi revisits this world eventually because it deserves to be written about as much as possible.  And while not necessarily written for children, the author only uses adult-themes and vulgarity to make the military aspect of the books come alive; it’s not gratuitous.

Give this series a shot.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

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