Zoe's Tale

Zoë's Tale is my favourite of the series so far.

Along with legions of others, I'm a fan of John's blog, The Whatever. (Well, it's actually just Whatever, but for some stupid reason it amuses me to say THE Whatever. Anyway.) And, when you read someone's blog, you're entitled to refer to them on a first-name basis. I don't know why I feel this way, but it just seems right, doesn't it? Anyway. So, me and John go way back. Like four months. And for all of that time, I've been curious to get my hands on one of his books and see if they live up to the hype. And, there's a good chance that I haven't read enough contemporary SF to be a good judge of what a sufficient level of hype for any given book is. Even though I've been reading a ton of SF / Fantasy, I think I've only read 2 books published in 2009. So, it's a non-expert opinion that I express now when I say the hype level is higher than necessary. Zoey's Tale takes place in the Old Man's War universe, the same universe as several other novels, and actually takes place at the same time as the novel The Last Colony. As far as I know, she's a minor character in The Last Colony, and Scalzi--I mean John--wanted to spend some more time with this particular character, and also extrapolate on her role in The Last Colony. Apparently, her contribution in TLC served as a kind of deus ex machina which John wanted to show wasn't really the author trying to take the easy way out. Anyway, Zoey's step-parents are in charge of a planet colonizing mission and are taking groups from nine different planets to settle on planet Roanoke. The risks of planet colonization are great: they're part of the Colonial Union, and an intergalactic organization called the Conclave doesn't want to let any races who aren't a part of the Conclave settle on any planets. So, Roanoke is going to run the risk of being found and destroyed by the Conclave. Also, did I mention how frickin hard it is to settle a totally unsettled planet? Then: Surprise! This isn't even Roanoke! It's a different, more dangerous planet than you were expecting. Welcome to a planet-wide swamp. And, by the way, watch out for nasty things in that swamp with weapons. And THEN, after everyone's used to this comfy scenario, things get hairy. That's the plot's opening. Zoey is a sarcastic 17-year-old girl who just happens to have two Obin bodyguards, and who happens to be the equivalent of Mother Mary to the entire Obin race for reasons I won't spoil for you. These two aliens, who are large and look like a combination of a giraffe and a spider (that's basically the only description we get), are around Zoey most of the time, and are both charming and hilarious and scary. Both of those. The Good: I was hooked from paragraph two. John is good at creating suspense, and the galactic situation going on in this series is just full of potential. Zoey is a fun character, the Obin are a really cool race, and John Scalzi's writing is entertaining enough to make this very hard to put down. I enjoyed this one enough that I'll probably hunt down some more of his books and tell you about them later. The Bad: Well, we have a lot of good guys here, and some ethereal badguy presences such as the idea of the Conclave, and then we have some characters between like....ummm.....well, I guess we have goodguys and badguys. But, we're basically talking about a space opera, so what were you expecting? What didn't work for me, though, was the way everything works out so super-hunky dory in the end, despite how totally shitty things get. When put in a situation where just about everyone looks like they're going to get killed by badguys, ALL of the goodguys live and some badguys die. But not the big badguys. Just the little ones who don't have names and aren't necessary for next season's show. The Ugly: Reading this book confused me a little. I knew this was a nominee for the Hugo, so I was expecting something on par with Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. Since China Mieville didn't get nominated, I was expecting something BETTER THAN The City & The City. But as far as I could tell, we didn't have any deep messages going on in this book, other than the starry-eyed idea that if you really get to know people and be nice to them, they'll probably be won over and stop trying to kill you. Since I fundamentally think this is wrong, that message made me feel a little sick to my stomach during the last few chapters of this book. In other words, when I finished this book, I started really wondering why it was a Hugo Nominee. So, I did a little research and discovered the Hugo awards are nominated by people who attend WorldCon and pay a certain amount of money. In other words, these awards are given out by The People. Specifically, The People Who Can Afford to Go To WorldCon and Then Also Afford to Pay More Money To Vote In the Hugos. Fair enough. Except now I'm starting to wonder what I've gotten myself into with my resolution to read a bunch of contemporary SF and fantasy...is this the cream of the crop? Or is this just something everyone agrees is pretty entertaining? After all of that, my final verdict that Zoe's Tale is a three-star book: entertaining, worth the time investment to read it if you're into this kind of thing, but purely entertainment. Just like his exemplary blog, The Whatever.

Zoe's Tale is a parallel retelling of Scalzi's third Old Man's War novel, The Last Colony, written as a first-person narrative from the viewpoint of Zoë Boutin Perry (John Perry's daughter). It was fun to get the events of The Last Colony from Zoe's perspective, which makes sense. Zoe's Tale fleshed out some bits of the Last Colony that weren't very clear, like why the werewolves stopped attacking the colony and where the sapper field came from. The society of the Obin and their relationship to the Consu was expanded. It also gave us an insight to the lives of Zoe and her friends. Also, this reminded me of Heinlein Juveniles, so there's that. This is basically Scazli's attempt at YA. Zoe's a believable teenage girl, who is dealing with extraordinary circumstances of attempting to settle a new planet while having the burden of a alien race worshiping her. I enjoyed her spunk. Zoe's Tale is not hard SF or space opera--it's a character-driven first-person description of the first year of a new colony's establishment, which Scalzi juxtaposes with some pretty nasty interplanetary politics. It's a quick, fun yarn with a few thought provoking moments. All and all, it is a nice complement to "The Last Colony". It's not my favorite Scalzi but I still really enjoyed it. It's got a great central character, funny moments, some interplanetary politics, and witty dialogue and believable teenagers. Perfect for fans of Orson Scott Card Ender series and Heinlein's juveniles.

The whole book is pretty pointless as it is a retelling of the third book in the Old Man's War series. However, Scalzi always ends a book well and the last 40 pages were pretty damn good once again. So I will give it that.

A really cool perspective on previous books and expanded. I've really been a fan of the series and now wondering where it's going with the end of it.

In the first hundred pages I wanted to give the book 3 stars, because so much material was a rehash of The Last Colony. I got to 4 stars around page 200 and 5 stars now. This is a great companion to TLC. Looking forward to The Human Division.

Wasn't sure what to make of the same story, told from the perspective of the teenage daughter of the main protagonist. But it was well told, quite poignant, and filled in some gaps in the story.

A nice way to get a different perspective.