I picked up Zoe's Tale when it showed up on the new books shelf, and D informed me that it was loosely a sequel to the Old Man's War stuff, so we went back to the library to check it out to read first. Like his Android's Dream, he writes in a plain spoken, clear-as-a-bell style, just straightforward enough to plausibly make his protagonist, John Perry, seem like a real, normal human. Perry is a man looking back on his first couple of years of service in the Colonial Defense Forces, and he spins out his story simply, embellishing with the details of everyday life rather than with exaggeration or high rhetoric.

The retrospective timeline also serves to make the story work. Prospectively, the average story should end in a quick and gruesome death, but in this case history is written by those who are both clever and lucky: the winners, or at least the survivors.

The book also has a nice amount of friendship and romance. I have to wonder about the romance part, because the protagonist is a writer, and I wonder if Scalzi is nodding towards how happy he is to have "gotten the girl" in real life. (8 ( )

Gritty, but good sci fi. Scalzi's battles are graphics, his tactics are interesting and unpredictable.

John Perry had no idea what he was getting involved in when he joined the Colonial Defense Force. But he becomes a surprisingly good soldier at the age of 75. He is a good character and you can't stand to put the book down because you want to see what he is going to do next. ( )

Came highly recommended. Hot-stuff space opera. But, for me....not so much. ( )

This was an excellent book. Anyone who enjoys military Sci-fi will like it. But to really enjoy it you have to have read another favorite of mine; Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. If you have seen the movie please try to not think about it while I am talking about the original. In fact, try to wipe it from your memory entirely and then read these two books to replace the void.
Starship Troopers is a coming of age novel. A young man joins the intergalactic army (can't remember the name) and we see how he matures and you get some cool tech stuff and fighting aliens. Bad description, but a good book, especially if you remember that it was written as YA and also don't mind a bit of politics with your novels.
Old Man's War tells the same story, but from the other end. The premise is that to join the intergalactic army you have to be 75. You will never some back but you promise to be a soldier for no less than 2 years, maximum of 10. This immediately throws the entire soldier novel tropes out the window because most of them deal with some sort of coming of age theme. What if the soldier thrust into new and difficult situations is an old man? Set in his ways, wiser and less apt to just accept everything he is told?
The amazing thing about this story is how well it works when you already basically know the plot. The general outline is very similar to Starship Troopers, but the details are so very different. Scalzi is a very talented writer to have pulled this off. He manages to pay tribute to Heinlein without feeling like a copy or a repudiation of the original. ( )

I found this book to be a bit thin - the characters weren't as complex as I'd prefer, though the plot moved quickly (some readers prefer plot over characters and others, vice-versa) and it was reasonably enjoyable. Because of the lack of detail, however, it's not something I'd read again. ( )