- Scalzi, John.
The Last Colony.
New York: Tor, 2007.
ISBN 0-7653-1697-8.
-
This novel concludes the Colonial Union trilogy begun
with the breakthrough
Old
Man's War (April 2005),
for which the author won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer,
and its sequel,
The
Ghost Brigades (August 2006),
which fleshed out the shadowy Special Forces and set the
stage for a looming three-way conflict among the Colonial
Union, the Conclave of more than four hundred alien species,
and the Earth. As this novel begins, John Perry and Jane
Sagan, whom we met in the first two volumes, have completed
their military obligations and, now back in normal human bodies,
have married and settled into new careers on a peaceful
human colony world. They are approached by a Colonial
Defense Forces general with an intriguing proposition: to
become administrators of a new colony, the first to be
formed by settlers from other colony worlds instead of
emigrants from Earth.
As we learnt in The Ghost Brigades, when it
comes to deceit, disinformation, manipulation, and
corruption, the Colonial Union is a worthy successor
to its historical antecedents, the Soviet Union and
the European Union, and
the newly minted administrators quickly discover that
all is not what it appears to be and before long
find themselves in a fine pickle indeed. The story
moves swiftly and plausibly toward a satisfying conclusion
I would never have guessed even twenty pages from the end.
In the acknowledgements at the end, the author indicates
that this book concludes the adventures of John Perry
and Jane Sagan and, for the moment, the Colonial Union
universe. He says he may revisit that universe someday,
but at present has no plans to do so. So while we wait
to see where he goes next, here's a neatly wrapped up
and immensely entertaining trilogy to savour. By the way,
both Old
Man's War and
The
Ghost Brigades are now available in
inexpensive mass-market paperback editions. Unlike
The Ghost Brigades, which can stand on
its own without the first novel, you'll really enjoy
this book and understand the characters much more if
you've read the first two volumes before.
October 2007 