Book Reviews
John Scalzi, Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades. Christopher Priest, The Glamour.
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What I Read
John Scalzi, Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades
The story begins with protagonist John Perry joining the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) on his 75th birthday. While the exact year is not specified, Scalzi indicates elsewhere it is set "a few hundred years into the future." Despite this futuristic setting, the world depicted feels remarkably similar to the 21st century. In the introduction to the second book, Scalzi candidly attributes this to laziness in his debut novel. He attempts to justify Earth's apparent technological stagnation within the narrative, even though events ostensibly occur in the 23rd century or later. Humanity has achieved space travel and established colonies in nearby star systems. Parts of Asia and Africa have become uninhabitable due to past wars, prompting migration to these new space colonies.
Humanity is not alone in the cosmos, and most other interstellar species encountered are notably aggressive. The primary mission of the CDF is to protect Earth and its colonies from these hostile forces.
The conflicts depicted among alien races resemble 20th-century warfare on Earth, with engagements predominantly involving ground troops rather than widespread use of weapons of mass destruction. Although this premise may not be entirely plausible, it serves the narrative effectively. Scalzi models the CDF soldiers on 20th-century U.S. Marines but with significant enhancements. Elderly volunteers have their consciousness transferred into biologically engineered, youthful bodies grown in vats. These new bodies, while biologically human, include special adaptations—most notably green skin capable of photosynthesis. Given the inefficiency of photosynthesis as an energy source, its practicality for soldiers is questionable, though it might allow prolonged hibernation in emergencies.
The first novel primarily explores the transformation and adjustment of these elderly volunteers to their new, youthful "superhuman" lives. Initially, Scalzi indulges excessively in humor and locker-room banter during the soldiers' training, which occasionally detracts from the narrative. However, once the recruits enter active service, the storytelling improves markedly.
A notable aspect of the CDF involves volunteers who die before officially joining. In such cases, their DNA is cloned to create soldiers without previous memories, known as The Ghost Brigades. This intriguing concept becomes the central focus of the second book, which I found superior, with a tighter plot and more convincing dialogue.
The second book was published in 2006, written during the period when senior political leaders in the USA, UK, and Australia justified invading Iraq based
The story begins with the protagonist John Perry joining the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) on his 75th birthday. The year is not specified although Scalzi somewhere else says that it is “a few hundred years into the future.” The world portrayed in the book however reads like it is 21st century. In his introduction to the second book, Scalzi admits that this was due to his laziness in his debut book. He tries to give a reason in the book for the apparent backwardness of Earth even though the narrative takk=es place in 23rd century or later. There is space travel and earth colonies established in nearby star systems. Parts of Asia and Africa are uninhabitable because of a past war. The people in those areas choose to go to the space colonies to make a new life up there. The humanity is not alone in space. There are many other interstellar species and most of them are very aggressive. The mission of the CDF is to protect the colonies and the Earth against such aggression.
The wars between the alien races read like the wars in twentieth century on Earth and most of the fighting occurs between troops rather than using weapons of mass destruction. This may not be a reasonable premise but the story will not work otherwise. Scalzi modelled the CDF soldiers after the US Marines of the 20th century, except better. Old people volunteer for the force and their minds are transferred to young engineered bodies, which are still flesh and bone and blood because the bodies are grown in vats but have many embellishments. Their skin colour for example is green to use photosynthesis when there is no food. Given the inefficiency of photosynthesis as an energy conversion, I am not sure how helpful this is to a soldier but it may probably lets them stay in hibernation if needed.
The first book was all about those old people getting themselves into new lives as 25-year olds in superman bodies. During the training period, I thought Scalzi indulged himself in too many lame jokes and locker room humour. However, the narrative got better once the new troops started service.
On a side note, if people volunteer to join the CDF but die before you actually join, the CDF clone their DNA. The clones have no memories of prior existence and know of no other mission in life other than being a superior fighting force. These are called The Ghost Brigades and are the subject of the second book. I thought the second book was much better and had a tighter plot with more believable dialogues.
