The Ghost Brigades
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The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. They're young, they're fast and strong, and they're totally without normal human qualms. The universe is a dangerous place for humanity—and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF's biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did. Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers -- a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jared's brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades. At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutin's memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reason's for Boutin's betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his "father," he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity's mere military defeat... Old Man's War Series #1 Old Man’s War #2 The Ghost Brigades #3 The Last Colony #4 Zoe’s Tale #5 The Human Division #6 The End of All Things Short fiction: “After the Coup” Other Tor Books The Android’s Dream Agent to the Stars Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded Fuzzy Nation Redshirts Lock In The Collapsing Empire (forthcoming) At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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5 primary books26 released booksOld Man's War
Old Man's War is a 26-book series with 6 primary works first released in 2005 with contributions by John Scalzi.
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Originally posted at FanLit:
http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/the-ghost-brigades/
The Ghost Brigades is the second novel in John Scalzi???s OLD MAN???S WAR saga. It focuses on the Ghost Brigades ??? the Special Forces soldiers that the Colonial Union (CU) creates by genetic engineering and who have special powers because of the BrainPal computers in their heads. They???re born in adult bodies and are rapidly assimilated into the Special Forces, though they are a little immature because of their mental age and they lack some of the personality and social skills that come from interaction with ???real-born??? people in a normal environment. The Ghost Brigades give the regular CU soldiers the heebee-jeebees.
In this story the Colonial Union has discovered the existence of a traitorous scientist, Charles Boutin, who has faked his death by cloning himself and has aligned himself with three alien species who plan to wipe out the humans. Part of his motivation is that he blames the CU for the death of his daughter Zoe who was on a planet the CU blew up. Boutin is helping the aliens by giving them information about Special Forces??? BrainPals. This will allow them to have such technology themselves and perhaps find a way to hack into the BrainPals of the Special Forces soldiers.
This is not good; Boutin must be stopped. When Special Forces discover a source for Boutin???s DNA and his consciousness which he uploaded for safe keeping, they decide to clone him so they can have a soldier who may have Boutin???s memory and who may think like Boutin. (They realize that this could go badly awry.) And so they create Jared Dirac and it???s up to Jared to stop his ???father.??? Commander Jane Sagan (who we remember from Old Man???s War), is skeptical and worried that instead of catching a traitor, they may be creating another one.
The Ghost Brigades is an exciting story with lots of action, cool ideas, and some of John Scalzi???s humor (but not as much as in Old Man???s War). Scalzi takes the opportunity to make us think about nature vs. nurture, free will, the role of the environment on personality formation, the ethics of cloning, the role of consciousness in the arts, and the relationship between brain, mind and soul.
Scalzi also decides to throw some mud in the water. At this point in the OLD MAN???S WAR story, it???s becoming clear that war is a murky business. Are we supposed to be rooting for the Colonial Union? They???ve got some seriously questionable ethics and our villain is somewhat sympathetic. Has Earth been mistreating her soldiers and/or holding back human technological development? I look forward to learning more in the next book, The Last Colony and its companion, Zoe???s Tale.
I???m reading the audio version of OLD MAN???S WAR which is mostly narrated by William Dufris who, as usual, gives a stellar performance. I recommend this series on audio.
Getting back to this series a few years after I read the first one. I enjoyed the thought experiment about transfer of consciousness and identity. It gets into these themes in an easy-to-understand way, and I had fun reading it. I want to read the next book, I think there are interesting things to be explored in this universe.
