One of my friends is a big fan of science fiction at the cinema but not reading a lot, he didn’t really know where to start in a book to get started. One author but immediately came to mind: John Scalzi with the first volume of his saga Old Man’s War.

Yes I know we rarely recommend a whole saga especially since it takes place over 6 novels but Scalzi’s style is super fluid and his universe quite original (and a little copied by James Cameron in his film Avatar)

In short here is why you should read Old Man’s War.

“I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.
Visiting Kathy’s grave was the less dramatic of the two.”

― John Scalzi, Old Man’s War

Old Man’s War is an excellent title, because it poses a contradiction, a slight paradox.
The kind that makes you smile, in the back cover: at 75 years old under the flags …

Indeed, it is a good military science fiction novel, one can be tempted to compare it to The Forever War or Starshiptroopers, and it is quite justified because this text clearly brings satisfactions of the type that can bring these excellent very demanding, prestigious and timeless texts.

The general context in which this novel is rooted is credible and functional while the characterization is good.
The only shadow on the picture is perhaps the humor that underlies the foundations of this universe, which moreover, in the following volumes will gradually and partially sink into a tailspin, to punctually deteriorate into a ridiculousness as punctual as occasional …
I am not talking about the humorous farce that partly shapes some of the dialogues of this neat novel that is hilarious …
Dialogues that are moreover systematically neat and of quality in general.

To make it simple I would divide this novel into two parts …:
-The first or a young old man rather romantic, enlists in the Marines after the death of his wife, to defend the land and guarantee its problematic colonial expansion.
John will be given a new body with many potentialities, so a boost of youth …
-The second part, military training and military campaigns and other galactic peccadilloes …

It is a very rewarding read for the lover of the genre: military space opera (as well as the second volume of this cycle by the way).
Credible characters, well-structured functional who irrigate the universe and the plot and who shape the universe, as much as they are shaped by this same universe and by its problems.
In short: the ABC of a good novel …

The pitch mobilizes varied affects that constantly spring up, in ways that are as relevant as they are interesting and that serve in relevant ways the narrative framework and its thematic variables.
Affects related to rediscovered youth, crisis situations, combats, mourning the past and even potential futures.

An “open” cycle, absolutely not militaristic in the bad sense of the term, because the colonial expansion of humanity is not legitimized in all directions, and it presents a bit of the characteristics of the antics of the elephant in a china shop ….
This frenzied expansionist attitude puts humanity in great danger finally, not without reason …

The extraterrestrials are perhaps not great in these texts, well it is subjective and relative, and it is only my humble opinion miserably subjective …

A good novel, which brings a lot of pleasure to reading and rereading ..
It is also endowed with excellent sequels, so?: what does the people want?