The Last Colony is the final installment of Joe Scalzi’s science fiction trilogy, following Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades. Suffice it to say, if you enjoyed the first two installments, you won’t be disappointed. In a nutshell, after years of colonizing planets with Earth inhabitants, the subsequent colonies have matured to the point that many wish to have their own colonies. In an effort to quell cries of favoritism, the Colonial Defense Force cobbles together a seed colony, consisting of colonists from many of the existing colonies. The colony will be led by John Perry and Jane Sagan, the main characters from the preceding two novels, who have subsequently retired from active duty with the CDF. Conflict with other intelligent life forms and intrigue within the Colonial Union ensues.

I’ve read quite a bit of science fiction lately, and this novel is a jarring contrast to one I recently finished, River of Gods (Ian McDonald). Whereas the latter was, at times, difficult to follow and understand (I would term it literary, intelligent science fiction), Scalzi’s work is far more accessible to the average science fiction fan. After reading River of Gods and Saturn’s Children (Charles Stross), I needed a break and this novel was a perfect breather. It is easy to follow, well developed and enjoyable to read. Not groundbreaking or award winning in my opinion, but if a good science fiction story is what you’re looking for, and you’re not in the mood for deep, philosophical Philip Dick, Frank Herbert style sci-fi, you could do far worse than Scalzi’s trilogy. As with Old Man’s War, I felt that some of the dialogue was contrived, but not to the extent of detracting from the story.

Bottom line, if you’re looking for classic Isaac Asimov style science fiction, this is just the ticket. Conversely, other authors are pushing the boundary of science fiction into the literary realm. This is not one of those, deep philosophical, complex works. ( )

A great finish to the Old Man's War series. Sure, Zoe's Tale is also available, but it seems that The Last Colony finished the story (and the author says so too). Much more politics than war in this story, but it's great to be with John Perry again. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

Regular readers will know that I've found myself in a special situation this month, because of accidentally getting my hands on a total of eight out of the twelve science-fiction novels nominated this year for either the Hugo or Philip K Dick award; today's review is the sixth of that series, with both Gradisil by Adam Roberts and Rollback by Robert J Sawyer still to go, plus any of the other four nominees I manage to pick up later in the year. And as someone who used to read almost exclusively SF until college (and old-school '50s and '60s SF at that), someone who lost touch with the genre for a good decade and a half during the '90s and '00s, I have to admit that it's been interesting to be thrust back into this type of literature this month in the intense way I have, and to be reminded of all the little differences that exist within the genre, the people who like this type of sci-fi over that type, who demand this level of quality to their stories or that level.

One of the groups of people, for example, who I've been put back in contact with recently because of all these books, is that vast group making up the bulk of science-fiction's actual purchasers, conventioneers and other customer base -- the fanboys and fangirls, that is, those who just eat anything up whatsoever that has at least something to do with spaceships or exotic aliens or laser weapons or whatnot. Er, you know -- all the Buffy fans, and X-Files fans, and Earth: Final Conflict fans, the ones actually watching and purchasing and loving the merely B-level stuff that makes up the vast majority of original content of any particular literary genre. (As a matter of fact, since plenty of people argue that shows like Buffy and X-Files were better than the usual B-level stuff I'm talking about, let's specifically set this entire conversation among the lowest and cheapest of the genre, the stuff that was cranked out in places like Canada and New Zealand in the '90s for the perpetual rerunning on Saturday afternoons on direct-syndication stations in the US, stuff like Xena and Hercules and Andromeda and Farscape and all the rest. And since I don't like to have to rely on specific pop-culture references to make my point in my essays, for the remainder of today let me just refer to all such shows as the collective Low Budget Canadian Saturday Afternoon Science-Fiction Television Show, or LBCSASFTS.) Fanboys and fangirls are the ones who love LBCSASFTS; the ones who collect every season on DVD, who attend midnight balls at fan conventions in full costume and makeup, who populate online bulletin boards devoted to the subject, who don't mind that the scripts of most LBCSASFTS episodes are full of holes and kinda cheesy, with dialogue dumbed down to the level of the average 15-year-old.

