Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Ghost Brigades

Title: The Ghost Brigades
Author: John Scalzi
Series: Old Man's War, book 2
Genre: Science Fiction
Published: 2006

Recommendation: A well-paced and well-written sci-fi that's fun to read.
Rating: 7.5/10

Summary: Charles Boutin has turned traitor to the humanity and conspires with Rraey, Enesha, and Obin to destroy them. In order to figure out why, the military creates a new member for the ghost brigades, Jared Dirac who is implanted with the recorded consciousness of Charles Boutin. His job will be to find Boutin and bring him back.

Reactions: I was a bit disappointed in The Ghost Brigades. Part of the reason is that the book doesn't continue the story of John Perry. I found him to be a much more interesting protagonist than Jared Dirac. We do get to see Jane Sagan again in this book, but her role in the story is rather secondary. There are a few amusing scenes with her taking on her superiors which I really enjoyed.

And all-in-all I still liked The Ghost Brigades. It just didn't have the same oomph that Old Man's War had for me. The writing is still excellent and I read the book really quickly. The plot moves along at a good pace and there is plenty of action as well as character development.

From the preview, it seems the third book in the series actually goes back to John Perry, so I will probably be returning to this world to see what happens next to the characters.

3 comments:

  1. If you like John and Jane you'll enjoy The Last Colony and the follow up, Zoe's Tale. For me The Ghost Brigades is probably my favorite of the books but only by a slim margin. I enjoy the whole series immensely. Will be interesting to see what you think of Scalzi's other work if you get around to reading it sometime.

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  2. My first Scalzi novel was actually Agent to the Stars. And that's what got me to try his other books. Is there a particular book outside the Old Man's War series that you would recommend?

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  3. Funnily enough I have yet to read that one.

    The OMW stuff is my favorite, but I also really enjoyed The Android's Dream. Much more wacky and caper-ish than these books. And the recent Fuzzy Nation is also worth reading.

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