The Ghost Brigades

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Colonial Defense Force is desperate. They've learned that three species are gearing up to fight a war against The Colonial Union. This isn't the most surprising or frightening part. The worst part is there is one human involved, Charles Boutin. Boutin is a genius CDF military scientist who knows all their secrets and who should be dead. The CDF is willing to do whatever it takes to learn why Boutin turned even going to the point of making a clone using something Boutin should've never left behind.

What can I say about The Ghost Brigades? First and foremost to me the overall story is incredibly generic. Now to be fair my father loves science fiction and I watched tons of those shows with him growing up. I watched all of Star Trek The Next Generation, most of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, a ton of Stargate SG-1, some of Stargate Atlantis, and who knows how many other short lived sci-fi series. The point in saying that is that I've seen basically all the space travel sci-fi storylines that exist today and that makes The Ghost Brigades particularly average for me.

The Ghost Brigades brings us back to the Old Man's War universe in the heads of multiple point of view characters of the Special Forces rather than returning to the mind of John Perry. The result is the reader sees and learns all there is to be known about The Ghost Brigade. Unfortunately the human factor and the humor that John Perry brought to Old Man's War is as absent as Perry is in this story. My favorite part of the series so far was Perry as an old man and immediately after he got a new body. Perhaps it's best to admit the space colonization and fighting doesn't really work for me.

The Ghost Brigades is a fitting sequel to the second half of Old Man's War. So if John Perry's time as a CDF soldier was an incredibly fun and exciting read for you then you'll undoubtedly enjoy The Ghost Brigades.

2.5 stars out of 5

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