The Ghost Brigades is John Scalzi’s sequel to Old Man’s War, and I enjoyed it about as much for some light sci-fi reading. This book focuses mainly on a Special Forces soldier named Jared Dirac. He was manufactured from a cloned body like all of the Colonial Defense Force’s answers to the Green Berets, but in this case the consciousness that was stuffed into the cloned and heavily modified body was a copy of the brain patters from a species traitor named Charles Boutin who is orchestrating a four-way war with other alien races to wipe out humanity. Dirac is indoctrinated into the Special Forces in an attempt to track down and stop Boutin.
Scalzi plays with some interesting ideas in The Ghost Brigades, chief among them what it would be like if you were cobbled together like a cutting edge Frankenstein’s Monster from leftover body parts and incredible amounts of genetic engineering, trained in a matter of days to be a perfect soldier, and then cut loose on the universe. There’s also some the associated questions about identity, free will, and the effects of indoctrination. Dirac isn’t JUST a Frankenstein’s Monster. He’s a Frankenstein’s Monster instilled with the soul of a madman trying to engineer the death of billions of people.
All in all, though, what makes the book enjoyable is that it’s another briskly paced science fiction story with aliens, battles, high tech (again with an emphasis on genetic engineering and nanotechnology) and exotic locations. It’s quite readable and works great as good old fashioned entertainment. I’ve already got the next book, The Last Colony on my to read list.
Ghost Brigades, while still pretty awesome, was my least favorite of the Old Man’s War books. It’s good enough that I’ve read it twice though.