- Scalzi, John.
The Ghost Brigades.
New York: Tor, 2006.
ISBN 0-7653-1502-5.
-
After his stunning fiction debut in
Old
Man's War (April 2005), readers hoping for the
arrival on the scene of a new writer of Golden Age stature
held their breath to see whether the author would be a one
book wonder or be able to repeat. You can start breathing
again—in this, his second novel, he hits
another one out of the ballpark.
This story is set in the conflict-ridden Colonial Union universe
of Old Man's War, some time after the events of that
book. Although in the acknowledgements he refers to this
as a sequel, you'd miss little or nothing by reading it
first, as everything introduced in the first novel is explained
as it appears here. Still, if you have the choice, it's best
to read them in order. The Colonial Special Forces, which are
a shadowy peripheral presence in Old Man's War, take
centre stage here. Special Forces are biologically engineered
and enhanced super-soldiers, bred from the DNA of volunteers who
enlisted in the regular Colonial Defense Forces but died before
they reached the age of 75 to begin their new life as warriors.
Unlike regular CDF troops, who retain their memories and personalities
after exchanging their aged frame for a youthful and super-human
body, Special Forces start out as a tabula
rasa with adult bodies and empty brains ready to be programmed
by their “BrainPal” appliance, which also gives them
telepathic powers.
The protagonist, Jared Dirac, is a very special member of the
Special Forces, as he was bred from the DNA of a traitor to
the Colonial Union, and imprinted with that person's consciousness
in an attempt to figure out his motivations and plans. Things
didn't go as expected, and Jared ends up with two people in his
skull, leading to exploration of the meaning of human identity
and how our memories (or those of others) make us who we
are, along the lines of Robert Heinlein's
I Will Fear No Evil.
The latter was not one of Heinlein's better outings,
but Scalzi takes the nugget of the idea and
runs with it here, spinning a yarn that reads like Heinlein's
better work. In the last fifty pages, the Colonial Union
universe becomes a lot more ambiguous and interesting,
and the ground is laid for a rich future history series set
there. This book has less rock-em sock-em combat and more
character development and ideas, which is just fine for this
non-member of the video game generation.
Since almost anything more I said would constitute a spoiler,
I'll leave it at that; I loved this book, and if you enjoy
the best of Heinlein, you probably will as well. (One
quibble, which I'll try to phrase to avoid being a spoiler:
for the life of me, I can't figure out how Sagan expects to open
the capture pod at the start of chapter 14 (p. 281),
when on p. 240 she couldn't open it, and since then nothing
has happened to change the situation.) For more background on the book
and the author's plans for this universe, check out the
Instapundit
podcast interview with the author.
August 2006 