The End of All Things - Penguin Book Club

384 pages

English language

Published Aug. 11, 2015 by Tor Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-7653-7607-7

Humans expanded into space…only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. The Colonial Union used the Earth and its excess population for colonists and soldiers. It was a good arrangement...for the Colonial Union. Then the Earth said: no more. Now the Colonial Union is living on borrowed time—a couple of decades at most, before the ranks of the Colonial Defense Forces are depleted and the struggling human colonies are vulnerable to the alien species who have been waiting for the first sign of weakness, to drive humanity to ruin. And there’s another problem: A group, lurking in the darkness of space, playing human and alien against each other—and against their own kind —for their own unknown reasons. In this collapsing universe, CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson and the Colonial Union diplomats …

Humans expanded into space…only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. The Colonial Union used the Earth and its excess population for colonists and soldiers. It was a good arrangement...for the Colonial Union. Then the Earth said: no more. Now the Colonial Union is living on borrowed time—a couple of decades at most, before the ranks of the Colonial Defense Forces are depleted and the struggling human colonies are vulnerable to the alien species who have been waiting for the first sign of weakness, to drive humanity to ruin. And there’s another problem: A group, lurking in the darkness of space, playing human and alien against each other—and against their own kind —for their own unknown reasons. In this collapsing universe, CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson and the Colonial Union diplomats he works with race against the clock to discover who is behind attacks on the Union and on alien races, to seek peace with a suspicious, angry Earth, and keep humanity’s union intact...or else risk oblivion, and extinction—and the end of all things.

3 editions

mikerickson@bookwyrm.social reviewed The End of All Things by John Scalzi (Old Man's War, #6)

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4 stars

Historically I haven't been a big reader of multi-entry series, something I've been steadily working towards being more open minded about. I guess I'm afraid of committing to a longer story arc that I feel obliged to complete because of the sunk cost fallacy. Around book four I almost bailed on this one, but now that I'm on the other side of it I'm glad I stuck around for this satisfying ending.

This book is structured as four separate novellas that take place sequentially in the same universe but following different characters. And this felt like a great balance between the fun parts of sci-fi (body horror, military grunts with high-tech gadgets, spaceship battles) and the more serious elements of a larger story explaining the "why" of what's happening (political grandstanding, backroom deal-making, and ambassadors out the wazoo). All this without forcing an unnecessary romance or slapstick humor that …

Historically I haven't been a big reader of multi-entry series, something I've been steadily working towards being more open minded about. I guess I'm afraid of committing to a longer story arc that I feel obliged to complete because of the sunk cost fallacy. Around book four I almost bailed on this one, but now that I'm on the other side of it I'm glad I stuck around for this satisfying ending.

This book is structured as four separate novellas that take place sequentially in the same universe but following different characters. And this felt like a great balance between the fun parts of sci-fi (body horror, military grunts with high-tech gadgets, spaceship battles) and the more serious elements of a larger story explaining the "why" of what's happening (political grandstanding, backroom deal-making, and ambassadors out the wazoo). All this without forcing an unnecessary romance or slapstick humor that some of the earlier entries had. This was a continuation of the more mature tone that book five developed, but with more action this time around.

The climax did feel a touch, well, anticlimactic, but I guess that's more a feature than a bug; by the time the main characters are forced to confront the central antagonizing force, we've seen them become so competent that they are able to - maybe not trivialize, but - outright meet and decisively neutralize the threat. Which was definitely more daring than staging a huge setpiece battle just for its own sake on the author's part.

Finally, I was gonna pat myself on the back for finishing something longer than a trilogy, until I just learned that a seventh book is expected to come out later this year, after a decade-long hiatus! With how this one stuck the landing though, I'm more willing to continue with this setting than I probably would've been a few months ago.