There are millions of you, after all, just like there are millions in every other genre you want to mention, the people keeping that genre alive, being the only customers of 80 percent of the stuff published in that genre; and I'm not going to arbitrarily slag on any of you, because in many ways I'm a fanboy myself, but I will say that you all will put up with an awful lot of crap that a literary fan usually shouldn't have to put up with, just for the sake of whatever genre-specific fetishistic touches you're looking for by reading that book in the first place. Let's take, for example...oh, John Scalzi's The Last Colony, the latest Hugo-nominated book under consideration here at CCLaP, which in many ways reminds me of a typical episode of LBCSASFTS; it is not bad per se, but Lord I wouldn't call it good (a sentence that will immediately prompt calls online for my death, bloody jihad-style, from various dark forums scattered among the edges of the Interwebs), ultimately something that a fanboy or fangirl will be very satisfied with but probably no one else. And this isn't necessarily bad, having a book on your hands that's likely to delight most who are fully committed to the genre, there isn't anything bad with that at all; but CCLaP isn't a science-fiction literary blog, it's just a literary blog, and part of my mission here is to always examine the appeal of any given author among a large general population versus a smaller genre one. And for better or for worse (for the reasons I'll be detailing today), Scalzi and The Last Colony fit firmly on the genre side of things, a book worth checking out but only if you already own the LBCSASFTS collector lunchbox.

In fact, this is always an interesting thing to start with regarding Scalzi, that his entire career sorta came about in a fanboy-wet-dream style: for many years simply an unpaid blogger like everyone else (albeit one trained at the prestigious University of Chicago, whose faculty advisor was briefly Saul Bellow), Scalzi basically self-published his first novel Old Man's War electronically online for free, at which point it just happened to get noticed by Tor Senior Editor Patrick Freaking Nielsen Freaking Hayden. Hayden signs it with Tor and puts it out; it immediately gets nominated for the Hugo, vaulting Scalzi from obscure blogger status to the top ten-percent of all writers in the genre, all in the course of a year. And there he's stayed since -- he's put out another four novels since, and has been both nominated for several other awards and sometimes won them. And as a matter of fact, today's book under review is actually the third in a series of interrelated ones by Scalzi, stretching back to this Old Man's War we've been talking about; that novel, see, is about a time in the future when old people on Earth are essentially tricked into waging bloody offworld war on behalf of Earth's colonizing military, by being promised tough new young genetically-engineered bodies, ones even given limited superhuman powers through the "magic" of chromosome manipulation, and then being kept in the dark about the horrific realities of the intergalactic war they're about to go fight, until it's too late to do anything about it. (In fact, there's a good reason Old Man's War gets compared often to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers; both novels achieve the dubious goal of simultaneously glorifying and decrying war.) And then the second novel in the series, The Ghost Brigades, is a standalone story concerning the "secret police" that exists within this colonial military; their brains are essentially newborn babies, put into the bodies of fully adult soldiers who have died, given a bizarre and truncated childhood and education and generally kept isolated from the entire rest of humanity.

So that's what makes The Last Colony intriguing from the start, then, is that it has little to do with either of the first two books; it instead takes the main characters from Old Man's War, retired soldier John Perry and his dead-wife-turned-secret-policewoman Jane, and puts them in charge of a peacetime mission to found a new planetary colony, a controversial one fraught with dangers. Because see, it's this general subject that drives the entire conflict behind all of Scalzi's stories; in his universe, there are tons of intelligent, spacegoing species, but only a tiny amount of planets around the galaxy that can support humanoid life, and so in realistic fashion a giant galaxy-wide space war has ensued over these precious resources, with there constantly being a state of conflict between all of the spacegoing species in question. That's bad enough; now add that this will be the first colony in history not to be founded by Earthlings, but rather by a federation of settlers from different "first-wave" planets that had already been founded by Earthlings hundreds of years ago, a decision that has many on Earth feeling deeply uncomfortable. Now add that there is a new Evil Empire in town too -- the Conclave, a group of hundreds of species besides Earth who have decided that non-Conclave species no longer have the right to colonize at all, and who are now running around blasting new colonies out of existence if they try defying the order.

