Okay, I'll admit, I wasn't that psyched about the first book in this series. I'm not even sure why. I think my family may have inadvertently done it a disservice by raving about it so much before I read it. When I finally got around to it I thought it was pretty "meh". I think my big problem with it was that I couldn't discern a plot. They go up in space, get fancy new bodies, play around with said fancy new bodies, fight various aliens, and then, in the last 100 pages, there's actually a goal and stakes and that part was really exciting. As a whole though, the book felt pretty disjointed to me.
This book did not suffer from that at all! And actually I appreciate "Old Man's War" so much more for having set up this book. "Ghost Brigades" hit the ground running and never stopped! From the very beginning there was mystery and danger and suspense and the entire plot was extremely well-crafted.
I also have to stop and marvel again at Scalzi's knowledge of human nature. He had a character who had never been given a choice and, like many people who have been properly conditioned, never thought about it. When he's made to think about it and forced to make a choice, he gets angry, not at the people/organization suppressing him all this time, but the person (well, alien, actually, but who's keeping track?) giving him and option. It boggled my mind because I never would have considered that reaction but of course it made perfect sense. There's an ease and simplicity to life when we don't have to make any choices and so I totally believed that this character felt angry with the person imposing this change on him. It was brilliant!
I really don't have much more to say about this book. It was a lot of fun, took me all of three days to read, and I would highly recommend it. Also, I got my sic-fi in for this month.
No comments:
Post a Comment