So - would I recommend this book to a teenager? No. She grew on me quickly, and her voice acting was very well done. The one shining star in this whole mess was the narrator: Tavia Gilbert. However, Scalzi does very little with those events, and thus you'll spend the entire book building up to a rather flat third act. It's clear that there was a kernel of a story hidden in "The Last Colony", where Zoe impressed General Gau, and somehow wrangled an impressive piece of technology from The Consu. Really? Had I not been on some very long airline flights, this book would have been returned for refund posthaste. However, what I got was Scalzi channeling giggling girls, fart jokes, and teenage crushes. I had expected Zoe to START OUT as a teenager, then slowly grow into a woman as the story moved forward. It's strange that Scalzi chose to re-write "The Last Colony" entirely from a teenagers point of view. I'm quite miffed at Audible & the publisher for not prominently calling this out, and classifying the book correctly. "Zoe's Tale" is an almost verbatim retelling of "The Last Colony", except it's the "Twilight" version. "Zoe's Tale" is Young Adult Science Fiction. This is pure bait and switch to sell a few more copies to unsuspecting customers. However, this is not a book targeted at adults even though it's mistakingly placed in Contemporary SciFi. I greatly enjoyed the first three books in the "Old Man's War" series, and picked this up without hesitation - as it was listed next in line.
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