Zoe's Tale
by John Scalzi
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Book Reviews of Zoe's Tale
Book Review: One of the Best Books You Can Give Your Kids
Summary: 5 Stars
In his fourth novel set in the world of OLD MAN'S WAR that jumpstarted John Scalzi's career in writing science fiction, the author doubles back for a second helping of story from his last novel, THE LAST COLONY. With a new voice, new events, and a batch of new stakes, Scalzi rekindles that reading experience to white-hot intensity.
The protagonist is a teenaged girl named Zoe who has an interesting background that has shaped not only her present, but her foreseeable future. She was a secondary character in THE GHOST BRIGADES and THE LAST COLONY, but now she's center stage. Although Scalzi's work has often been compared to Robert A. Heinlein's, with this new protagonist, those parallels have never been more sharply defined. I constantly felt as though I were twelve years old again, hunkered down with one of Heinlein's novels for juveniles.
Zoe is a marvelous character and leaps from the pages. As a kid, I knew girls like her. As an adult, I raised a daughter like her in so many ways. The fierce independence and need to shield her parents from her world (and to protect her privacy) was endearing.
Scalzi's voice in the first-person narrative is pitch-perfect. If I hadn't known the writer was male, I wouldn't have believed it. The views and opinions Zoe and her best friend Gretchen shared were incredibly well done.
I enjoyed the portrayal of the scientific realm as well, especially the way that it was rendered through Zoe's eyes. Her chief concern was her PDA, and it was just as much a part of her as a modern teenager's cell phone: for calls, for pictures and videos, for texting, and for storing media. The other things (like the interplanetary ship) were primarily taken for granted since they were in the adult world.
Zoe's crush on Enzo was particularly good as well. I like the way the couples paired off, and the fact that their close relationships later caused problems for all of them when those friendships also became liabilities.
Readers of THE LAST COLONY are going to know most of the major arcs of the story and won't find any true surprises in this book regarding those. But to hear the story in Zoe's words, to find out all the behind-the-scenes action that was going on regarding Zoe and her alien protectors, to find out more about the "werewolves" in the forest's outside the colony's containment walls is a veritable feast made from leftovers. Sure, the story's been told before in some regards, but there's a reason twice-backed potatoes are popular too.
Not many writers can pull off a second visit to what is - essentially - the same story. Scalzi not only does pull this off, but he brings so much more out of the second trip in such a unique way that this trip through doesn't even feel like the same book. Even though so many of the characters and situations are familiar, I was swept away to another world seemingly made whole from the one I'd only thought I knew.
I enjoy Scalzi's writing. He's deceptively easy to read. His voice, whichever voice he's using, always rings true and pulls me through his novels. Zoe's voice was hauntingly familiar from the Heinlein juveniles, but Scalzi just has a much better hook on today's kids.
ZOE'S TALE is a perfect book to offer a young reader. Especially one that's wondering why you're reading Scalzi's books. A young reader doesn't have to read the preceding three books because this novel is self-contained. It's a great exposure to the Old Man's War books, and it might just have your kid raiding your book shelves or the local library for Scalzi's previous novels. If that happens, you're going to have competition for his next book!
Book Review: A reiteration of The Last Colony
Summary: 4 Stars
Let me first say that I think John Scalzi is a wonderful writer. I read Old Man's War when it first came out and enjoyed it very much. Earlier this month I noted he had penned a few sequels and I decided to give them a go. In preparation for doing so I actually re-read Old Man's War and, surprisingly, I enjoyed it even more the second time around. I can say unhesitatingly that I feel that Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and the Last Colony are all wonderful five star reads that evoke the best from the golden age of science fiction and yet are distinctly modern in their presentation.
Scalzi writes in a deceptively easy and smooth style and you glide silkily from one page to the next. His writing is leavened with liberal humor and spiced with adrenalin-fueled action scenes making for a thoroughly enjoyable treat. Many people have compared him to Robert Heinlein...I would go even farther. Scalzi could easily be Heinlein's clone when it comes to writing. Their styles are that similar. This is a good thing though, a grand thing, and I am so pleased that Scalzi is writing the books he is.