Yeah -- exciting milieu, interesting characters, lots of action, built around a universe and backstory that has already been detailed in two previous books. A recipe for success, most would agree, which is why I say this book succeeds among those looking for nothing else than another episode of LBCSASFTS. (And you can see quickly why this was nominated for the Hugo too, in that this is one of the only old-school grand space-opera angry-alien laser-shooting PWEEW PWEEWPWEEW PWEEW! books in the running this year, and there is certainly a wing of Hugo voters who still want SF to primarily consist of such old-style grand Silver-Age rocket-and-robot space operas.) But then you start getting into it, and start coming across all the details that drove me in particular crazy as I was reading through it, the times when characters act dumber than they're supposed to in order to artificially inflate the drama and tension of that moment, crap I just hate seeing in a book because it always feels to me like the author being lazy. Like, here's a random one -- after establishing what an arduous thing colonization is, but how there's been tens of generations now that have done it, why then make the actual colonists such simpering doughy fools, who still rely on their little planet-to-planet radio/internet PDA doodad thingie so much for all their even basic information about life? And after so many generations of colonization teams now, haven't they come up with anything better to ship with these people than fabric tents? I mean, sheesh, even here in the 2000s there are cutting-edge architects working out prototypes of flat-pack prefab housing, stuff that can be cheaply shipped in the millions in order to create entire safe and stable refugee cities; after hundreds of years of sending out entire colonization teams to faroff planets, you'd think this futuristic group would have this stuff worked out to a science, or at least something better than pup tents and plastic storage bins. And you'd also think that before any of those colonists would be allowed on the ship, they'd be required to have a decade of survivalist training under their belt, a thorough knowledge of handpowered tools, and all the other things that come with perhaps suddenly being cut off from your delicate, temperamental, interplanetary communications doodad thingie. You know, God forbid.

Now, I know what you're saying -- that the reason these elements are like this is so that when things do start falling apart, when their communication doodads suddenly are cut off from everyone else, it'll add a layer of drama and suspense and tension to it all. But I'm not buying that, see; I don't buy the idea of characters purposely acting stupider than they're supposed to be, at freakishly appropriate times in the plot that just happen to conveniently raise the tension of the entire situation at the exact moment it's most welcome. And that, really, when all is said and done, is what mostly separates me from a fanboy or fangirl -- they're willing to buy this, and I'm not, because they're more interested in the genre elements of that genre novel, and I'm more interested in the building blocks behind all great literature. And that's why The Last Colony drove me kinda crazy when reading through it, because it's just full of the kinds of moments and elements I just mentioned, just hundreds of them that will make the non-fanboy frown and say, "But what about the...but it'd just be so easy to...Yeah, but what the...argh...arrrggh, you're driving me crazy, YOU'RE ALL DRIVING ME F-CKING CRAZY!"

I'm tempted to give The Last Colony a bad score because of all this; but that's why I try to build in some time for reflection between the day I finish a novel and the day I write its review, so that I can come to realize that it'd actually be unfair of me to lambast the novel for this alone. What we're really talking about here is more a personal choice of mine as a particular reader, not Scalzi breaking a fundamental rule for writing to be good versus bad; when it comes to the fundamentals, things like characters and structure and setting and the like, he delivers something no better and no worse than any of the other books nominated for this year's Hugo. It's not a bad book, just one of those line-in-the-sand books, and the side you stand on when you're finished is a very clear sign of whether you're a fangirl or just someone who occasionally likes a good science-fiction novel. It wasn't for me, and it's not a book I can seriously imagine winning this year; for those of you who live, eat and breathe SF, however, it's definitely one you'll want to check out.

Out of 10: 8.2 ( )

Scalzi probably right in retiring The Old Man's War universe (bar Zoë's Tale) as the characters do seem to be running of steam. Enjoyable writing as usual though. ( )

I read John Scalzi's blog, Whatever, and its very clear that this book is all Scalzi. The first thing that comes across is how much John loves and respects his wife and daughter. Where other authors will write a teenager as utterly clueless or miniature adults, Zoe is all teen.

The characters are quite real, but the plot is over the top and more convoluted than it needs to be. It makes sense, but I'd like to see a character rely on innate ability rather than an unexpected gift. The ending also felt rushed. ( )

Spoiler Alert!

