Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi

A funny thing happened while I was reading a series about a science fiction military space opera book.  A YA book magically appeared in my reader.  Now I'm not against YA books and YA series, I've read quite a few.  I've even read books and series for whatever would be a, for a lack of a better term because I don't know what to call them, but a pre-YA.  This turned out to be a pretty doggone good book.

Zoe's Tale is a retelling of The Last Colony without it being a retelling of The Last Colony.  As John Scalzi puts it:

    "Writing a parallel time novel does not, in fact, just lazily retell the story in a previous book is hard"

I guess Scalzi got a lot of heat after The Last Colony and left some unanswered questions about werewolves and what Zoe did when she was off-world and what she brought back with her when she came back to Roanoke.  To me Scalzi excellently wrote a book through a teenager's eyes about being uprooted from her home, starting a new colony, and seeing her family and friends being put through many dangers.  Since this is a YA book it also has her go through her first love and heartache.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Scalzi really did the parallel story and even changed the genre of the book. Kinda, sorta in a way.

I'll rate this 4.5 stars and a solid 8 on my grading. Great book in the middle of an average series.

Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (2008)
Book 4 in the Old Man's War series