jojo_k
Written on Aug 20, 2020
John Perry did two things on this 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it to interstellar space. The bad news is that planes fit to live on are scarce and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. Fr from Earth, the war has gone on for decades: brutal, bloody, and unyielding. We fight to defend Earth from our new enemies and to stake our claim to planetary real estate. On Earth, the bulk of the resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defence Force. Only those of retirement age can join the CDF: they want people who carry the skills from decades of living. CDF members are taken off Earth to serve two years at the front. If they survive, they're given a generous homestead on hard-won colony planets, never to return to Earth. John Perry is taking that deal with only the vaguest idea what to expect.
- ISBN13 9780765348272
- Publish Date 15 January 2007 (first published 1 January 2005)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Tor Books
- Format Paperback (US Mass Market)
- Pages 368
- Language English
Reviews
jamiereadthis
Written on Sep 18, 2019
Whatever the reason, just not my style, substance, or humor. It’s definitely suffering from my recent forays into Ursula K. Le Guin and Lois McMaster Bujold, which is unfortunate but also means there is sci-fi and fantasy out there written for me.
leahrosereads
Written on May 5, 2019
John Perry did two things on his seventy-fifth birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.
OLD MAN'S WAR follows John as he joins the Colonial Defense Forces to serve in a war away from Earth (far, far away from Earth) and tries not to die.
He's a pretty typical MC to be honest, which would normally bother me. But, sometimes it's nice to have an MC like this, just a nice security blanket. He was smart, sarcastic, and thought his humor was the absolute shit. It worked incredibly well for this story. Could it be that down the road John's personality will bother me because of how predictable it is? Sure, but it didn't happen during this book.
Of course, this is only the first of 6, so maybe by book 6 (if John's still the MC), maybe he'll annoy the hell out of me. I'm looking forward to finding out.
After John, we had several side characters self-dubbed the Old Farts. They were as interesting as side characters could be, but they weren't really developed incredibly well. I still enjoyed when they were on the page, but I'm not going to name names - if that's any indication on how much they actually mattered to me.
And yet, there were times when they mattered quite a bit to me. Quite a bit indeed.
In general, I enjoyed every aspect of OLD MAN'S WAR. I got lost sometimes during the story, and I don't know if it's because there were plot-holes, or if (as it sometimes happens), I got lost in all the info dumping and missed something vital that would have been necessary to grasp to really get a certain part of the book.
Usually, I just had to re-read certain parts to get back into the story, so it wasn't a big deal for me.
The world building was great. I felt like John Scalzi really did a lot of research on scientific theories, technology, and really thought about how he wanted the universe to be. And then made it so. It was just fascinating to explore this world with John (the MC not the author, but I guess with the author too).
All in all, I really enjoyed this book and am absolutely going to read more of the series (hopefully all of the series if the rest of the books are as good as this).
adamfortuna
Written on Sep 16, 2014