Book Review: Old Man's War

So, I'm a day late, and this review is not going to be nearly as informed as the last, as I have only read the book in question one time, know next to nothing about the author, and haven't read the rest of the series. Also, this isn't as long as my other review, probably because there isn't as much to say.

Anyways.

Old Man's War was the debut book for science fiction writer John Scalzi. Scalzi has since written another three books, with a fourth coming out sometime in the next year or so. I have read none of the other books, so those are out of the discussion for the moment.

The book itself is set in the future, where humanity is setting about colonizing other planets. Old Man's War revolves around a single character, John Perry, who joins the Colonial Defense Force at age 75, the earliest and only age at which they will accept new recruits.

First off, ignoring all else, Scalzi is an excellent writer in terms of his style. Something about it - probably the careless way that he juxtaposes wildly varying ideas or events with no change in the writing - grabs hold of your interest immediately and does not let up until the end of the book.

Old Man's War is very similar to the Heinlein science fiction classic, Starship Troopers. However, where Heinlein went to one extreme with the enormous amount of explanation and lecture in the book, Scalzi goes the other way - while you mostly know what the CDF is fighting and why they're fighting it, you don't know much else in most cases, which is kind of disappointing.

Maybe this trend is broken, maybe not, but the book itself sacrifices a lot of potential depth for the benefit, albeit not a small benefit, of never dragging and always having some amount of action going on.

Overall, I really liked the book, and you will probably also like it, assuming you like science fiction in general or Heinlein's writing in particular.

And, as a final warning, don't read the book if you're not up to plenty of violence and the occaisonal sex scene. It's well done, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.