Zoe's Tale - John Scalzi

Zoe's Tale

By John Scalzi

  • Release Date: 2012-12-21
  • Genre: Science Fiction
4 Score: 4 (From 505 Ratings)
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Description

How do you tell your part in the biggest tale in history?

I ask because it's what I have to do. I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player (and a pawn) in a interstellar chess match to save humanity, or to see it fall. Witness to history. Friend. Daughter. Human. Seventeen years old.

Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did — how I did what I had to do — not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too. All of you. I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope. Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity. All through my eyes.

It's a story you know. But you don't know it all.

Old Man's War Series
#1 Old Man’s War
#2 The Ghost Brigades
#3 The Last Colony
#4 Zoe’s Tale
#5 The Human Division
#6 The End of All Things
Short fiction: “After the Coup”

Other Tor Books
The Android’s Dream
Agent to the Stars
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
Fuzzy Nation
Redshirts
Lock In
The Collapsing Empire (forthcoming)

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Reviews

  • A wonderful story & series

    5
    By Jonny'B
    Zoe’s Tale is a wonderful alternative viewpoint of the previous book, through the eyes of John’s and Jane’s adopted daughter Zoe. It has also thoughtfully, filled in a number of blanks left open previously; in a very imaginative and entertaining manner. If you enjoy or just mildly love science fiction, then this book and series is a definite must read. Enjoy! JAO

  • Last colony redux

    1
    By Cheech of all trades
    I loved the first three books. So when I finished the third, I simply bought the fourth without bothering with a preview or reading the reviews. I should have bothered. This is just the third book rewritten. I kept reading, hoping for a new storyline to branch off. But it didn’t. Just the same story slightly rewritten from the point of view of a child. I’m not planning to read the next book in the series.

  • Good but not the best one in the series

    3
    By GrumpyPolarBear
    I enjoyed the new perspective to many of the stories and events and adding a young person’s perspective and struggles did make it feel different. However, it felt more forced at times and many of the events were not as enjoyable because they were about events that you already were aware of. Only a few unique ideas. Still was good.

  • An excellent follow up to the last colony

    4
    By stimpy13
    So many questions after the last colony and this book answered them all. An outstanding read with emotionally engaging characters.

  • Are you kidding me?!?!?!

    1
    By Ironwill7901
    This isn’t Book 4 it’s Book 3.5. The author is basically forcing you to reread Book 3 but from Zoe’s perspective. My assumption is that his publisher was pressuring him to put something out and he was suffering from writers block and as a result we were left with this garbage. It’s going to be awhile before I read anything by Scalzi again. What a waste of money!!!!

  • Excellent Read

    5
    By jasniteowl
    When you tell your friends of this novel have them read the others for context of course. But I believe they will thank you,especially if they are young.

  • Good in its own right

    4
    By S. Gordon
    I admit to not caring enough about Zoe to understand why she needed a book. By the last chapter I did and it is one of the better books I've read in quite some time. I ended up caring about the characters more, becoming more emotionally invested in the story than expected (especially because it reflects the previous book). It is very well written and very few authors can do what John Scalzi has done with the story. I recommend it.

  • Zoe's tale....

    3
    By 8bitme!
    The book was a decent read unless you've read the previous book. I mean it's really the same story but told by the daughters POV. If it was half the price it'd be better. But full price for a retelling is a little steep....

  • Scalzi becomes a teenage girl

    5
    By CherieWS
    Loved this story. I was a huge fan of Scalzi until I read Redshirts. I took a break after that until Zoe caught my interest again. Only after reading the notes at the end did I learn there were other parallel books to the story, so you don't need to read them to appreciate this tale. The best thing about it is the voice: its written in the first person of a teenage girl. It wasn't easy to capture the intelligence, courage and humor of the character, and still explore the implications of her connection to an alien race. As someone who works extensively with teenagers in my real life world, I found her voice to be incredibly authentic. Kudos to Scalzi!!

  • Another amazing book

    5
    By jackbenny12003
    I loved this book. It seems to that each of the books in this series have just been better than the one before. Which is really hard to do, since each of the books is truly great in its own right. I loved reliving the events of The Last Colony from Zoe's perspective and learning more about such a critical character. I loved this book and the whole series and I hope John Scalzi will takes us there many more times in the years to come.

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