Although parts of the novel (especially the report between Perry and his assistant Savitri) is thoroughly enjoyable, it feels like Scalzi is rushing to finish off the story of Perry and Sagan. The storyline is sometimes simplistic and "too easy" (as when the enemy Conclave faction leader practically hands himself over on a platter to the besieged colonists) ( )

Another reviewer called this "a good old fashioned space opera" and that's essentially what this series (Old Man's War, Ghost Brigades and now this) is. If you like this kind of sci-fi (particularly Heinlein and Starship Troopers), you'll like this series as a fun, entertaining read. Will it really stick with you years after you've read it? Probably not, though you can re-read it again for a similarly enjoyable day or two :) ( )

In The Last Colony we see John Perry and Jane Sagan trying to do what is right for there odd little family and trying to run the new colony on Roanoke and keep everyone alive. There are conversations that are told from the other side in Zoe's tale, but for the most part this is it's own book. The overlaying of the two is seamless and brilliant.
full review at www.unboundblogzine.com ( )

This book describes colonization of a new planet using old technologies and the politics behind it. Interesting to read what might happen when the colonist selection standards for survival skills are almost nonexistent.

Link to a review on my personal website. ( )

A very quick but entertaining read. I have not yet read The Ghost Brigades, but was able to jump right into this new adventure. The book was more of a mystery than sci-fi. I compare it to The Devil's Eye by Jack McDevitt. Very much less technical than Old Man's War. I would sum this one up as a great weekend book. ( )

http://tinyurl.com/daccy6

I do enjoy it when the last book of a trilogy turns out to be just as good as the first book. Middle books, eh. They can be long-winded or slightly boring or off-topic or without purpose. I mean, think about "The Two Towers." All that riding around Rohan and trekking through the woods with Ents. Snore-o-rama. And then, blam! The last book nails it.

It'd be silly to equate this trilogy with Tolkein's, but my point is the same. Scalzi returns to the first character he created, John Perry, brings along his now-wife, Jane, and the adopted daughter, Zoe. Plants them in a strange setting and puts the fate of the world on Perry's shoulders. Many plot twists later, and you have an excellent set-up for the end of the book.

Plus, he adds a wise-cracking secretary who makes you hoot with laughter. He should be a humor writer, really, this stuff doesn't just roll off the keyboard. Although, amusingly, this character makes it clear that he does write a (very well-read) blog on the side (http://whatever.scalzi.com/). Because writing a blog is all about the clever. ( )

This is a slightly different book to the first two in the trilogy, with the bang bang action of the first to giving way to political maneuvering and much more time is spent on the characters and the sometimes minute of their lives. This works well, because when it becomes obvious the Colonial Union are playing with there lives, you care even more new colonists.

And can I just say how great it is to have John Perry back! He has got to be one of my favourite characters of the last few years reading, and his sarcastic one-upmanship with his assistant Savitri Guntupalli, is a joy to read.

John and Jane are also joined by their daughter, Zoe, who does her best to both mock & love her 90-year-old adopted dad. I can’t tell you just how much I am looking forward to meeting Zoe properly in her own book, Zoe’s Tale, which follows the events in The Last Colony from her teenage point-of-view.

While, there is less action in this book, it is certainly not missed, Scalzi once again, excels at writing characters and their interactions and that is what makes his books so much fun to read. And this one is no different. Excellent, excellent read. ( )

Not a lot happens in this book, compared to the previous ones, but it is written quite superbly.There is a section where we get to see a discussion between two old friends, alien leaders. We've never met them before, and yet, by the end of the chapter, I really cared for them.Brilliant piece. ( )

The third book in Scalzi's Old Man's War series was, according to the afterword, supposed to be the last one. At least it is for the main characters Jane Sagan & John Perry, with Zoe now getting her own book.

Continuing the the story of John & Jane The Last Colonoy follows as they are wrangled into becoming colonial administrators of the Colonial Union's latest colony world. A colony world that is under threat from a variety of alien civilizations that aren't exactly friendly with the CU. If course, it is more complicated than that, and the colonists find that they are just pawns in several different people's plots and schemes.

