The Ghost Brigades

In the afterword of this book, Scalzi acknowledges that it's hard to write sequels, especially when the first book in the series was as acclaimed as OLD MAN'S WAR was. THE GHOST BRIGADES, while interesting and thoughtful in its own right, was simply not the same “feel” as OMW and sort of falls short, but was interesting enough to keep reading through to the end.

In OMW, one of the characters we meet is Jane Sagan, a member of the Ghost Brigade, the Colonial Defense Force's Special Ops group. This book is partly Jane's story, and partly the story of Jared Dirac, a Ghost Brigade clone of Charles Boutin, a man who has turned traitor against the CDF and has unified three alien races in an unprecedented alliance to stop the CDF once and for all. Dirac and Sagan must race against time to figure out why Boutin has sold out the CDF, and Dirac tries to piece together his “father's” story.

All in all, it was a good book. It obviously won awards. Scalzi's simplistic prose is still crisp and interesting, but John Perry was missing from the book. After OMW, I wanted more Perry, and without him and his glib dialogue, this felt like an entirely different book in an entirely different series. It was still worth reading, but I felt a little cheated because of the change in characters.

That's the author's prerogative, though. I still enjoyed the book and downloaded the next one in the series, THE LAST COLONY. Perry is back in that one. I hope I will enjoy it, as well.