Steven C. (SteveTheDM) - , reviewed on 6/16/2009 + 204 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 4

Boy, I'm really liking this Scalzi stuff. The Ghost Brigades was a fun read, with plenty of action, the growth (and death!) of characters, and a glimpse of the greater political galaxy that the Colonial Union finds itself in. And it had a good ending! Far too many books I've read over the last decade have felt like the authors hit their word count and decided to stop. That's not the case here, at all.

The book is actually a really nice sequal to a fantastic first book (Old Man's War), in that the whole "galaxy" that Scalzi has invented is matured a bit. Instead of gushing about how great it all is (as was the feeling in the first book), we begin to see the morally ambiguous decisions that have been made to bring the situation to it's current status. A lot of the change in feeling is due, in large part I think, to the switch to a third person perspective for the narrative, rather than the first person perspective of the prior novel.

The Ghost Brigades was highly enjoyable. And the setting that Scalzi has created has become something that can easily house more interesting stories. I'm looking forward to future titles in this series!

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