• Full Title: The Ghost Brigades
• Authors: John Scalzi
• Year: 2006
• Genre: Science Fiction, Interstellar War
• Publisher: Tor
• ISBN 0-765-31502-54 (library hardcover)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia Page

 

Summary

The second book in the Old Man’s War universe, I opened John Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades under the mistaken assumption that it was a sequel. It is not. The primary character of Old Man’s War is briefly mentioned a couple of times in this book, but he is not in this book. Another character from the end of Old Man’s War is also a secondary character in this book. And this book takes place chronologically after the events of Old Man’s War. In all other ways, it is not a sequel.

In a nutshell, the Colonial Defense Forces are on the hunt for a traitor scientist who left behind a copy of his consciousness. This copy is implanted into a newly grown special forces (“ghost brigades”) soldier in the hopes of learning more about the escaped scientist in order to locate him and avert the war about to rain down on humanity.

 

What I Liked Least About It

It’s not a perfect book, but I’m having a difficult time pointing to specific things I disliked. One thing that stood out near the end was a conversation with a child, which felt drastically unrealistic — including quickly getting over her father’s death. The girl in the story would have been about the same age as Scalzi’s real-life daughter at that time, and about the same age as my daughter now. Maybe Scalzi was thinking of his own child when he wrote it, and maybe his own daughter would have spoken and behaved like the girl in the story; mine would not have.

And my usual Scalzi complaints: lack of character descriptions and forward-backward time jumps.

 

What I Liked Most About It

This book, unlike its predecessor, at least attempted to explain why so many species in the galaxy are constantly at war with one another. (This was something that bothered me about the first book.) Maybe he got some feedback, but Scalzi here mentions something of a conspiracy among the CDF higher-ups, who are hiding from most humans the fact that humans are the only race that’s at war with all the others; most of the others aren’t at war with one another. I’d like to learn a little more about this in future books. It’s still vague to me.

Again, none of the technology in the story was new or original to Scalzi (at this point in science fiction, it’s going to be fairly difficult for any writer to think up some new kind of technology), but again, he treats them with his own flair and weaves them seamlessly into a mostly believable future society.

Also, I think Scalzi did a better job in this book of avoiding the skip-forward, flash-back narrative style he used so much in Old Man’s War. He still tends to begin each new chapter in the middle of the action, which forces him into several paragraphs of exposition to help the reader understand what’s happening — but here it felt more natural and his summaries were quicker and more efficient.

 

Conclusion

Always having been a fan of the military-style science fiction novels, I like this series fairly well. I enjoy the stories despite my small complaints above. I still think The Collapsing Empire is the best of his books I’ve read so far, with Fuzzy Nation a close second.

If you liked Old Man’s War, you’ll enjoy this one too — but I think this story mostly stands on its own. (I can’t be certain, because I did read the first book, but I’m convinced you could read The Ghost Brigades alone and not be lost.)

Related: Old Man’s War

Related: The Last Colony

 

 

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