The novel “The Last Colony” by John Scalzi was published for the first time in 2008. It’s part of the “Old Man’s War” series.

John Perry and Jane Sagan live on the colony of Huckleberry together with their adopted daughter Zoë. Their lives seem quiet after the years spent fighting in the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF). The situation changes when they are offered to lead a new colony on the planet Roanoke, an important project for the Colonial Union.

John and Jane accept and the two of them are sent to the planet to colonize along with Zoë and the two Obin who always accompany her as her protectors. However, the aliens seem to have information on the new colony that cast a shadow on the project. The situation becomes more complicated when the starship reaches its destination and its captain realizes that that’s not the right planet despite the fact that the course was correct.

John Perry was the protagonist of the novel “Old Man’s War“, Jane Sagan appeared in that novel and in “The Ghost Brigades“, where Zoë appeared as well. “The Last Colony” is set a few years later and continues the story of these characters, representing a sequel to both novels, again told in the first person by John. It’s a story autonomous from the other ones, however if you haven’t read the previous novels you will lose a lot of concerning the development of the characters and the details of this fictional universe.

In “The Last Colony”, John Perry and Jane Sagan have left the military to civilian life. They adopted Zoë and settled down on the planet Huckleberry, where they can enjoy some peace. Initially, the tone of the novel is quite different from the previous ones, which are essentially military science fiction with lots of action.

John Scalzi gives us a quick idea of the civilian life of the protagonists when they are offered to lead a new colony that the Colonial Union wants to establish on the planet Roanoke. At that point, the story starts being complex because the new colony becomes the center of an interstellar clash.

An alliance among various species called the Conclave aims to prevent species that are not part of it from establishing new colonies. The Colonial Union intends to challenge that ban getint a result using deception, even against the settlers. The new colony is established on a planet whose location is kept secret and isn’t the one described to the settlers.

This act of the Colonial Union has profound consequences for the clash with the Conclave that occurs first at a diplomatic level and then leads to military action. For humanity it’s a dangerous game and the consequence is that the settlers of Roanoke directly risk their lives. To protect them, John Perry and Jane Sagan are forced to make difficult choices, handling themselves among various deceptions and half-truths that exist even within the Colonial Union and the CDF.

Ethical and moral problems were present in quantities in “The Ghost Brigades”, in “The Last Colony” the situation becomes even more complex. There are various power struggles at various levels: in the colony of Roanoke, within the Colonial Union and between the Conclave and the Colonial Union.

John Perry has to make the most of all the experience accumulated in the course of his long life from both diplomatic and military point of view. To solve the many problems he has to face, he and Jane have to make tough choices and even use a lot of creativity.

From this point of view, in my opinion “The Last Colony” is excellent because the plot has constant twists and turns that have a sense within it. Among the many characters, some already present in earlier novels and other new, the protagonists have to deal with in the course of the novel, the borderline between friends and enemies is sometimes blurred. Some of them are hard to be lableled in simple categories such as good or bad.

Although “The Last Colony” doesn’t contain as much action as the previous ones and there are some family life moments of the protagonists rather corny, typically the pace is quite high. The elements of politics, diplomacy and even espionage help to keep an almost constant tension because the situation of Roanoke is never quiet.

To all this, John Scalzi also adds a local danger with a species native of Roanoke. Unfortunately, this ends up being the novel’s main flaw because there’s a major subplot that concerns these natives that is built in the first part of the novel but is then completely abandoned. If the author doesn’t resume it in a later novel it will turn out totally useless.

This is the one big flaw of “The Last Colony”, which for the rest seemed to me a very good and intriguing novel. If you’ve read the previous novels, this one is a must-have, otherwise I recommend getting it along with the previous ones.