The saga continues. And we’re back to first person narrative and the voice of John Perry. Yay! I think John Scalzi finally gets the balance between dialog and description right. (Except between pages 199-203.) The Last Colony is a very satisfying tying up of story lines and themes.
Quotes and Notes
2011-03-02. Added after reading all three books in the series.
You never forget where you come from. — p 1
The opening paragraph sets the theme for The Last Colony: the search for a place to call home. Although the book resolves the premise nicely, I can’t decide if I agree with it. As a BRAT, I don’t feel like I came from anywhere. I have no memory of my birthplace and no desire to return to it. As a former expat, I remember how living elsewhere reinforced my identity as a Texan. This was funny because when I’m living in Texas, I’m reminded that I’m not and never will be really a Texan even though I’ve lived here for almost 40 years. Can anyone go home again? In my experience, no. Space and time are intertwined. We can return to a place physically but our time will have passed.
“Seeing the constellation. That’s when I knew this place was my home. That’s when I knew I had come here to stay. That this place was my place.” (Jane Sagan) — p 32
I was pleased to see the one image that stuck out in Old Man’s War resurface in The Last Colony. Especially because in the former it was almost a throw-away line. And, yet, there was something about the observation that made me stop and think. Best of all, it’s not one of those ideas that John Scalzi over-explains. It wells up from the characters.
“…for the first time in my life I knew my life was more than what was directly in front of me. I learned to see the constellations, not just the stars.” (Jane Sagan) — p 104