Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1) - John Scalzi

GoodReads Summary: Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.

"Old Man's War" was a long time in my "to read" list. Today I finally finished reading it.

I've been following Scalzi for some time on Twitter and he always post intelligent comments. I read Subterranean Scalzi Super Bundle and really enjoyed his writing style. The very first book of his was, then, an obvious choice.

"Old Man's War" is part The Forever War. It's war on space. You have spaceships and soldiers with special training and special weapons.

But while you read about the military life like in "Starship Troopers", it also has no qualms in killing interesting characters to show that not all things in war are easy and the bad guys always lose, like in "All Quiet".

The story starts really strong, gets more cerebral in the middle and then slows a bit in the end. Still pretty enjoyable, specially if you liked the books I mentioned before. The fact that they way Scalzi writes makes it easy to read is also a plus.