This book was published in 2006 so it was being written during the days when very senior people in USA, UK and Australia were were preparing to invade Iraq and tried to justify it by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, which we later found out that even they knew that the WMD did not exist. At one point I thought that discourse was reflected in the narrative with some of the Ghost Brigade people questioning whether the cause for war was genuine or whether they were duped into being players in someone else’s game. But this lead was not continued and the story returns to more ordinary grounds.
John Scalzi is not a deep author but is fun to read.I reminded me of Robert Heinlein. I might read more books of him.
Christopher Priest, The Glamour
I don’t enjoy constantly switching between new books and unfamiliar authors. I prefer returning to the writers I know and trust—authors whose voices I’ve grown comfortable with. Christopher Priest is one of them. Recently, I read The Glamour, a novel of his that I had somehow missed when it was first published. It turned out to be one of his most puzzling works, and I’m still trying to make sense of it.
That said, The Glamour is an incredibly engaging read. It’s intriguing and beautifully written, but when you reach the end, you’re left asking: What actually happened? What was Christopher Priest trying to tell us?
The book begins with a short first-person monologue—an introspective reflection from someone who grew up as a lonely child, with an interest in photography. Initially, we assume this voice belongs to the protagonist, Richard Grey, who appears in the following chapter. But as the story unfolds, even that initial assumption becomes uncertain.
The actual story begins with Grey waking up in a hospital after surviving a bombing incident, in which he was merely a bystander but suffered serious injuries. Most notably, he has lost all memory of the six weeks leading up to the bombing. The novel centers on unraveling what happened during that lost time—though we’re never given a single, definitive version of events. Instead, we hear multiple accounts, filtered through different perspectives.
In Grey’s own telling, he takes a spontaneous trip to France. A freelance cameraman who has worked in dangerous places (he once won an award for footage he shot during a bloody event in Northern Ireland), Grey is on a kind of break from his professional life. On a train, he meets a mysterious woman named Sue. They grow close and eventually become lovers, traveling together through various towns in France. But Sue seems haunted by someone from her past—an ex-boyfriend named Niall—whose presence looms over their journey.
Niall is a strange and elusive figure, one we never fully understand, even by the end of the book. Sue tells Grey that Niall is glamorous—not in the modern sense of celebrity or charm, but in the older, arcane sense of the word: someone who can become invisible, sometimes by choice, sometimes not. Grey, strangely, doesn’t question what she means. As readers, we find this odd—why wouldn’t he ask her to explain? But it seems to be part of the novel’s larger meditation on what we choose to see, and what remains hidden.
Sue suggests that Niall is becoming more and more invisible, slipping away from the world, and that she is one of the few people who can still make him visible. She also implies that Grey himself might be partially “glamoured.” The love triangle that forms between Sue, Niall, and Grey is both emotional and metaphysical—dealing with memory, perception, and presence.
Later in the novel, we return to the hospital, where Grey undergoes hypnosis. Under trance, he offers yet another version of the lost six weeks—one that subtly contradicts the earlier account. Then, in a letter, Sue gives her own version of the events, where she and Grey never even went to France at all. Instead, they traveled through England. Her story diverges entirely from Grey’s recollection.
These multiple narratives don’t add up neatly. They aren’t meant to. The Glamour isn’t a book you read for plot resolution. It’s a book that invites you to question memory, reality, and identity itself. The pleasure lies in the act of reading, of constantly reassessing what you think you know.
The ending, like much of the book, is cryptic and unsatisfying if you’re looking for closure. Niall remains a mystery. We never find out who—or what—he really is. But to me, the only interpretation that offers some clarity is this: Niall represents the author himself. He even says something near the end that supports this reading—something to the effect of, “I made you behave the way you did because it was my volition.” That feels like a direct statement from Priest, stepping into the narrative.
At one point, I even found myself thinking: is this what an intervening god would look like? A god who manipulates characters, shapes events, but remains elusive—unseen, unaccountable, but always present? In that sense, the author of a novel is not unlike a deity, subtly guiding their creations toward fates they can’t fully understand.
Ultimately, The Glamour is a deeply rewarding novel, though not in a conventional way. If you’re looking for tidy conclusions and firm answers, you won’t find them here. But if you enjoy stories that haunt you long after you’ve finished reading—stories that leave you wondering, theorizing, doubting—then this is one you’ll want to experience.