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Monday, October 1, 2007
Reading List: The Last Colony
- 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, for which the author won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and its sequel, The Ghost Brigades, 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.
Posted at
20:50
