[Review] The Ghost Brigades - John Scalzi

[digitaldiscipline]

For those of you who don't regularly peruse http://whatever.scalzi.com, you really should. I've never met John, but he strikes me as the sort of guy that it would be a terrible idea for me to have a beer with for the sake of anyone in the vicinity with working ears and a large functional vocabulary. Also, he has a propensity for being pictured as if he is about to nom the lady in his life's brains, which is something of which I am similarly guilty. He also tends to have interesting, sci-fi and geek-flavored words spill out of his head on his blog, and, fortunately, that carries over to his day job or vice versa. Or something.

The Ghost Brigades is, unbeknownst to me when I picked it up, the middle book in a trilogy; the best thing I can say about that is that you'd never notice, and if I hadn't read the jacket copy after finishing, I'd have no idea, though, because I've read his blog, I had a hunch that Zoe's War was a sequel of some sort or other. It treads the well-worn ground of interstellar, inter-species conflict, rife with super soldiers, political intrigue, and inscrutable aliens (who, admittedly, I totally want to wedgie him for due to an excruciating lack of description; there's a bug-like species and two others that are... ummm... err...)

Because I'm an irreverent goof in much the same way John is capable of being, I feel pretty comfortable in my supposition that the super soldiers are, in fact, based on the little green plastic army men of our childhood, albeit with a healthy dose of Heinlein and Ender's Game slathered on them (it's inescapable, really, and he says as much in the afterword). It was a fun, engaging, and interesting read, and some of the tropes he applied a half-twist to were entertainingly warped.

Good enough that I'm tempted to try the precursor (Old Man's War and the followup, Zoe's War), and it's held up well in the six years since it was written (having laughed my ass off at his recent high fantasy send-up "Shadow War of the Night Dragons," it's clear that he's gotten better with practice (apparently, I'm not alone in that; that bit of ridiculousness got a Hugo nomination).

Comments

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

I loved them, too. Old Man's War is the first, while Zoe's is a retelling of one, sorta, from another POV.

Scalzi is, indeed, fun to hang with, but he's not a drinker, so you would be drinking alone :-)

[ivy]

I really liked "Old Man's War", though I haven't read any of the sequels.

[rat-bastard.livejournal.com]

Actually, the proper order is Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and then Zoe's War (Zoe's War is actually The Last Colony told from the perspective of a different character, but you will probably want to read The Last Colony first).

[rat-bastard.livejournal.com]

Er. I mean Zoe's Tale.

[emzebel.livejournal.com]

Dude, I find it almost impossible to believe you have not read Old Man's War. Get thee to a library!

[sskipstress.livejournal.com]

I read Old Man's War this weekend. I don't really follow any blogs closely, but I do end up reading Whatever fairly often. So I figured I should read something by Scalzi, and Old Man's War was on the shelf and some of the books said, "By the author of Old Man's War" and the book itself didn't mention being a part of a series, so I figured that was a good place to start.

[sskipstress.livejournal.com]

The shelf at the library. I think it may be time for lunch.