The Shattering Peace

The Shattering Peace is the seventh novel in John Scalzi's long-running Old Man's War universe, arriving a decade after The End of All Things and picking up the saga's central question: can an uneasy peace between rival powers actually hold?

Set roughly ten years after the previous book, the story unfolds through the first-person narration of Gretchen Trujillo. The fragile tripartite balance between the human Colonial Union, a newly independent Earth, and the vast alien Conclave has held for years -- but when civil war erupts among the fearsome, enigmatic Consu, that stability is suddenly in jeopardy, and every faction scrambles to keep a hard-won peace from collapsing into something far worse.

Written with the brisk dialogue, wry humor, and political maneuvering that have defined the series, The Shattering Peace rewards longtime readers who have followed the Colonial Union's story across six previous books. It returns to familiar series staples -- interstellar diplomacy, sharp-tongued protagonists, and the ever-present threat of war -- while introducing a fresh point of view onto a universe fans have waited years to revisit.