Author: John Scalzi
Series: Old Man's War, book 4
Genre: Science Fiction
Published: 2008
Recommendations: A good stand-alone adventure science fiction, less interesting to those who have read The Last Colony already.
Rating: 7.5/10
Summary: The same story as told in the The Last Colony, but written from Zoe's perspective.
Reactions: When I bought this book, I knew I was buying a story from Old Man's War series written from Zoe's perspective. What I didn't realize was that the story spanned the exact same period of time as The Last Colony.
The fact that the plot mirrored the previous book was somewhat disappointing. While there are several different scenes/adventures that Zoe undertakes that weren't covered by the previous books, overall it was a bit redundant to follow the exact same story as before. I think the book could easily stand on its own, but is a bit less interesting for someone who has read the previous 3 books.
Nevertheless, I did like Zoe as a narrator. We got to learn a lot more about her friends and people who were only minor characters in the previous books. The emphasis in the plot was also a lot more on relationships, and coming of age. I would almost say that this reads more like a YA novel.
All in all, it was a quick uncomplicated read that I enjoyed. However, it wasn't as good as The Last Colony without the scheming and the politics of the previous books. Not to say there was no scheming at all, but it was a bit simpler in Zoe's case -- and also seemed unrealistic to me at times.
Still, Scalzi is undoubtedly a very talented author and I will be certainly reading more of his stuff.
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