Review: The Last Colony by John Scalzi

The first two books of the series are military SF. The Last Colony takes a side step into something more like a science fiction political thriller.

John and Jane have settled on a colony world, basically using rights similar to those granted to Roman legionnaires who fulfilled their terms. In fact, they’ve taken something of a leadership role. They’re now entirely human again.

The Conclave is threatening to remove any colonies planted by non-humans, and the human leadership is refusing to join. John and Jane are manipulated to lead the new colony of Roanoke…

…and yeah, that name is well chosen.

This book reminds me more of my own work. Yes, there’s military conflict, but the heart of the book is the conflict between xenophobia and reaching a hand out in friendship. Between the hawks and the doves.

As such, I liked it a lot better, but that’s mostly about me and my thematic preferences.

Still, the series does seem to be getting better.

I received a copy of this book for award consideration purposes.

Review: Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi

These two books go together, because they cover the same timeframe, just from a different point of view.

I’ve never found this to be a particularly effective conceit, although Scalzi does it well. Scalzi also isn’t a YA author particularly, and it does show a little bit. I found Zoe’s arc a little bit flat, to be honest.

That said, it does fill in the holes in The Last Colony quite nicely. We find out how the deus ex machina in the other book happens and why, for one thing.

We also find out a few things about pop culture in this world. The ridiculous list of music genres is quite, quite entertaining. We find out that yes, even the remote colonies, at least in theory, get all the latest pop culture. I might have wanted a couple of things in there other than just music, but I’ll take it.

(Although this led me to realize a hole in the worldbuilding of this series, and that’s that Scalzi never talks about clothes. Which made me realize I am also bad at talking about clothes, so I suppose I can’t complain).

One problem I did have with both books is this: If the entire planet smells bad, then within two days everyone would stop noticing it to complain about it. Our brains tune out background smells very well. Likely every planet has different background smells and every planet smells for the first day or two. Including ones you were on before and then left.

Ahem.

But this book isn’t really about Roanoke anyway, it’s just about Zoe, and it’s about…basically, she’s the Chosen One, and it’s about dealing with that, learning to use it, learning when not to use it.

And at that level, I can really appreciate it.