Zoe's Tale

I put off reading this book for a really long time. I wanted to finish the OMW series, but honestly I liked each book a little less than the previous one, and seeing as this one was a retelling of my not so favorite installment told in the first person from the perspective of a teenage girl, a Chosen One teenage girl no less, I didn't think it would be my favorite in the series.

It's my favorite in the series.

Scalzi pulls off Zoe's voice with a skill I honestly didn't know he had in him. I think the fact that our narrator is a teenage girl and thus does a lot of internal monologuing helps limit his tendency to over-speech tag that that usually gets on my nerves. Zoe's Tale cleans up a lot of dangling plot points from Last Colony and adds an extremely different perspective on the events we do see. Scalzi has used Zoe as a tool and a plot point in this series as much as the Obin do, and this volume really gave her a chance to become a real character.

The real reason I'm giving this book a five though is that it dragged my emotions in every way possible. Maybe it's just that I'm having a rough week and kinda ready to cry on a dime, but I cried twice in this book during events that didn't make me bat an eyelash on Last Colony. The funny bits were hilarious, the sad bits were gut-wrenching, and the exciting bits were heart-pumping. There were some notable moments of cheese (Singing...? Really...?) but I have a deep abiding love of cheese, so I'll let that go.

If Last Colony disappointed you, definitely give Zoe's Tale a chance to make up for it. It is well worth your time.