First I'd like to thank John Scalzi for forming the wonderful world that resided inside the pages of the Old Man's War trilogy. It was a pleasure and an adventure, and I hope to see more from him in the future, in that universe or otherwise.
To clarify, The Last Colony is the third and final novel in the trilogy, following the original Old Man's War and the sequel, The Ghost Brigades. It does it's part well, wrapping up the superficial conflicts nicely, introducing new ones (such is life), and revealing to the reader the real solution to the core conflict, an issue the reader had known about since the first chapter of the first novel. Not only did it reveal a great truth about humanity, the ending also left an echo within me as well. As the saying goes: You know a book is good when, even after finishing the read, you can't help but ponder it's events and the overall meaning.
It has been said before, but there is a recognizable relation between Scalzi and Heinlein -- the writer of great sci-fi classics such as Stranger in a Strange Land and the more popular Starship Troopers. This similarity is, of course, shown in the content, but also the frank and in-your-face truths that Scalzi would layout on the table throughout the trilogy.
Yet Scalzi makes it his own, most dynamically in his common-man humor, something eked out as chirps of laughter as I would read. The jokes, puns, and quips wouldn't be tossed in for flavor but surgically placed to magnify the suspense that had been building or relinquish it in a single moment.
Our culture often stereotypes great works as classics, or that they must be overtly complicated, dry, and pontifical. Scalzi shuns this notion and rewrites the law with a trilogy and speaks difficult philosophical theories in layman's terms.
I recommend John Scalzi's Old Man's War to anyone who's new or old to the science fiction community. It showcases the morals of the genre without being a copy-pasted style of the greats.
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