By about 1/2 way through the knowledge of who is honorable and who isn't makes the ending all-but-inevitable, though the process of arriving is still entertaining. I was disappointed that the primitive but intelligent natives introduced about 1/4 of the way in turned out to be just filler material just as quickly dropped, and later discarded as merely a hypothetical situation. Perhaps they get a little more treatment in Zoe's Tale. ( )

This book reminds me more of a Niven/Pournelle book than Scalzi's previous 2 novels in this series. Unlike the first two, John Perry is not fighting for his life every moment of the book. Instead, he's helping to found a colony, then trying to prevent it from being destroyed. This book reminds me a bit of 'Ender in Exile', though John Perry is no Ender Wiggin. ( )

Fun read, but getting a little preachy in third volume of series. ( )

I enjoyed this, and read it almost in one sitting. I enjoyed the previous books in this series more, however. There's nothing bad about this one, and if you liked the previous books you'll like this too. ( )

In which we discover that the Colonial Union is actually some kind of evil empire... We follow Jane Sagan and John Perry into semi-retirement with their adopted daughter, Zoe Boutin - and then back into active service. The book feels a bit more epsisodic in places. Having said that, I found it unput-downable, even while falling asleep. ( )

Finally got around to reading the third in John Scalzi's Old Man's War universe, a book that takes place after the events of Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades. I wouldn't recommend reading this book if you haven't yet read the other two. If you HAVE read them, and enjoyed them, don't miss out on this story. It concludes John Perry's and Jane Sagan's adventures, and it's a far deeper book than meets the eye. It challenges the truths behind loyalty, peace and war, and well worth the read.

The premise: John Perry and Jane Sagan have retired, only to be called up for duty once more: this time to lead the seed colony world of Roanoke. It's a media-circus, as it's the first colony that's been populated by other colonized planets rather than Earth, but John and Jane soon discover that the Roanoke colony is much more sinister than that: it's a pawn in a brewing war between the Colonial Union and the allied alien forces of the Conclave, and unfortunately, Roanoke and its colonists are stuck right in the middle.

The full review, which does include spoilers, may be found in my journal. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome.

REVIEW: John Scalzi's THE LAST COLONY

Happy Reading! :) ( )

"The Last Colony" is the third book of the "Old Man's War" trilogy by John Scalzi. It's as much a political thriller as the military sci-fi of the previous books; it follows Jane Sagan and John Perry as they are picked to lead the planetary colony of Roanoke, the first colony to be picked from existing colonies rather than Earth itself. But Roanoke is important in a different way - it's being used as a pawn by the Colonial Union (leader of all the human colonies) in their opposition to the Conclave, a group of alien races that are attempting to regulate the unchecked expansion and war in the universe.

I liked "The Last Colony" both more and less than the earlier books. The philosophical questions around the CDF and the Special Forces aren't really a large part of the whole thing, which is slightly disappointing. Working better, however, is that Scalzi doesn't spend so much time in the area of competent but dull mil-sf like he did in the last two. Much of this book is the raising of the colony, which Scalzi handles well (although it is somewhat understandably shunted aside by developments later in the book) - it's nice to watch as Perry and Sagan try to keep the colony under control and safe under the constraints they're stuck with.

The book picks up steam as things turn more political, and the balancing act Perry has to strike is engaging. Scalzi keeps the situation tense and interesting, although some events are disappointingly offscreen. It's a satisfying finish to the Old Man's War series, and the best of the three books. ( )

The Last Colony moves more slowly than the previous two books in the Old Man's War series, but the story is just as satisfying — and fun — as Scalzi's other novels. ( )

Fine, entertaining story. Continues a story from two earlier books about same characters and same world, but it isn’t necessary to have read the earlier books – I haven’t – yet.
Well described characters, interesting background, refreshing that most of the time you were rooting for alien empire against the human community. ( )

(Alistair) In Which, as an old-fashioned subtitle might say, The Colonial Union Learn That Behaving Like A Complete Pack Of Bastards Does Not Pay.

Of course, I can't really say too much more on that front without book-destroying spoilers, but considering I've been bitching about the creepifyingness of the Colonial Union's behavior and some of the pessimality of the setup of the universe since I first started reading it, it's very nice to see that at least some of the characters in the universe (General Tarsem Gau, please stand up and take a bow if physiologically possible) recognize some of that and wish to do something about it (and thus implicitly the author too, of course). It is, shall we say, the payoff I've been hoping for.

And, also of course, it's still a good book for the other reasons I've liked the previous Scalzis, so recommendations for this series continue and are enhanced. Very good books.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ce... ) ( )

The Last Colony by John Scalzi
The third book of his Old Mans War series. A fair read. His character's are getting a little stiff and and worn out. Also I kept thinking I"ve read this somewhere else (alot of familiar plot twists) . Still If you read and liked the first two you'll like this one too. Overall I enjoyed it (having read the first two) and pre-ordered the fourth book "Zoe's Tale." ( )