Reviews with content warning for Death - Old Man's War

I did think John felt a little too perfect though. The drill instructor can't find something he doesn't like about just him, he always comes up with the brilliant solutions and saves the day. But it was an early novel, so whatever.

I do wonder if some of it is a product of its time. I think today there would be a much more visceral negative reaction to having a virtual assistant put into your brain without informed consent. No one seems to have any of the privacy concerns I would have expected. Are their thoughts still private? Especially by the time the AI no longer needs words (spoken or not) to take instructions. John doesn't seem at all bothered by the fact that apparently his new body can just be turned off. (And what's to stop an enemy from discovering how to do that and then just taking out all of the CDF?

I also think there must have been a lot of body dysmorphia and existential crises happening. Even a better looking you is a different you than you see in the mirror every day to say nothing of the fact that you're now green with different eyes. That's also going to mess with people's identities. The drill instructor points out that there are no minorities now, but being part of the majority or minority is going to shape a person over the course of their 75 years (and the drill instructor does mention breaking 75 years of various mental conditioning, but that's about it). Similarly, I'm not 75 and I understand that as the body starts to fail there would probably be some joy in having a new, vastly improved working body, but I have to think there would also be a profound existential crisis for a lot of people who were transferred without much warning and their old bodies presumably destroyed. There is a line that there's a religious figure for many religions onboard, but at least no on in John's group seems the least bit bothered. Nobody wonders about the nature of the soul, or if they're just a software program now, or they've committed a gross violation of their religion.

There's also no discussion of whether someone who was transgender was put into the body of the same sex they were born with or if their new body matches his/her/their gender. This also came out in 2005, and while transgender people obviously existed long before 2005, I don't think there was as much awareness as there is now so that's not really a knock against Scalzi.

It was pretty clear where this was going once the nanoprobes were inserted and I thought the baseline tests were interesting. I'm not sure what would cause me to get murderously angry, and I couldn't tell you anything about my seventh birthday (and that's without a naked person in the room). And how's that for a job?

I'm also not really clear why Earth's fragility in the larger universe is being kept a secret, unless it's that they think no one would sign up for service if they knew. (And there's no push back against that, either. People on Earth seem to think they'll likely be doing a two year tour and be done, but when it turns out that won't be the case no one seems to be bothered by it. I kind of doubt they'd all be saying, well, I signed a contract so it's fine.

I get that this would all radically shift the tone of the book Scalzi was writing and so that's probably why it wasn't really dealt with.

And while the CDF has gone after a couple of homeworlds, there's no suggestion that someone might do the same to Earth, which seems odd.

There's also not a lot of grappling with the fact that we're repeating our colonialist past (it's called the Colonial Defense Force, for gods sake). I suspect that might happen in later books.

I'm curious if we will see John's theory about the Consu come to fruition in later books.

It's also interesting (and somewhat unlikely?) that we don't see much in the way of alliances with other aliens. The enemy of my enemy etc, especially if you have several technologically weaker races.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.

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minzzi's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

This book wasn't for me.
I'm a character driven reader and all the characters in this book were so one dimensional it hurted. Like, I get that the main focus of the story is the war, but some of the characters we spend more then half of the book with and they are as flat in the end as they were when first introduced and because of that I ended up not caring when someone died.
The main character clearly had what I like to call "action anime male protagonist symbrome", with includes: plot armor so he doesn't die even when he should, being perfect in everything he tries to do and having hot woman interested in him just because. I didn't hate him, but I also didn't like him, he was just a bland protagonist.
Also, the author seems to be very confused on what type of book this is. He seens to be writing a fantasious story with unrealist alien science, with is totally fine, but then he tries to explain away the craziness like it is real Earth science and it gets really confusing. Especially because the tone of the story is all over the place, going from stupid jokes to action packed scene to stupid joke in the blink of an eye with paragrafs of science throw in the middle.
It poses some big questions, like: Is colonizing space by killing entire aliens species ethical? How much can you alter your body and self until you are no longer a human? Etc. However, those questions are never answered. The war is just there and that is not good considering that said war is the center of the plot.
The only saving grace for me was Jane and her relationship with John. Wich didn't help much since she only shows up in the last, like, 10% of the story. Honestly, if the book was told from her perspective I would have enjoyed it more. The whole concept of the the Ghost Brigades was interesting, but, unfortunately, not interesting enough to make keep reading the series.

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jwells's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Strong character development? No

I'm not usually a military SF reader but I got curious about the premise of the "second life" that elderly retirees can get by enlisting. It's a good hook.

I'm surprised how many reader reviews tagged this as funny. Just because of some dialogue wise cracks? When

quite a few likeable characters die in various unpleasant ways.

I found the thread about John's love for his dead wife rather moving... right up until it became clear that she was going to be replaced on a particularly appalling way. I wouldn't have minded a new romance when John's been a widower for nine years. But this:

a clone of the dead wife, who is emotionally six years old, whom John is teaching/grooming with memories of his wife. What.

. I'm not up for it. The romance doesn't progress in this book, but we get enough to know that's where we are headed.

It's too bad I have to bail; I see that the sequel has alien POV which is intriguing.

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its_kievan's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

A very dark military sci-fi book that’s strangely uninterested in questions of morality. The main character literally commits war crimes against various aliens, and even discusses the fact that humankind has basically gone to war with every other civilization in the galaxy just because we can, but it’s kind of… shrugged away? There’s a character who’s planning to become a military leader and then end the wars, but she later dies and it’s really not discussed any further. It’s a good book, but I wish it was a bit more thoughtful.

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carolinewardnesbit's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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omnombailey's review against another edition

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adventurous funny informative mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

While Old Man's War brought very little to the table in terms of new ideas to the sci-fi genre, it executed tropes well enough to remain enjoyable. The plot was a touch predictable, thanks to the numerous info dumps meant to hold your hand throughout the narrative, but the wit in the prose continued to hook me again and again.

If you are giving this book a shot and find yourself struggling in the beginning, the story drags its feet (imo) until about 60% into the story. Then it actually gets interesting beyond the whole training montage sequence the story is up until then. At the same time, the fact it took THAT long for me to finally not put the book down isn't great, either.

There's more to this series, but I'm not really jumping to find out what's next. Maybe I will someday. For now, I'm content with what I read and shall move along.

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