Homer's Travels: Book: John Scalzi's "The Ghost Brigades"

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Book: John Scalzi's "The Ghost Brigades"

The Ghost Brigades" is the sequel to John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" which I read earlier this year (Review here). Like all sequels, it doesn't quite live up to the first book but, as sequels go, it's still pretty good.

The book, as the title implies, follows the Ghost Brigades, Colonial Defense Forces special forces soldiers. The soldiers are engineered from DNA of dead volunteers that die before they can be enlisted in the regulars ranks (All volunteers are recruited from elderly people from Earth and their minds are transferred into young, genetically engineered bodies). The special force's bodies are enhanced using alien DNA and brain implants turning them into super-soldiers.

The crisis in the book was pretty obvious. I saw the potential weakness in the special forces back in the first book. This kind of diminished the reading experience somewhat but the final solution to the problem is imaginative and satisfying.

I ended up reading this book in just over three days. This kind of tells you that I liked it well enough. When I don't like a book I tend to read slow. This one I zoomed through. It could have been better but it was good enough.

If you read the first book, I recommend you read this one as well.

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