The Ghost Brigades

John Scalzi's writing is something I enjoy reading as stress relief. It's fast-paced, quirky, sarcastic sci-fi with a stronger influence on the effects of crazy future technology than on the causes. I didn't like this book as much as “Old Man's War,” mostly because I miss John Perry as the narrator, but I still enjoyed exploring the themes of Scalzi's future. The first chapter throws you right into the plot twists, and from there on you know to believe absolutely none of your preconceptions.

Ghost Brigades more or less ignores the CDF corps of the rejuvenated elderly and focuses instead on the “child” army, born fully formed and programmed to serve. I don't think this is as fertile ground as the earlier subject and part of me expected more of their childish nature to stick around longer than the introductory chapter. That said, I'll grant Scalzi leeway here because children raised in war are likely to lose childish attitudes quickly, and there is all the training Special Forces goes through.

That said, I had a bit of trouble with the Colonial Union not doing a better job of programming them. If you are training soldiers from birth to do all the nasty things regular humans have a moral compass pointing decidedly away from, it seems to me you should do a better job of indoctrinating their ideals. Jared should never have gotten far enough in his questioning of the Colonial Union if they really are as vicious as everything else in the book leads us to believe. Then again, there's twists about the Colonial Union at the end too, and I may be judging too quickly before the series is finished. Still, if the Nazis could convince people that killing children was okay, I think a future with computers literally plugged into our brain should be able to do that.

To me, Special Forces worked better as mysterious allies than point of view protagonists. However, they were useful in illustrating the most interesting theme to me: identity. Scalzi proposes a body, mind, and soul/consciousness trifecta of identiy. Jared Dirac is born with the body and mind of another person (as opposed to Jane Sagan, who was only born with someone else's body). The soul/consciousness, however, is uniquely Jared's and can only be changed by revolutionary and terrifying procedures. Jared's struggle to deal with someone else's memories invading his own consciousness was fascinating to watch, and I love the way Scalzi interjects them over time.

The Obin, on the other hand, have no consciousness at all. They are basically bees with technology... which is a scarier image than I really like. The Rraey intrigue me in their “charitable” efforts at improving the universe, and I'm sure we're not done exploring that culture.

I also really liked the Gamerans. I'm hoping they figure more prominently in the later books because that's what'd I'd be making if I had the ability to build my own being from whatever DNA was around.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about the colonialism and expansion themes. Like Jared, I don't feel I have all the information. Since the first book, I've disliked the pictures of an earth that keeps sending soldiers out to win planets without really telling them why. It's ugly and a little uncomfortably realistic. Then, just when it was getting a little too heavy-handed a moral for me we find out that Boutin's Conclave is not necessarily made up of peace and goodwill either. That twist keeps me interested, and I'll definitely finish off the series. The only other thing that bugged me would probably bug me if I reread OMW too. I usually read pretty fast, and I tend to skip speech tags, but someone pointed out that Scalzi overuses "said." Then I listened to the audiobook of his serial, and the amount of "He Said She Said" forced me to turn the thing off. It doesn't bother me reading because I speed over speech tags, but now that I know it's there, I can't un-read them.I feel I'm being a bit too severely critical. I still enjoyed this book as the sci-fi adventure it is, and I enjoyed musing over the ideas it suggests. It's a fast read and character banter is one of Scalzi's strongest points. Still, there were a bit too many loose ends and needling questions for me to love it as much as I loved Old Man's War. 3.5 stars, but I'll definitely keep moving with the series.