The Last Colony (edição: 2007)

John Scalzi hasn't failed me yet. All three books in this series so far have been gripping, stirring, exciting adventure stories with a thrilling edge of darkness. Even though he does not paint his alien characters in shades of black and white, he also does not flinch from demonstrating that some species of aliens are extremely dangerous, brutal, and willing to stop at nothing to murder and mutilate humanity. My only criticism is that an early plot-line dealing with a native threat on the colonized planet was completely dropped when the greater outside threat presented itself, and it retrospect it seems like a thread that should have been resolved or otherwise dealt with. As I understand it, his upcoming book, "Zoe's Tale", deals with the same time period but tells it from a different perspective, so that should be interesting. I look forward to reading that, and I'll definitely continue picking up everything he writes. ( )

Rather old fashioned I thought, although without the old fashioned habit of relegating half the human race to be charming housewives...... A good story but a bit thin. The actual process of starting a new colony doesn't seem to have interested him much, but it might have been better to skip over the detail rather than bring on [SPOILER] a whole race of intelligent alien savages just to make it seem more interesting - then vanish them and never mention them again. But I liked it - relaxing if a bit predictable. ( )

This volume displays much more sophisticated plotting than its predecessors and finally allows us to see the big picture of galactic politics. In doing so, Scalzi finally also reveals what he thinks about the super-aggressive militaristic Colonial Union. It's what I had been waiting for.

The book jackets variously describe Scalzi as "slick", "accessible" and "entertaining", assessments that I agree with. At this point in his career he had not tipped over into overly dialogue dominated pseudo screen-plays, either. Fun stuff. ( )

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 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. ( )

Again no writing awards for this one but I like 90 yr old dad and Jane and Zoey and the Oben. I don't like all the he said she said jane said zoey said I said etc...i'd say 3.75 ( )