The Last Colony

February 17, 2025 2:12 PM

Retired from his fighting days, John Perry is now village ombudsman for a human colony on distant Huckleberry. With his wife, former Special Forces warrior Jane Sagan, he farms several acres, adjudicates local disputes, and enjoys watching his adopted daughter grow up.

Written by MeFi's own jscalzi.

That is, until his and Jane's past reaches out to bring them back into the game — as leaders of a new human colony, to be peopled by settlers from all the major human worlds, for a deep political purpose that will put Perry and Sagan back in the thick of interstellar politics, betrayal, and war.

In honor of the 20th anniversary of Old Man's War, and in anticipation of September's release of book 7 of the series The Shattering Peace, we're revisting this SF mainstay with one post a week for the next 4 weeks.

This is a 'Reread' post, comments that touch on future events in the series are most welcome.

posted by Frayed Knot (5 comments total)

Reading the Wikipedia plot summary, I have literally zero memory of this story -- but, even knowing the entire plot, I want to read it (again).
posted by wenestvedt at 5:35 AM on February 18

Zoe's war, the 4th book, retells the events of this book from her perspective. And maybe it's just because I read that one before this (library vagaries), but Lost Colony didn't hit home for me. I felt Zoe's War had covered the same events from a more interesting perspective. Perhaps people reading books 3 and 4 in the intended order had the opposite experience.

I remember feeling that the ending was a bit of a deus ex machina if you didn't have the additional context from Zoe's War. Perhaps that was on purpose - a hook to make the next book compelling to readers who already know the plot beats. It's certainly not an easy trick to try and keep readers interested in two books that both cover the same plot beats so closely.
posted by Lorc at 4:50 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]

Yes. I read them in the intended order and I remember being bored by Zoe's War, and a little baffled by why he would write it.
posted by Illusory contour at 6:15 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm trying to remember if I got all the way through this in my Helldivers 2 inspired SciMilFic rereads of both Starship Troopers and Old Man's War before I ran out of steam. I mean, my Kindle dumps me off at the Acknowledgements page, but is that from the first time I read the book, Bezos, or the most recent time I read the book? I wish there was a better way of managing reading positions and read state, harumph. *shakes fist at Kindle-shaped cloud*

I should pick up Zoe's Tale and the rest of 'em again just to be up to speed again before the new book comes out. It's been a while.
posted by Kyol at 7:50 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]

I was able to read both this and The Ghost Brigades over the weekend and am about 1/3 of the way through Zoe's Tale. More than anything else I'm really wondering what the CDF's long game is here because an alliance of a couple of races ought to be enough to end humanity and the CDF seems to be doing a better job of building enemies than alliances of its own.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:20 PM on March 24