Read in August1 - The Last Colony

Alas, reading this book, by John Scalzi, I come in at the end of a trilogy. The first book is Old Man's War, followed by Ghost Brigades.

I would class this book as space opera, which, I thought, was a somewhat dying breed in SF. It's set amongst the stars, with numerous planets, alien races, and so forth. It's about about human colonization of the universe and the agreements and negotiations between civilizations/races, and about the politics of the colonial administration.

The book was an easy read, a story of political intrigue, musings about family, and at the end, a ripping little war story. I also really liked Scalzi's humor; he really writes some witty, funny dialog.

I also found myself thinking about space opera in a new way, given all the new planetary systems we've discovered over the last decade or so. Before, for all that many people might have thought there must be other planets out there, we really didn't know. Now we do, with more and more being added every day. With new and better search tools coming online, the next decade should see many many more discovered, and possibly, finally, ones that resemble earth. So suddenly interplanetary space opera begins to take on a new meaningfulness. Cool!

I'll shortly be reading the other two books in the trilogy.