The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Ghost Brigades
Book Review: Never Hits Its Potential
Summary: 3 Stars
Living as a healthy adult from your first moment of consciousness would be difficult enough; what Jared Dirac has to deal with - being templated with the mind of a scientist (Charles Boutin) turned traitor - seems like piling on. The Ghost Brigades is John Scalzi's followup to Old Man's War, but rather than follow John Perry (that novel's main character) it follows Dirac, as he is "born", integrates with the Special Forces (adults from birth, like him), and begins to remember things from Boutin's mind. How Dirac deals with all this - how human is he, and how human are the other Special Forces he works with - is the main conceit of the novel.
Which is good, because it's the novels strongest point. While Scalzi doesn't explore it as well as I was hoping after Old Man's War - perhaps because of the absence of John Perry and his complicated relationship with Jane Sagan (who does return, as the commander of Dirac's unit) - Dirac is an interesting character. What's problematic, however, is that Scalzi is frequently more interested in writing a fun ride than fleshing out his ideas, and Dirac's development feels somewhat wasted. It's hard to pinpoint where things specifically go wrong, but Scalzi's prose, while solid and with some nice passages, never manages to grab hold of the ideas and potential before everything sort of slips away. The action is capable but never all that exciting.
The book is still a page-turner, however, and I read fairly quickly to the end. The Ghost Brigades is a good book, and an improvement on the second half of Old Man's War, but only rarely rises above the level of fun distraction.
Book Review: Nice fun novel with a deeper side, and sharp and funny writing
Summary: 4 Stars
John Scalzi won last year's Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and his first novel with a major publisher, Old Man's War, was on the Hugo ballot. That novel told of human colonies in a hostile galaxy, whose army consists of old people who have agreed to serve in the military in exchange for a new body. The backstory of that novel hinted at a complex political situation involving the many alien races the humans share the galaxy with. His 2006 novel, The Ghost Brigades, addresses that situation a bit more.
The title refers to the Special Forces branch of the Colonial Defense Forces. These are particularly enhanced soldiers, cloned from soldiers who didn't survive the period between agreeing to serve in the CDF and getting transferred to their new body. They have special abilities, most particularly a quasi-telepathic link with other members of their unit. But they are for the most part secret. In Old Man's War we met one Ghost Brigade soldier, Jane Sagan. (These soldiers are given names derived from famous scientists.)
In this novel a plot is uncovered: three alien races, the Rraey, the Obin, and the Enesha, have agreed to unite against humanity. And one human, Charles Boutin, a brilliant scientist, has turned traitor after the death of his daughter. Boutin's expertise is consciousness transfer. The CDF have a copy of his consciousness, and they transfer it into a clone of his body, hoping to find out what made Boutin go bad. But the transfer doesn't take (at first), and the clone, called Jared Dirac, becomes a regular Special Forces member.
He joins Jane Sagan's unit, and eventually participates in key actions, such as a mission against the Eneshans, in which his unit commits atrocities in order to convince the Eneshans to abandon their alliance against humans. This stress begins to recall his Boutin memories, and he is set on a path leading inevitably to the real Charles Boutin, and to some wrenching revelations about galactic politics, and about human interactions with aliens.
It is once again a lot of fun. There are weakness -- some excessive implausibilities in the plot most particularly. And I am not entirely convinced by the characterization of the Special Forces members (though Scalzi does try ...). But it's pretty good overall, and I did like the increased moral complexity of this future as described here. Not a great novel, but a nice fun novel with a bit of a deeper side. There are some nice ideas, some good thinking about such things as the importance of consciousness, and plenty of sharp and funny writing.
Book Review: No Life of His Own
Summary: 5 Stars
Jared Dirac has no life of his own. His body is a superhuman hybrid cloned from the DNA of a traitor to humanity to receive the stored consciousness that traitor--the top command hope that he will be able to answer their questions about what Charles Boutin will do next.
This book is a sequel to Old Man's War in name only, and while it leans on that novel for some concepts, it stands on its own. In some ways, the moral and ethical implications of the technology are questioned more fiercely here. And these are questions that our time and our world need to consider with the rapid advance of bio-technology. Even in our world, there are soldiers who are only children in age.
Ultimately, this book shows us that our choices are what make us fully human, our choices create our souls. Jared Rules!
Book Review: Not Another Bug Hunt
Summary: 4 Stars
I was expecting a sequel and I was pleasantly disappointed. While the story does take place in the same universe, it's a whole new story unto itself in reference to Old Man's War. I kept waiting for John Perry to come into the story but I'm quiet happy with the story only eluding to him now and then through Jane.
I loved the way his story twists into something so much more than just another "Bug Hunt" science fiction book. I didn't know who I wanted to win in the end and I loved it. I won't give anything away so I'll leave it at that. If you've read Old Man's War, and I do recommend you do before reading this one, then you'll just tear into this one and love every page.
Book Review: Not Free SF Reader
Summary: 4 Stars
Someone with rather a large amount of knowledge of the science and politics of the Colonial Union has decided to do a runner.
However, there is an old template of him on file, so to speak, so they make a new body to perhaps use against him. The intelligence officer that gets to babysit? Jane Sagan.
Apparently Special Forces types get named after scientists etc., so this new guy is named Dirac.
Naturally he runs into the old guy, and along the way some twists and turns in the galactic political situation are revealed, setting up the scenario for the third book in this series.