Review: The Last Colony

The Last Colony by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really more of a 3.5, but I'll round this one up to a 4 mostly because it brings back John Perry, that super-relatable and funny narrator of the original Old Man's War, and while it doesn't totally require reading the slightly inferior Ghost Brigades first, The Last Colony does benefit from continuing that book's storylines as well. This time around, though, the real enjoyment lies in the way Scalzi really pokes at the reader's brain, taking his ongoing story threads and giving them a very, very thought-provoking spin. Here, the humans have a pretty implacable enemy who wants to stand in the way of their colonization efforts, but that same enemy isn't nearly as lethal or murderous as the humans would have you believe, merely wanting to avoid colonization of the universe, period. As Haim say in "My Song 5," "I've been lied to, so what's the truth?" (Not exactly apropos, but not entirely a non sequitur either.)

It's a shame that this is, according to the author's note, the last we get to see of John Perry for now...but at least Scalzi's got several other books in this future universe, and maybe since then he'll have brought Perry back? I'll just have to read and find out.

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