The Last Colony

THE LAST COLONY by John Scalzi is by far my favorite book in the Old Man's War series. It has a little bit of everything - political maneuvering, battles, aliens, trickery, family drama, and more. The tension and mystery start quickly and never eases. Being able to see more of John Perry and Jane Sagan is a treat; seeing them with Zoe Boutin Perry is even better. Add in Zoe's Obin bodyguards, and there is a level of humor you don't expect, along with an undercurrent of danger that you do expect. THE LAST COLONY is a very satisfying ending to the original trilogy, and I wish he had ended the series there. The books that follow do not live up to the excitement or suspense contained in either of the first three books and are nowhere near show more as satisfying. show less

John Perry and Jane Sagan have 'retired' from the Colonial Defense forces and along with their adopted daughter Zoe, have been tasked with overseeing a new colony. However, the sneaky underhandedness of the CDF has conspired to leave them stranded on this new planet, unable to utilize any electronic technology lest they be discovered by The Conclave, a new alliance of 405 alien races who plan to keep all the good planets for themselves.
Perry and Sagan continue to be delightful characters as they struggle with their situation as well as the political machinations and just plain stupidity of the colonists as well as the situation the CDF has put them in. Zoe is a refreshing delight and I love, love, love her Obin "bodyguards" Hickory and show more Dock. This world continues to build and Scalzi keeps the reader guessing as to who can be trusted and who the 'bad guys' are. A very deft line to walk indeed. Excellent work. show less

John Perry and Jane Sagan have 'retired' from the Colonial Defense forces and along with their adopted daughter Zoe, have been tasked with overseeing a new colony. However, the sneaky underhandedness of the CDF has conspired to leave them stranded on this new planet, unable to utilize any electronic technology lest they be discovered by The Conclave, a new alliance of 405 alien races who plan to keep all the good planets for themselves.
Perry and Sagan continue to be delightful characters as they struggle with their situation as well as the political machinations and just plain stupidity of the colonists as well as the situation the CDF has put them in. Zoe is a refreshing delight and I love, love, love her Obin "bodyguards" Hickory and show more Dock. This world continues to build and Scalzi keeps the reader guessing as to who can be trusted and who the 'bad guys' are. A very deft line to walk indeed. Excellent work. show less

Series Info/Source: This is the third book in the Old Man's War series. I bought this for audiobook.

Thoughts: I enjoyed this and was happy to be back with John and Jane and Zoe. This is a very political book, so I didn't enjoy the story quite as much as previous books.

The story follows John, Jane and Zoe but is told mostly from John's POV. We start off on the colony they have retired to name Huckleberry; here they are living a quiet but happy life as a family. Then they are contacted by the Colonial Defense Force to help with starting a new colony on a new planet. They agree but don't realize at first that the Colony Defense Force hasn't told them the whole (or really any) of the truths around this new colony. John, Jane, Zoe and all show more the other colonists are in serious trouble as they end up pitted against a multi-alien coalition that is trying to prevent human colonization of planets.

I really enjoyed being back with John, Jane, and Zoe. Zoe in particular is very entertaining. Sadly, you don't get to see a ton of interaction between John and Jane, as they are very tied up with running the colony and often separated. I also enjoyed the new planet that they colonized, although I would have liked to learn more about the planet itself and the supposed sentient species they found on it (this storyline got dropped in favor of a broader storyline involving the CDF's betrayal).

I didn't enjoy how political this was. The majority of the story deals with John and Jane trying to figure out ways to outmaneuver two massive political forces in order to avoid the annihilation of the new colony they are leading. I also thought the ending felt anti-climatic and predictable. I do realize this was original supposed to be the last book in a trilogy, but now there are three more books in this series.

I listened to this on audiobook and it was well done. My only issue with it was the volume. My husband and I were listening to this while driving and the volume would go up and down drastically so we were constantly having to turn the sound up and down.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this. There was a bit less military and action in this book and more political maneuvering. I really enjoyed the characters but enjoyed the story less than previous books because of the political nature of it. I do plan on continuing the series. show less

John Scalzi wraps up the Old Man's Universe with the last possible tale to tell. We're out in deep space with the army and special forces defending new colonies. We've told the army's story. We've told the Special Forces's story. Who's left? The colonists.

