★★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: The End Of All Things
• Series: Old Man’s War #6
• Author: John Scalzi
• Year: 2015
• Pages: 349*
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Publisher: Tor
• ISBN 978-0-7653-7607-7 (library hardcover)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia page

(* not including extras)

 

Summary

In The End Of All Things, John Scalzi wraps up the long-running Old Man’s War series, bringing a tentative peace to this region of the galaxy. The Colonial Union adapts to changing times and its loss of top-down power; the Conclave holds together and begins official ties with the CU; the people of Earth begin to have a say in their future.

The book is constructed as a collection of four novellas, perhaps building on the easy-to-digest format of the fifth book in the series, The Human Division. All four are told in the first person, each by a different character. The first, The Life Of The Mind, is narrated by pilot Rafe Daquin; the second, This Hollow Union, by Conclave second-in-command Hafte Sorvalh; the third, Can Long Endure, by soldier Heather Lee (whom we first met in “episode” 8 of the previous book); and the fourth, To Stand Or Fall, by longtime series character Lt. Harry Wilson.

 

Praise

While it might not be a perfect ending to the series, it was satisfactory. What few plot threads remained alive from previous novels were resolved. There were enjoyable action scenes, characteristic Scalzi snark in the dialog, and perhaps a bit more examination of the deeper meaning of things than Scalzi typically sets forth.

As I found with the previous book, this (novella collection) format is better for me than a full-on novel. Though the chapters within each novella were relatively long, the novella format is (by definition) shorter than a novel and provides nearer end-points for each reading session. I think it also forces the author to write more concisely and to leave less of the plot up to chance.

Though I know some readers dislike first-person narration, I’m a fan of it when done well and I think Scalzi did it well here, especially considering that he used four separate narrators — each one had a noticeably different voice and viewpoint on things.

Also, perhaps due to the novella format, I noticed Scalzi depended far less on his usual skip-ahead-then-go-back-and-explain tactic. Yes, it happened, but the “go-back-and-explain” parts were much briefer and often handled in dialog instead of with many paragraphs of expositional explanations.

 

Points Off For...

As I said, it wasn’t perfect. Some of the action happened in the background, its space in the text given over to dialog and character interaction (which really is Scalzi’s strong suit). A few tricks, I felt he used too often — to the point of cliché. For example, Character A says something, then Character B responds, and Character A comes back with: “But that’s not exactly what I said” and makes some semantic point about the specific words he chose. Which was cute and/or funny the first couple of times, but it seemed like it happened over and over. Also, the basic disagreements between the Earth, the Colonial Union, and the Conclave kept being explained (not to mention the motivations of the mystery organization that was strongly hinted at in the previous book).

Scalzi also stuck to his characteristic lack of character descriptions, which I have learned to expect from him, even when the characters are non-humanoid extraterrestrials. Which makes me wonder why he included the few he did, such as that one alien species is much taller than Earthlings. As is typical, Scalzi’s characters are differentiated primarily in two ways: their current rank/occupation and their backgrounds.

There were also a couple of oddly telling mistakes, almost certainly introduced during the editing process. In the third novella, on page 219, Scalzi refers to one character as “Terrence”, though none of the characters in that scene are named Terrence. I assume he refers to Terrell Lambert. This might have been a weird slip that didn’t get caught during editing, but I think it more likely that the character’s name was originally Terrence and got changed to Terrell at some point but one of the instances didn’t get changed. In the fourth novella, on page 274, Scalzi says “his BrainPal” when it should have been “my BrainPal” — because there are only two people in the scene, and only the first-person narrator has a BrainPal. I think this part was originally written in the third person and then edited to be first person, but the “his” wasn’t caught.

 

Conclusion

One of the very few series that I’ve read to completion, the Old Man’s War group of books was overall enjoyable, and this particular book was a fitting ending. If anyone has read the bulk of the earlier books, I recommend reading this one to get some closure.

(Now I am curious about reading Old Man’s War again — I think I still own a paperback copy. When I read it, I hadn’t read science fiction in a while and was circling back into the genre. It was my first Scalzi novel. I wonder what I will think of it now that I am more accustomed to Scalzi’s writing, specifically, and more familiar with modern sci-fi in general.)

 

 

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