Scalzi, John: The Last Colony
The Last Colony
Writer: John Scalzi
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 320
There was no question whether or not I'd read John Scalzi's The Last Colony. I was just waiting for the mass-market. I was in the bookstore the week it came out, and I would've read it sooner, but I really haven't felt like reading much SF lately, and it's only the Hugos that've inspired me to get some more under my belt. Scalzi's one of my favorite authors, so it didn't hurt to have this book to look forward to.
The premise: after the events of Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, John Perry and his family have retired to one of humanity's many colonies. But the seed colony named Roanoke needs leadership, and John and Jane are begged to take the job. What starts out as a major media event (first colony colonized with peoples from planets OTHER than Earth) is nothing at all what it seems, and the colonists of the planet Roanoke may find themselves to be the last colony humanity's got left.
Spoilers ahead.
The book, fortunately, returns us to John Perry's rather humorous, sometimes snarky, beyond-a-doubt Scalzi voice. Thank God for that. Voice was one of the things lacking in The Ghost Brigades, but now that I've read this book, I see how important the events of book two really were, aside from getting Jane retired out of the Special Forces, and giving her and John an adopted daughter. I'd forgotten all about the Obin, as well as the Conclave--both which were introduced in book two--so it was neat to see how those seemingly small threads played a major role in this story. Sometimes, I felt as though I'd been sucked into one of the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, but in a good way, with the familiarity of the characters and how they interacted with the alien characters, as well as the alien characters themselves.
But what's interesting about this book, like its plot, is that nothing is what it seems. What looks like a simple colonization story with John and Jane in charge is anything but: the colonists of Roanoke are purposefully lost in an effort to make the ever-growing alien Conclave look like fools. Then the Colonial Union purposefully lets the colony be found in order to blast the Conclave's major fleet out of the sky. The plan is to let the Conclave then destroy itself from the inside-out once it's shown that they can't enforce there colonization policy (no race outside of the Conclave may colonize a planet, and those that do will find their colonies removed by force). But even then, there's more to it than that:
I'd always thought there was something a little shady about the Colonial Union, and in this book, that shadiness is really brought to light. Everything from its death grip on the media and its death grip on colonization policies. The colonists of all planets are purposefully left in the dark about the truth of the Conclave, an organization that will use eradicating force if necessary, but actually wants to promote peace and stop all the petty wars between races competing for planets. More so, the leader of the Conclave, General Gau, requires that all Conclave-colonized planets be made up of multiple races, so that no one race as a stranglehold on a planet or its resources.
In short, the Conclave, for the most part, is actually the good guys. And once John and Jane learn how they've been manipulated and how they're CURRENTLY being manipulated by their own government (Roanoke, once saved, is left with a bullseye on it with no planetary defenses: the idea is for the alien races to destroy it after their earlier humiliation, and the media will use that destruction to recruit soldiers from the existing colonies), they have to take matters into their own hands to save themselves, their daughter, and their colony, even if it means treason in the eyes of the Colonial Union. And it is, only what the Colonial Union doesn't realize is that if Roanoke falls, so will humanity.
It's a surprisingly deep book. Questioning one's loyalty to one's race, one's government, is pretty heady stuff, and Scalzi handles it well. I can certainly see how we're going to get another sequel from Zoe's POV in Zoe Tale, where we learn just how exactly she acted to save the colony and the rest of humanity. And I admire Scalzi giving the alien races a certain three-dimensionality in regards to their politics and character. It would've been easy to paint the aliens as completely good or completely bad, and Scalzi doesn't quite fall into that trap. It's the Colonial Union that's truly the bad guys, and that's cool. Also cool is how John Perry ends up breaking the stranglehold the CU has on Earth by letting EARTH meet the rest of the Conclave, by opening EARTH up to a stream of information and yanking the CU's wool out from over Earth's eyes. Good play, good play.
We get a happy ending, and that's a good thing. I'm not sure what to make of Jane being pregnant, though I'm glad--as Scalzi indicated in the acknowledgments--that their story is over.
My Rating
Must Have: it's a no-brainer, and after reading this, I can see why it came in second place in the Hugos. It's deeper than it appears to be, and it makes the reader question what loyalty really means, as well as the nature of peace and war. I wouldn't recommend reading this without the sequels of Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, but I have no trouble recommending these titles to those who love space opera. Scalzi has done great work with this series, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does next. I still need to read The Android's Dream though, so at least I have something to tide me over while I'm waiting for the mass-market of Zoe's Tale and the trade of Agent to the Stars.
Book: The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
Graphic Novel: Hellboy Library Edition Volume 1: Seed of Destruction and Wake the Devil by Mike Mignola