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Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: Retired from his fighting days, John Perry is now village ombudsman for a human colony on distant Huckleberry. With his wife, former Special Forces warrior Jane Sagan, he farms several acres, adjudicates local disputes, and enjoys watching his adopted daughter grow up. That is, until his and Jane's past reaches out to bring them back into the game�??as leaders of a new human colony, to be peopled by settlers from all the major human worlds, for a deep political purpose that will put Perry and Sagan back in the thick of interstellar politics, betrayal, and war. Old Man's War Series #1 Old Man's War #2 The Ghost Brigades #3 The Last Colony #4 Zoe's Tale #5 The Human Division #6 The End of All Things Short fiction: "After the Coup" Other Tor Books The Android's Dream Agent to the Stars Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded Fuzzy Nation Redshirts Lock In The Collapsing Empire (forthcoming) At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.… (more)
User reviews
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.
Scalzi does pull out something of a deus ex machina at the end, as his characters face impossible odds, but the book is so fantastic that I didn't mind all that much. The Old Man's War books are engaging and intelligent, without being overwhelming in terms of the science fiction. I look forward to reading the next volume in the coming months.
We loved the world Scalzi initially built, but there is nothing exciting and
Politics are a necessary evil responsibility in real life and the last thing either of us want to do during our precious down time is listen to a fictional character discuss science fiction politics and bureaucratic backstabbing. Scalzi had an opportunity here to breathe new life into a series and it's a shame that didn't happen...at least not for us. The only time the book held our attention was when something exploded...which wasn't often enough. It was a sad, sad experience.
We won't be continuing the series.
He can
We navigate many social and moral situations with John Perry, an old man from Earth who embarked on a new military career when he thought he had nothing left to miss at home. He had no idea what he was in for. There are definite echoes of Joe Haldeman's Forever War in Perry's experiences, though he was given a completely new young body in the beginning, and is on at least his second new body by this third installment of the series. He thought he was out of the action, trying to live a quiet life with his wife, a retired special forces soldier, farming on a colony world. Usually his most challenging task is mediating between colonists, and it's a good life, but it's not to be. Perry and Jane are back in the thick of things between the Colonial Union and the Conclave in a dominance struggle, with all the complications and action that will bring.
During all of these battles and discussions and alien encounters, Scalzi is able to give his characters personalities we can relate to and care for, so it's not all dry Sci-Fi but also engaging on an emotional level. Perry is given many difficult decisions that don't have a clear answer, with many looking to him in leadership roles that he never really wanted. He's just a guy, trying to live a life, being the best person he can be, in extreme circumstances.
I'm enjoying the Old Man's War series in a completely different way than Scalzi's humorous stand alone novels, and it's a great example of the complexity and deep thought that he is so capable of conveying, examining difficult issues from all angles. If you're needing entertainment and laughs, check out Red Shirts. When you're ready for a more serious examination of intelligent inter and intra species relationships and military/government intrigue, then you're ready for Old Man's War.
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 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]
This volume isn't the kind of millitary story told in the first two books. Instead, it focuses more on family, really. While the circles of family and community have to navigate some treacherous, dangerous larger issues, at its heart, The Last Colony is about building and maintaining community. John Perry and Jane Sagan, now married and back in normal bodies (they had different bodies in the previous two books. Don't ask - just go read them) run a small colony, and care for their adopted daughter, Zoe. For various reasons, they're chosen to head a controversial new colony, to be called Roanoke.
Does that name set of alarm bells? Excellent.
As you can imagine, all sorts of mayham ensues from there.
There's only a little fighting, which is dramatic, gripping, and brutal. When Mr. Scalzi writes action, he means it. He also seems to have a keen insight into how a government buracracy does and doesn't work.
I quite enjoyed this novel, but I have two complaints. First, the deus ex machina got heavy handed. Second, the main characters tend to have a similar voice. This makes sense between John, Jane and Zoe - they're family. Jane and John chose each other, so it makes sense for them to have strong similarities. They've raised Zoe, so it makes sense for her to have a similar voice. I can see John's assistant also tending to have some similarities. But my credulity broke when the main rival to John and Jane's authority, when push came to shove, agreed with and backed them. It felt a lot more like Narrative Imperative than a natural outgrowth of the character as we'd seen him previously.
But even given those problems, I didn't care. The writing was so engrossing, I had my moments of, "I can't believe you did that!" then lost myself in the story again. Other than that odd similarity, the characters were believable, and very appealing. The writing was good enough to ease me past the deus ex machina. I finished the book quite satisifed with it, and looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
Continuing the the story of John & Jane The Last Colonoy follows as they are wrangled into
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.
He is in semi-retirement with his wife (a former Special Forces soldier and clone of his dead first wife on Earth) and his adopted daughter (who is revered by an alien species), when he is called on to lead a new colony being established on a distant planet. It soon becomes clear that they have been lied to. The planet they arrive at is not the one they were told they would be colonizing. In fact, they are told they must remain hidden, which means the crew of the ship that brought them there cannot leave, the ship will be destroyed, and they are not to use of anything that can transmit an electronic signal.
To say much more about this would involve spoilers, but it soon becomes clear to Perry that their government is misleading them. What he does not know at first is that the survival of humanity depends on him figuring out what he has not been told, taking a stand against established authority, and countering some of their incredibly poor decisions regarding an alien led federation of species known as the Conclave.
A few things about this book distinguish it from others in this subgenre and make it deserving of a five-star rating. The first is the characters. There is a clear distinction between the main characters in this book. None are cookie-cutter ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys.’ Each has understandable motivations. Some are admirable, and you care about what they do and what happens to them. Those that aren’t, are at least believable.
The second thing is the story. John and his wife (as the main characters) recognize that what they have been told doesn’t quite make sense. There are gaps, possibly distortions, and they attempt to figure out what those are (i.e. they are not stupid and credulous). Through their actions, they question, they discover, and they act, not with mindless violence, but with thought and well consider planning. This is not a simplistic ‘action’ story.
The third thing about this book that I especially liked is the mood. This is a work of positive science fiction in that it is hopeful. Humanity, despite some shortcomings, can progress and advance. Our biggest challenge is not some alien presence that wants to eat or enslave us but ourselves and how we view our place in the universe. Prejudice and jingoism are greater threats than the other species sharing the stars and John Perry realizes this.
The only negative aspect to the book that I saw was that it introduces a sentient species native to the planet John and the colonists have been sent to but little is said about them or the humans’ interaction with them other than a brief and unpleasant encounter.
If you are looking for comic book heroes and action adventure, this is book is not for you, but if you appreciate a thoughtful story with admirable characters, I recommend this with one caveat - read Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigade first.
Excellent as usual from Scalzi.
Then John and Jane are chosen to be the leaders of a new colonial venture. Only the Colonial Union doesn't tell them that the Conclave (a group of over 400 alien races) has forbidden non-members to colonize new planets. Nor does the CU actually send them to the planet they think they are colonizing. After some adventures including discovering that they are not alone on the planet and the aliens are hostile and learning to survive without all their electronics, the CU comes back. Roanoke colonists are in danger and not only from the Conclave.
The story was exciting. My only complaint is that the story ended. I want to know more about these characters and what happens next.
In many ways this is a lighter read than the previous novels in the series; other approaches
There's arguably none of that in this book, for which I roll my eyes to the skies and thank ceiling cat; I've read plenty of that crap already.
A nice close to the official series; John Scalzi plans on writing more in this universe, but not more in this series. I'll be picking them up.
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.
The characters are
Well described characters, interesting background, refreshing that most of the time you were rooting for alien
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.
It's not an examination of colony life,
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% 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.