Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi: A Review by Warren Bull

Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi: A Review by Warren Bull

Image by Michael Rosner Hyman on Upslash

I was attracted to John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War by the concept i.e., that soldiers are recruited only from people who are past retirement age. And joining up meant leaving everything you knew behind you forever. In fact, joining meant that you were officially dead.  The author’s deft handling of such diverse issues as the “hurry up and wait” nature of the military, combat, and questions about what it means to be human kept me entertained and interested through a trilogy includingThe Ghost Brigades and The Lost Colony.

Then I discovered there was a fourth book Zoe’s Tale. And again the author’s concept caught my attention. In this book, the entire story unfolds as before but from another point of view. In the afterward of the book, the author wrote that he had no intention of doing anything else with the “happily ever after” ending, but reader feedback made him re-think his decision. 

Readers advised him that he left one interesting group of characters seemed to simply disappear. Readers wanted to know more about them.  Also, at one point without explanation one item needed for the good guys to survive shows up when a  character who left the story suddenly pops up again: TA DAH! with exactly what is required.

It was like a dues ex machina. In Greek and Roman theater actors playing gods were lowered to the stage by a crane. As gods, they had the power to resolve problems and untangle messes. It gave the writer a quick and easy way to justify a highly unlikely series of events because the gods willed it.

Scalzi explained that he knew the backstory about the just in the nick of time arrival and it made perfect sense in his mind. But he hesitated to add the 30,000-word explanation, which would be a major distraction for readers.  As a writer, I sometimes grumble that of course charter A behaves and he/she does. After all, in the past B, C, D, and E happened. Okay, it ‘s not in the story but… Oh, maybe I do have to explain that.

The author also wrote that retelling the entire sequence of events without boring readers who already knew the story was very difficult. In fact, I do not recommend this book as highly as the other three because so much is repeated. However, I appreciate how well the author accomplished the task. I enjoyed seeing things from Zoe’s point of view and seeing thing invisible from the POV of the first three books.   

I recommend the trilogy highly. Then if you want even more or if you enjoy reading from the viewpoint of another writer give serious consideration to this one too.