The Last Colony (2007)

The third book in a great trilogy that starts with Old Man's War. Scalzi is exceptionally easy to read as his words flow off the page in rapid fire. All three books in this series are balanced reads.

This is the third book in the Old Man’s War series, and it unites the storylines of the first two books. John Perry has been returned to human form, and Jane Sagan has been made human as well. They married and settled down on a world named Huckleberry, adopting Zoe, the orphaned daughter of a brilliant traitor.

Everything was going fine, and then the Colonial Union asked them for a little favor.

So John, Jane, Zoe, and the rest of their household are off to form a new colony on Roanoke, except this is no ordinary colony. It’s a mix-mash of divergent cultures and almost seems designed to fail. And then they get the rug pulled out from under them when it turns out the Colonial Union has been… shall we say, less than truthful. From there it’s an engaging story of setting up a colony under less than ideal circumstances, hiding from aliens, and discovering the truth about what’s really going on.

This was probably my favorite of the series so far. It was all fresh material, and there were lots of problems to be solved, both practical and political. John, Jane, and Zoe all did humanity proud, even if it wasn’t always what the Colonial Union wanted. They also peeled the lid off of a static situation, and I’ll be interested to see where the story goes from here.

So, if you faltered during the Ghost Brigades, pick this one up and keep on marching. ( )

Definitely my favorite of the series so far. I enjoyed John and Jane interacting with civilians, it was a nice change from the first two books. ( )

The Last Colony definitely needs to be read after having read the first two books, as it's directly connected to both, uses the same world, and many of the most key characters. Like the others, it's easy to read and fun. It returns to using the same narrator as the first book, which I think is a bonus: he's fun. The plot is pretty much the culmination of things that have been building up in the other two books, which is why you need to read them. I liked the conclusion of it, and the open-endedness. Always leaves room for more, or for your own interpretation.

Being only three hundred and twenty pages long, and packed with all kinds of developments, this book goes very, very fast. One of the things I disliked about it were the quick summaries of what had happened, done in pure first person POV. I'm sure there must've been better ways to do the time jumps. Still, it kept it moving and kept it easy to read, which is part of the appeal.

Again, a good ending. Scalzi's pretty good at feel-good, ending-the-plot-but-leaving-possibilities type endings.

I do agree with reviews that suggest this is more fluffy than a lot of the SF around. It's definitely easy to read and the kind of book you read to give your brain a break -- for me, anyway. It's not a bad thing. ( )

Last in the Old Man's War series. It skips ahead a number of years, which I wasn't quite expecting, but we're back to John Perry's narration, which I enjoyed. This was where my knowledge of Zoe's Tale kicked in--it was interesting to read about the same events from a different perspective. All in all, I felt it was a very satisfying conclusion to a well-done series. (Dec 2011) ( )