Oh, John Scalzi, why do you write such good books!?

If anybody needs me, I'll be in over here in the corner,
trying to inject this book into my veins.

Picked this and it's sequel, The Last Colony up today at a thrift store of all places. Someone donated three of the four books in the Old Man's War series, apparently without having read any of them. Their loss. My gain. I actually can't recommend Old Man's War highly enough, it's one of the finest pieces of military science fiction (and scifi in general) in recent years. The opening to it says it all:

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.

Now, if that doesn't peak your interest, I don't know what will. The Old Man's War series takes place in a future where humanity has reached the stars and colonized many worlds. However, real estate is limited and contested by multiple alien races and so, human colonies are protected and new ones secured by the Colonial Defense Force. The oddity is that the CDF only accepts the elderly - you have to be at least seventy-five in order to enlist. Now, you're probably wondering "how the frell do geriatrics protect colonies and fight alien soldiers?" Well, you'll just have to read the first book to find out. Believe me, you will not be disappointed. The series has a good mix of action, humor, and introspection, so it has something for everybody.

The Ghost Brigades is a sequel to Old Man's War and focuses on the epoymnous special forces that are cloned from DNA collected from the dead. That bit of info isn't spoilery since it's mentioned in the blurb. The story itself concerns the discovery that several alien races have allied in secret to oppose humanity and its expansionism and the revelation that they're being aided by a human traitor. I'm already over thirty pages into it and I expect to hit a hundred before I go to bed tonight.

Picture via saltmanz.com.