I am not familiar with the old man's war universe, nor had I ever read any other book by John scalzi.

I just mention that because when I picked zoe's tale up, I thought that lack was seriously going to hinder my enjoyment of a book that by the way, I grabbed without expecting anything more than a light outer space alien-human-go-at-it flick

I was sooo wrong. Yes, there WAS an alien vs human (and alien vs alien, and human vs human, and babar the dog vs babar the plush elephant...really) war going all out but the book wasn't really about it

I felt with zoe, learned to hate her flaws and love her good side, and simply, enjoyed a character that sort of grew up as I read about her, and when (SPOILER...WARNING) Enzo got killed, I reaaaaally threw one of those reader tantrums like you know...XD noooooo don't kill the booooyfrieeeend...

The ease with which scalzi could have botched zoe's tale at any one time was outstandingly clear in my head...i mean...she trained to keep herself alive...have her get into a huge fight and come out victorious and voilà, you've turned this into xena of outter space...or...she has the obin to do as she wishes...simply have her save roanoke (the last colony is about this very same incident btw!) by popping into it's planetary system with the obin fleet...or the consu for that matter...

I also was very impressed with hickory and dickory (not so with dok ) and their myth of obin creation...

plus i just loved gretchen.

The book is juts one more space opera, except it is not, it's more a book about people and self discovery, about shared hardship and friendship.

Scalzi's "goodbye" to enzo is memorable and I even liked enzo's last poem, that zoe gets after enzo dies..

all in all, do not read it to discover the next nebula award winner...but if you want to delve in a story about people learning to deal with huge changes in their lives and keeping their cheer through weather and storm, I recommend it.