When John Perry turns 75, he has a choice to make. Spend his few remaining years without his wife, who recently passed away, or join the army. The same army that somehow recruits 75 year olds and turns them into young, fit, professional soldiers. The choice isn’t very difficult for Perry, who has little to live for and finds the prospect of renewed youth appealing. He quickly learns that the army he’s joining turns its elderly recruits into much more than simply younger versions of themselves.
There is, of course, a price to pay – at least two years of grueling fighting, with a rather dismal survival rate. Humanity has made it into space, and Perry, along with his other recruits, finds himself with no shortage of hostile combatants. All of whom are striving to control the same few habitable planets that exist in the universal neighborhood. Perry, a former advertising exec, thrives in galactic boot camp, but quickly learns that the Colonial Defense Forces, the military arm of humanity’s new government, is not all that it first appears to be.
A fast paced space opera, readers of Elizabeth Moon, David Weber, and Joe Haldeman will enjoy this title. Scalzi writes with sharp edged humor, full of wit and puns. Old Man’s War is the first in a series of four, three of which have been nominated for Hugo and Prometheus awards.