Paperback, 320 pages
Published May 30, 2008 by Tor.
Getting back to this series a few years after I read the first one. I enjoyed the thought experiment about transfer of consciousness and identity. It gets into these themes in an easy-to-understand way, and I had fun reading it. I want to read the next book, I think there are interesting things to be explored in this universe.
Something I didn't really care for in Old Man's War was the protagonist, who I just couldn't jive with, but I really liked the setting. Turns out this book reuses the world laid out in the first book, but with a completely new cast of characters. Win-win for me!
There's some philosophical undercurrents about consciousness and identity lurking under this plot, but I was having too much fun with the over-the-top action scenes and espionage and extraterrestrial blackmail that was going on to focus on it too much. Hell, at one point a supersoldier is fighting an alien and is getting his ass kicked, so he spits up blood into the alien's eyes, then sends a command from the supercomputer inside his head to force the nanomachines in his blood to explode, blinding the alien. That's the kind of shenanigans we're dealing with here; kinda hard to wax poetic about …
Something I didn't really care for in Old Man's War was the protagonist, who I just couldn't jive with, but I really liked the setting. Turns out this book reuses the world laid out in the first book, but with a completely new cast of characters. Win-win for me!
There's some philosophical undercurrents about consciousness and identity lurking under this plot, but I was having too much fun with the over-the-top action scenes and espionage and extraterrestrial blackmail that was going on to focus on it too much. Hell, at one point a supersoldier is fighting an alien and is getting his ass kicked, so he spits up blood into the alien's eyes, then sends a command from the supercomputer inside his head to force the nanomachines in his blood to explode, blinding the alien. That's the kind of shenanigans we're dealing with here; kinda hard to wax poetic about the ~self~ with that stuff happening every other chapter.
If you just wanna turn your brain off and go on a creative military sci-fi romp, you'll enjoy this one. But there's also a little more meat on the bones here if you're looking for something more engaging than that.
In this book I was already familiar with the world set up for this series, and it had a lot of brain-magic, that pretty much contradicts whatever I know about how human brains work, and that annoyed me in a supposedly sci-fi novel.
The new friend group development was kind of cool and enjoyable. The "saving this one person is somehow more important than a small town of strangers" thing was rearing its head a bit.
Still, light, fun and such, in this cool world with aliens, not all of whom are just weird looking humans.
Basically a stand-alone adventure, moving pieces into place for what appear to be the more sweeping events of the next couple of books in the OMW series. Scalzi is a great creator of worlds and a fast-paced writer, but a few too many of the characters in this one were blunt military commanders with a fondness for cursing and colorful analogies. The apparent move away from strictly military stories and characters in the next book will be a welcome one.
