In his afterward, Scalzi points out that writing the same story from a different character's perspective is harder than it looks. He's certainly right. Zoe's Tale is exactly what it sounds like--the events of
The Last Colony as told from Zoe Boutin's perspective. While I feel Zoe is a far more entertaining narrator than her adoptive father--John Perry--most of her story isn't really that exciting, especially when the readers already know how the story ends. Honestly, I feel like the new events of this book would have been better told as short stories rather than inserts in a full novel.

However, I gave this book a higher rating because of the ending. Scalzi has a great way of discussing ethics and philosophy in the midst of an entertaining story. I can't say much more without giving away the ending, but I like Scalzi's take on a clockmaker god and that of an interventionist one.

Scalzi says this is his attempt at YA, but I have a hard time believing it. Because he gets the voice of an overwhelmed teenager right, but other things wrong. The main character has zero relationship with her parents. All the YA I ever read, parents take a strong front and center role. Even if they're dead. And especially if the main character's a girl. It doesn't matter that she's adopted, her dad's an 80-year-old man in a 25-year-old body, and her mom's a space green beret. All teens have a strong latch onto their parents. It may not be pleasant, it may be filled with conflict or love. But they do, because they know they're inches away from leaving the nest.

And there is no sex. I don't know what the future is like, but hormones haven't changed that much in the past two thousand years. Here's a fact about all teens: they think about sex. It's always on their minds. It's not always in the context of wanting it, but they think about it. And most of them have sex when they're teenagers (not me, of course). So unless the Colonial Union has some kind of suppression field like in Half-Life 2, something's wrong here. Also, there's no whining, no snapping, no drugs, no alcohol, no engaging in destructive behavior. Zoe's the perfect girl.

Also I'm realizing that Scalzi does a lot of dialogue is his novels. His characters do a lot of talking--civilized debates, interviews and arguments. That's his style, and that's okay. But at a certain point it's like, okay, this has gone on long enough, it's time for something to happen. Enough speechifying.

And I could not believe his author comments at the end when he thought he could just handwave the werewolves and deus ex the "bullet sapper" machine in "The Last Colony". How could you leave obvious plot elements like that and not realize they are unresolved? Don't you read your own work? I'm looking forward to his next work, but I feel like I'm starting to get burnt out on his style.

The overall story was interesting and entertaining but the characters were rather unbelievable and didn't really make a connection that made you root for them. Like Zoe and Gretchen's instant friendship is so unlike any teenage girl it was hard to believe, same with Zoe and Enzo. The ending was also a little too quick and tidy, but Zoe's speech for the open and the way multiple players came together to round it all out was well done. Overall an entertaining but not spectacular read

I had not planned to read the fourth book in the series without having read the first three, but by the time I realized that it was the fourth book, I was already almost halfway through it, so there wasn't any point in not completing it.

I don't remember ever reading a book that was a repeat of another book written from another character's point of view. It happens to have been just long enough since I read [b:The Last Colony|88071|The Last Colony (Old Man's War #3)|John Scalzi|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1437660786s/88071.jpg|18279847] that I didn't really remember that much of it, and then only a few pages before the next key event. With the caveat of my crappy memory, I really enjoyed this.

This is essentially the same story as told in The Last Colony, but from Zoë’s perspective. It’s much more of a Young Adult flavour of book, which is a nice change of pace in this fascinating series. It also allows the author to fill in a number of gaps so the whole story makes more sense. It also affords us a much deeper insight into the nature of the Obin, the aliens given consciousness by Zoë’s biological father, and their relationship with Zoë.

On to the next book. Yay.

It was nice to have all of the details from the story of the previous book laid out, but a middle aged man writing as a teenage girl felt kind of creepy to me.