Old Man's War

OLD MAN'S WAR is a book that was recommended to me by a friend ages ago. I downloaded a copy on my Kindle and promptly forgot about it for a year or two because my to-be-read pile is an ever-growing beast that threatens to avalanche nightly and kill me in my sleep. When I finally got around to reading it, I was immediately kicking myself for not starting it when I originally bought it. OLD MAN'S WAR is the type of sci-fi war novel that I love to read.

The premise is simple enough: Far in the future, the elderly are given a chance to be declared “dead” on Earth on their 75th birthday, and then shuttled off into the vast reaches of colonized space to fight as soldiers for the Colonial Defense Force. In exchange for their service as soldiers, they are basically gifted a “second life.” Their consciousness is transferred into a genetically modified and enhanced clone version of themselves and they go off to fight the many races of intelligent species on the edge of civilized space to gain new colonies for humankind and defend the settlers that are already tilling exo-soil. We follow John Perry, a widower still very much grieving his ex-wife, as he signs up for the CDF and goes to war.

OLD MAN'S WAR has had plenty of praise heaped upon it already. It won a pile of book awards and was extended into a series (the second of which, THE GHOST BRIGADES, I have already downloaded). I won't be able to add anything new to the already existing, glowing reviews except to say that I found the book intelligent, interesting, and well-written.

Scalzi's prose is simple and direct. He doesn't over-flower things. When I wrote AFTER EVERYONE DIED, I attempted to capture a similar voice. Both books are written in the first-person in a journal-like style. Scalzi is a better writer than I am, though. Though the books are simple in style and writing, they are complex in thought and idea. The first book touches on a lot of concepts about age, mortality, and the rationalization for war, as well as the futility and senselessness of it. The book isn't preachy. It isn't too serious. And while there are jokes and humor in it, none of them are stretches. All in all, this was a highly enjoyable book. All awards for it were well earned.

When I read books, I want them to be like OLD MAN'S WAR. The protagonist is likable and intelligent, without being a pain-in-the-ass, he might border on being a Mary Sue, but not overly so. The situations on the book are intriguing and make the pages turn quickly. There is a matter-of-fact reasoning to the deaths in the books (sure, the new/old soldiers die...but if they'd stayed on Earth, they'd still die...), and a simplicity and elegance to his musing on mortality.

Maybe this book hit me at a time when I'm doing a lot of questioning of mortality while battling my own existential dread, but I found it to the exact medicine I've been seeking. I highly recommend giving this one a glance, if you haven't already.