I had never heard of John Scalzi until a few years ago. I know, I live under a rock. One of my coworkers recommended Old Man’s War to me. He described it as old people getting put into young bodies and sent off to fight wars, adventures ensue. Odd concept, I thought, but I gave it a try. It was set in the future, full of high-tech stuff, and was humorous. I enjoyed it immensely. Then I quickly read the next three books in the series: The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoe’s Tale. I had to wait for The Human Division and The End of All Things to come out, but I read them when they became available.
The first three books are chronologically sequential with alternating perspectives. The fourth book, Zoe’s Tale, is pretty much a retelling of The Last Colony, but from a different character’s perspective. I have had a hard time convincing people to read this one because they think it is just a repeat of The Last Colony, which it is. But I think it is well worth the read. The fifth book, The Human Division, is centered around a minor character in the previous books, but I enjoyed it as well. It does feel somewhat removed from the preceding books in the series, but that doesn’t matter. The last one, so far, is The End of All Things. It has some interesting stuff in it, but it is probably not my favorite one in the series.
Scalzi has other standalone books too. Fuzzy Nation, Redshirts, The Android’s Dream, and Agent to the Stars are all good. In fact, Agent to the Stars is probably my favorite Scalzi book. Fuzzy Nation is probably a close second.
Fuzzy Nation is a “reboot” of Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. I haven’t read the original story, so I can’t compare the two, but Fuzzy Nation is good.
Redshirts exploits the concept of the nameless ensigns on Star Trek who are somewhat dispensable and short lived. You would probably like this book if you like Star Trek, but certainly not a requirement (but would probably help).
Agent to the Stars is just great. It has a Palahniuk-Lite feel yet more sci-fi.
Lock In is the start of another series with another book on the way. I can’t wait for the second. The premise is a little bit similar to that movie Surrogates with Bruce Willis, only different and better.
If I had to rank these books in the order from favorite to least favorite, it would be:
- Agent to the Stars
- Fuzzy Nation
- Lock In
- Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony
- The Human Division
- Zoe’s Tale
- Redshirts, The Android’s Dream
- The End of All Things