It's not an examination of colony life, although those glimpses are present and interesting. It's more about how the how the watershed conflict between the humans and the rest of the universe takes place. It's about war, it's about peace, and it's about the distance between people and government.

Scalzi is the guy that writers want to be. I don't how the guy can keep the plot moving when nearly 90% of his writing is dialogue, 9% is infodumping (but done in an entertaining way), and 1% show more is the gunfight at the climax, but he does it. I think it's because he doesn't just give a narration of what happened, he teases and toys. He's standing on a stage with a bunch of upside-down boxes, and he delights in turning them over in just the right order to keep you intrigued.

It's the best book I read this year, and the most memorable. My top pick for Satisfying Reader Experience(tm) of the year. show less

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Scalzi's witty stories. In this third volume of the Old Man's War series, John Perry and his wife Jane Sagan are asked to head up a new colony. They accept and begin finding out that the government has not been honest with them about the nature and purpose of the colony. They deal with numerous challenges and unexpected revelations. John in particular (perhaps because he's narrating) struggles to find solutions that are both successful and honorable.

The book is full of Scalzian humor, from the naming of the new colony (Roanoke) to snarky employees and dad-like funny lines. While it's mostly enjoyable to watch Scalzi walk the tightrope between humor and serious concepts, a couple of major flaws poke show more through. The first is that he starts to develop interesting subplots and then simply discards them with no resolution when the next big revelation comes along. The second is his propensity for constructions like "for Jane and I." This sort of grammatical idiocy bothered I as I read. But it was still mostly a fun read, because you can see the author winking at you the whole time. Yes, he says, I know these plot points and solutions are over the top, but I'm having a really good time making them up. Aren't they fun? For the most part, they are. show less

The Last Colony picks up where Scalzi's previous books left off, finally tying together the lives of John Perry (from Old Man's War) and Jane Sagan and Zoe Boutin (from The Ghost Brigades). Given the ending of the latter, if you guessed that these three would finally settle down on some placid colony planet to live out the rest of their lives in peace, well...you'd be right.

For a while, anyway.

The third book in the series picks up a decade into their life as a family on the colony of Huckleberry. John Perry is back as the first-person narrator, though ten years of family life in an ordinary, non-military human body seems to have worn away his sarcastic edges some. Anyway, his family is chosen by the Colonial Defense Force to head a new show more colony, omniously dubbed "Roanoke", but as you can probably guess from the name, things don't go exactly as planned. Or, rather, things don't go exactly as the colonists planned—the CDF is playing a game with galactic alien powers, and Roanoke is just a pawn caught in the middle.

If you skim to the bottom of this review, you can see just from my rating that I thought this book was great. It continues the series nicely, I love the characters, the plot is gripping, full of unexpected twists and turns, I'm involved emotionally, and Scalzi makes the pages turn so quickly one begins to worry that they might literally catch fire.

But that's not to say the book doesn't have any issues. As alluded to above, Perry's narration doesn't have the same sarcastic edge that he showed in Old Man's War. Chalk that up to family life, maybe, but I missed Perry during The Ghost Brigades, and while he was great in this book, I felt I missed the "old" (ha!) Perry as well. The 10-year jump from the end of the previous installment was a little disappointing, too, since we never get to witness these three very different people settle in as a family. Heck, we only get the briefest glimpse of Perry's courtship of Sagan in OMW; Scalzi could easily write a trilogy dealing with that.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of the novel was seeing the Roanoke colony get jerked around left and right by the CDF. There's a lot of political intrigue and maneuvering involved, but since we only get Perry's POV, it's all invisible—behind-the-scenes. Until every fourth chapter or so we get a little infodump on what's "really" going on (which of course changes from dump to dump as lies get unravelled.)

I can't complain too much, though, because all of this leads up to a number of great Perry moments where he takes matters into his own hands and screw everyone else that's trying to take advantage of the colony, complete with a great ending that serves to nicely wrap up the trilogy. Well, John and Jane's story, anyway. Because there's a fourth book, you see, and...well, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Overall, if you enjoyed the first two books, you'll enjoy this one. Period. [4 out of 5 stars] show less