I finished Zoe's Tale, the final book in John Scalzi's Old Man's Warseries. Interestingly, it is basically a retelling of the events of the previous novel, The Last Colony, from a different point of view, that of Zoe, John Perry's and Kate Sagan's daughter.

Zoe's a bit of a special girl. If you've ever read any of the books in this series, you know that she's the biological daughter of Charles Boutin, the man whose work on consciousness allowed an entire race self-awareness. This race is known as the Obin, and they are a created race, engineered into intelligence by the Consu, another alien race who is so much ahead of the other races in this neighborhood of the galaxy in their advancement and technology that they appear almost unknowable.

Zoe's father's story is told in the second book, The Ghost Brigades, when Jane Sagan leads a strike force against him and the Obin and ends up as the adoptive mother of Zoe.

Zoe doesn't have any special powers or anything, but she is revered by the Obin, since they credit her father with giving them the gift of consciousness. And perhaps because of this scrutiny by an entire race, she's developed a higher moral or ethical compass when it comes to dealing with other life forms.

The parts of the story told by Zoe were parts that were glossed over in John Perry's account of the events of The Last Colony, mostly because John didn't know about everything that happened to Zoe or that Zoe did.

It was a powerful addition to this universe and this series of tales. I really think Scalzi's work is some of the best SF I've read in the last year. It harkens back to the works of Robert Heinlein, but with more spirit. More introspection.

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