But...I have to say I was disappointed with Zoe's Tale in several ways. This is entirely my fault as I was so very excited to get a fourth installment in this series that I did not bother to read the publisher's blurb on the Amazon page. The fact I didn't do so is actually a form of homage to Scalzi because I have already decided that anything he writes is worthy of reading so I didn't really feel like I had to check out the plot first. Zoe's Tale simply retells the story of The Last Colony from the perspective of Zoe, a young teenaged girl. Since I just read The Last Colony a few days ago, I already knew what was going to happen and so there was little ability to generate tension during the story. I still very much enjoyed the smooth, humorous writing but the story itself was a little bit like eating leftovers that you aren't really interested in. It's better than not eating, but it's simply not that thrilling.
I think Scalzi did a remarkably good job of capturing the perspective and outlook of a teenage girl in the novel, which as he explains in the afterword is something of a challenge for a middle-aged guy to pull off. Speaking as another middle-aged guy it seemed to me like he did a good job, but then again, what do I know? Yet, since I am a middle-aged guy I do generally prefer stories told from an older perspective than that of a teenager. I definitely preferred the protagonists of the first three books from a narrative point-of-view. Shifting from an adult perspective to a teenaged one, while well done, detracted a little from the book for me. It could be a plus for others, but I share this so others can make informed decisions.
I must say that overall I enjoyed the book, but I probably would have ordered something else if I'd known beforehand what this was going to be (again, completely my fault). So my advice is to understand what you are buying here before you do it. This is a good book, very enjoyable, and it does throw in a few scenes and explanations that were not in The Last Colony, including a bit more about the werewolves. On the whole though, there isn't much additional informaiton here and I would have preferred a brand new story over a rehashed one. So I'll give this one five stars for the enoyable writing style that will keep me coming back for more, but three stars for not really adding anything new to the series, and settle out at four stars.
Book Review: A Goddess with a Real Face
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the fourth book set in the Old Man's War universe, but it's not a continuation of the story arcs he established in the first three, but rather a retelling of the events of the third book, The Last Colony, but told this time from a very different perspective, that of sixteen year old Zoe Boutin-Perry, daughter of a traitor, the object of a major treaty between the Colonial Union and the Obin, and adopted by John and Jane Perry.
Now doing something like this is fraught with peril, as readers of the earlier books will certainly know how everything ends, and will therefore have little sense of suspense throughout this work. It is even more perilous for a middle-aged man to attempt to find the correct `voice' for a teenaged female, one that rings true and will appeal to younger readers, and still engage readers of much greater ages. I'm happy to say that Mr. Scalzi quite deftly succeeded very, very well with both the characterization and being able to still hold at least this reader glued to the pages, even without the suspense.
Zoe herself is a full-bodied person, one you'd definitely like to meet, someone you come to care about a great deal over the course of this work. She's not perfect, she makes mistakes, occasionally her sarcasm and biting comments might make you grimace, and there is an element of unthinking `me-ness' to her, an attitude that she's unique. But in this case, she really is unique - not many girls can say that they are the goddess-object of an entire alien race. But besides her, several of her close friends also come alive as real people, something that's a little rare in first-person perspective works. Gretchen, Magdy, and Enzo are very much real people, and even better, real teenagers.
Certain aspects of other major players are given better backgrounds, most especially the Obin and Zoe's two Obin bodyguards, Hickory and Dickory, and a certain story `hole' in The Last Colony gets a better, fuller explanation. These are nice touches that help hold your interest.
