The Last Colony
Retired from the Colonial Defense Forces, John Perry has settled into an unglamorous peace as village ombudsman on the farming colony of Huckleberry, adjudicating his neighbours' disputes and raising his adopted daughter Zoë alongside his wife Jane Sagan, a former Special Forces soldier. Then the Colonial Union comes asking. Perry and Sagan are offered the leadership of Roanoke — the first human colony to be settled from ten existing colony worlds rather than from Earth — and they accept.
Roanoke is a trap. The colonists' arrival is sabotaged and they are left stranded on an unknown world, and Perry gradually works out that his colony was never meant to prosper: it is bait in a scheme to break the Conclave, an alliance of four hundred alien species assembled by General Tarsem Gau specifically to stop unilateral colonisation of this kind. Gau offers Roanoke the chance to give up the planet peacefully, and he means it. What Perry does with that offer decides considerably more than the fate of a few thousand settlers.
The third novel in John Scalzi's Old Man's War sequence, following Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, it returns to Perry's first-person narration and trades the front line for the negotiating table — colonial administration, interstellar politics and betrayal rather than boot camp. It was a finalist for the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Novel and won the 2010 Seiun Award for best translated long story. Zoe's Tale (2008) retells the same events from Zoë's point of view.
Former Colonial Defense Forces soldier, now village ombudsman on Huckleberry; narrates the novel in the first person and is press-ganged into leading the Roanoke colony.
General and founder of the Conclave, an alliance of four hundred species; repeatedly offers colonies the chance to withdraw peacefully rather than be destroyed.
Perry and Sagan's adopted teenage daughter, daughter of the traitor Charles Boutin and revered by the Obin for his work in giving them consciousness.
Perry's wife, a former Special Forces (Ghost Brigades) soldier who co-leads the Roanoke colony and runs its security.
One of the two Obin assigned as Zoe's bodyguards, who regard her with near-religious awe.
While it functions as a narrative continuation of the first two books, it was written with a sense of closure for the protagonists, John Perry and Jane Sagan. Readers can follow the plot without prior knowledge, though familiarity with the established political landscape of the Colonial Union enhances the experience.
Zoe's Tale covers the same timeframe and events as this book but is told from the perspective of a different character. Many readers find it helpful to view that volume as a companion piece that provides additional context rather than a direct sequel.