Review: Zoe's Tale

Zoe's Tale (Kindle Edition) is the latest book in John Scalzi's Old Man's War universe, taking place concurrently with The Last Colony.

Even though Scalzi swears up and down that the book is independent of The Last Colony, I don't think it can easily be read that way --- you would miss a lot of context, and that would lead you to think that this was not a very rich universe. Scalzi agonizes a lot on his blog as to whether he got the teenage girl's voice right, and he does. But I've never been a teenage girl, so I'm not sure I'd qualify to pass that judgment.

Unfortunately, it feels a bit like that's his only goal for the entire book --- there's not a lot of additional story, and while the travails of a teenage girl in a colony who's the Chosen one is entertaining, it strays too much into Buffy territory for me, and unfortunately, Scalzi is no Joss Whedon.

If you like the previous Scalzi books, then you'll eventually pick up Zoe's tale, but I see no reason not to wait for the paperback version (well, ok, I picked up the Kindle edition).