Zoe's Tale

Yes, this book is a blow by blow retelling of the previous work "The Last Colony" from the putative perspective of a teenage girl.

It's clear from Scalzi's own remarks in the book that this was written as an empowerment tribute to his daughter so she would have a heroic role model to inspire her. Perhaps it did, I'll never know.

What it did do is make a naive, unsophisticated girl from a backwater planet into a super diplomat and superior intellect to almost everyone else in the book. In many ways, powerful, proud and violent adults defer to this impudent upstart, and we as readers are expected to accept this. I cannot.

Moreover, the gaping plot hole around the teenage girl's role, plight, fate or whatever you want to call it, is not addressed or resolved here either. The same fatal flaw in the plot remains, damaging the story and leaving only Scalzi's trademark universal snark to carry the day.