Scalzi's writing style has much to do with your enjoyment of this book. It's witty, sarcastic, funny, thoughtful, and incredibly easy to read, a trait he shares with a writer he's often compared to, namely Robert Heinlein. But beyond this, in this book he also grabs your jugular of emotional response, expertly playing you like a harp, and making you at time furious, sad, and very strongly up-lifted to the point of tears. It's just this strong emotional content that makes me think this book is better than The Last Colony, and on par with the first book of this series, Old Man's War.
All in all, a great accomplishment, one that should appeal to both teenagers and old codgers like me.
---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Book Review: POV means everything in a story . . .
Summary: 4 Stars
I stopped only a few pages into Scalzi's latest, thinking to myself, "I've read this story before." But I knew it was also a brand-new book. Only one thing to do: Cheat and read the author's Afterword first. Where I discovered I was both right and wrong. This is indeed the same story that was told in The Last Colony -- but from a different perspective and with some essential information added. John Perry and Jane Sagan, late of the Colonial Union's military forces and now semi-retired low-level bureaucrats on a bucolic colony planet, have adopted young Zoë Boutin, biological daughter of the man who provided artificial consciousness to the Obin, one of the many hundreds of species filling our part of the galaxy. This makes Zoë very special indeed to all the Obin; in fact, her welfare is a significant part of the peace treaty between the Obin and humanity, and she has two Obin bodyguards whose job is to keep her safe. Then John and Jane are recruited to lead the settlement of a new colony of a special character, and Zoë, now fifteen (I think) has to set about making new friends and dealing with a new home. Of course, the Colonial Union, being controlled as it is by the worst sort of politicians, hasn't told the settlers of Roanoke anything about the real reasons they were sent there, nor why they're being set up as bait, nor why they're worth more as dead symbols than as live settlers. And it's eventually down to Zoë to upset the CU's applecart and save her family and friends. Because this is Zoë telling the story in first person (the same story, more or less, that was told by her parents in the previous book),we learn a lot more about certain events and gloss over certain other things that we witnessed in much more detail from her parents' point of view. We also hear it all in Zöe's intelligent and precocious, but still adolescent voice, so that the whole thing comes across somewhat like a very well written Heinlein-style juvenile. Can't say fairer than that. Reading the two books a year apart allows you to forget and then re-learn much of the detail, which is why I would not recommend reading them back to back. But Scalzi is one of the best sf writers working these days and you definitely should read both of them.Book Review: More character time leads to Scalzi's best so far
Summary: 4 Stars
(I received a Zoe's Tale ARC through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program)
Zoe Boutin Perry was never a significant character on her own merits in the previous John Scalzi book "The Last Colony" - a key to parts of the plot, but more important there for what she was than who she was. Combine that with her involvement in the one big plot gap of the book - where key events happened offscreen - and there's plenty of room for something like "Zoe's Tale", which covers roughly the same time period but from the perspective of Zoe rather than her parents.
And Zoe's Tale it truly is - though the previous books in the Old Man's War series were primarily from first person perspective, they were not as focused on a single character. As a result, Zoe may be Scalzi's best established character; the note-perfect sarcasm was a little overplayed (Scalzi is great at snark) but not by much. Plus, it allows him free reign with her primary conflict - growing as a person and facing the issue of who she is as a person versus her role as a icon to an alien species and part of a treaty between that species and humanity.
The personal focus also causes a problem, however; it's not as easy to switch the grand events occurring during the novel. This leads to some strained info dumping on occasion as the reader has to be caught up on the background plot to understand what's going on. Scalzi also manages to write himself into a corner later on, setting up a big fight scene that he can't write out - it would completely throw off the books pacing and is too large to manage - so he has to offhandedly dispatch it in 7 words.
For all that this is a parallel to the third book in a series, it feels accessible as a standalone book; the plot dumping helps, but the book is mostly shaped well on its own. There are a couple minor points that a new reader is unlikely to get - the roles of Phoenix and Earth, certain aspects of the CDF - but they're not significant distractions. Zoe's Tale is as good a place as any to start with Scalzi, and a good book in its own right.
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