In the first book we learned that humans have spread all over the universe but rather than an idyllic galaxy-wide confederation of trade, it’s all they can do just to stay alive.  Turns out the humans have lots of competition for prime real estate.  The Colonial Defense Forces are the only thing standing between human colonies and all the alien-uglies trying to kill them to take away a planet.  What makes this story stand apart is a clever twist:  rather than recruiting from young people and destroying generations in sometimes hopeless battles; they recruit from seniors who have lived their full lives and are on the down-hill slide.  The recruitment is simple and irresistible:  on your 75^th birthday, you can choose to join the CDF for a minimum two-year term of service, not to exceed ten years; and, in return, they will make you young again.  There are, of course, catches.  They will never return to Earth, they will never see friends or family again; and, no one on Earth has the slightest idea how the promise of youth is fulfilled.

This story focuses on two primary characters.  One of which we met in the first book: Jane Sagan.  The other is a very special new Special Forces ‘baby’, Jared Dirac.

The CDF is on the defensive since they’ve discovered that in an unprecedented move, two opposing races, supported and supplied by a third, have united against the CDF.  Once the CDF discovers this, they move to neuter one of the two threats.  They do this by kidnapping and then killing the leader’s heir.  Jane Sagan leads the team and the event serves to illustrate that even without prior memories, the Special Forces troops (aka Ghost Brigades) do have morals and a conscience. But the question of why these races collaborated is still of great significance.  The answer lies with the intelligence that suggests it’s due to a human traitor.  Once the traitor is identified, it’s not a stretch to realize that since they have a scan of his memories before he apparently died, those memories could be implanted in a new clone and then questioned.  The author does spend a little time debating the morality of such a move – it’s never been done before without having a live and cooperative host.  But it is done and Jared Dirac is born.

The process and its results were a great deal of guesswork and no one could predict how the transition would go.  To the disappointment of the Generals, the traitor Boutin’s personality failed to take hold; it was thought that was due to the lack of preparation of the clone body as is usual in the formation of a new Special Forces soldier.  But it was also thought that the usual preparatory process would interfere with the memory transfer; a real Gordian knot.  So, without access to Boutin’s memories, the new ‘baby’ soldier is transferred to a squad in Special Forces to be just another grunt.  But no one has forgotten that a traitor’s psyche could still be lying in wait within Jared; so, unbeknownst to him, he remains under Sagan’s scrutiny.  But his singular awakening and subsequent delay being integrated into a squad gives him a unique perspective and the ability to function without integration; which proves a significant benefit to everyone much later.  All CDF forces, including the Ghost Brigades, operate with an implanted computer that allows instant access to information and communication with squad mates. Being integrated means never being alone again.

The intelligence about the identity of the traitor came from a captured Rraey who provides some interesting commentary in the story about the nature of souls and the significance of choice.  Whether the Ghost Brigades have a soul is, perhaps, a personal opinion but they sure-as-heck were never given any choices.  The Rraey challenges Jared to question his own ‘birth’ and the conditioning that makes him believe his sole purpose in the universe is to fight for and defend human colonies.  Jared eventually chooses to embrace his purpose while acknowledging that having less than a year of life experience handicaps him; but he does choose.

And, of course, Boutin’s memories do eventually surface in Jared.  Once it became obvious that bits of the memories were haunting Jared, the powers-that-be decided to push the envelope.  They sent him to the destroyed and abandoned space station where Boutin and his daughter, Zoe, died.  But by now, Jared knows that Boutin didn’t die there but he hopes that when confronted with a familiar environment, more memories will coalesce.  He just doesn’t anticipate what it will feel like to experience both the love for a child but also the loss of that child.  The experience on the station gives the author a chance to play with other ideas he’s obviously had about the applications of genetically modifying humans and we’re introduced to a very secret group of Special Forces – which allows the author to manipulate the conclusion. 

Now Jared believes he knows exactly why Boutin turned traitor and where he went – a moon within the home system of the dreaded Obin. Jared is also pretty sure that it won’t be as easy to extract Boutin as his superiors seem to believe.  He doesn’t yet have all the memories but Boutin was a genius and it’s a sure bet he would have prepared for the eventuality.  So, of course, even with the best preparations and planning the extraction goes south just as soon as they hit the atmosphere. What follows felt a little pat to this reader. There is the inevitable confrontation between “Frankenstein and his monster” which, while satisfying to read, wasn’t anything original.  The conclusion was too warm and fuzzy to my taste what with all the blood-thirsty aliens out to eradicate the whole human race and all. The author salted the story with some intriguing bits that suggest the universe is bigger still than imagined and the ones actually pulling the strings aren’t obvious (think: Second Foundation).

Overall, it is a satisfying enough space opera, but I didn’t find it that unique.  And my biggest criticism is that the author isn’t able to color his characters as anything other than human.  With the wildly divergent human genotypes portrayed, one might imagine that each would regard the other as alien but they display the same human characteristics.  Without a physical description, the reader cannot see any difference between the characters.  In a humorous pulling-the-wool scene, the author even fools the reader into believing the characters in the scene are human when they are not.  That was annoying and juvenile; illustrating that the author really has a problem with anthropomorphizing the aliens. I need my aliens to be really alien so that the protagonists are challenged to think outside of their human box; these aliens all behave just like humans.

And I regret having to criticize Mr. Scalzi as I’ve greatly enjoyed his other works. I intend to continue reading the rest of this series so I hope future reviews are more positive.  ~~ Catherine Book

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