A- #BookReview: The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi

The Shattering Peace (Old Man's War, #7) by John Scalzi
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: humorous science fiction, science fiction, space opera
Series: Old Man's War #7
Pages: 288
Published by Tor Books on September 16, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

After a decade, acclaimed science fiction master John Scalzi returns to the galaxy of the Old Man's War series with the long awaited seventh book, The Shattering Peace
THE PEACE IS SHATTERING
For a decade, peace has reigned in interstellar space. A tripartate agreement between the Colonial Union, the Earth, and the alien Conclave has kept the forces of war at bay, even when some would have preferred to return to the fighting and struggle of former times. For now, more sensible heads have prevailed – and have even championed unity.
But now, there is a new force that threatens the hard-maintained peace: The Consu, the most advanced intelligent species humans have ever met, are on the cusp of a species-defining civil war. This war is between Consu factions... but nothing the Consu ever do is just about them. The Colonial Union, the Earth and the Conclave have been unwillingly dragged into the conflict, in the most surprising of ways.
Gretchen Trujillo is a mid-level diplomat, working in an unimportant part of the Colonial Union bureaucracy. But when she is called to take part in a secret mission involving representatives from every powerful faction in space, what she finds there has the chance to redefine the destinies of humans and aliens alike... or destroy them forever.

My Review:

Twenty years ago, a book by a then up-and-coming author was released on January 1, 2005. That book was Old Man’s War (original cover is pictured at left). The story is still stuck in my head all these years later, because the premise was just so utterly bonkers. It begins with 75 year old John Perry fulfilling his earlier enlistment in Earth’s Colonial Defense Forces.

Which is where all the fun began – for ‘may you live in interesting times’ values of ‘fun’. First because Earth’s Colonial Defense Forces aren’t exactly that. They don’t really belong to Earth. They use Earth for cannon fodder, while keeping the entire population under ‘mushroom management’ – meaning that they are keeping Earth’s people in the dark and feeding them (bull)shit about the actual state of the galaxy and the human colonies eking a living out amongst the stars.

This story, set in the same world twenty years and six books later, is all about reaping the whirlwind of those original choices. Because humans are far, far, FAR from alone in the galaxy, habitable planets are scarce, every species needs a place for their excess population – and no one likes being lied to, particularly not on as grand a scale as the Colonial Union had been lying to the population of Earth.

The colonies – everyone’s colonies – and the need for more of them had set the Colonial Union and the everybody-but-human Conclave on a collision course that the CDF was doomed to eventually lose even before Earth pulled the plug on recruitment. But ten years ago a fragile peace was cobbled together between the opposing parties, a peace based on a moratorium on colonization for all sides.

Of course, that agreement was broken. But the breakage – in the form of a joint colony populated by non-humans, Earth humans, and colonial humans – was more or less working. Whether it was working more, or working less depended a LOT on whose reports one had access to.

Then the reports stopped. And so did everything else. Because the colony disappeared from space. Completely. Totally. It didn’t even leave any debris behind.

Which is where Gretchen Trujillo, her Obin assistant and best friend Ran, and a whole shipload of scientists, engineers, diplomats and administrators enter the scene of the crime. Or whatever this is.

It’s their responsibility to figure out what happened to the missing colony before that fragile peace shatters into the shards of war – no matter how impossible that task might be.

Escape Rating A-: The opening scene of this book is a stunner. Literally. Gretchen Trujillo walks into a training class for potential diplomatic security personnel, promises that she’s going to kill them all, and then does so. Repeatedly. They’re not really dead, but they do, EVENTUALLY, get the point. That the universe isn’t fair and their preconceived notions about what does and does not constitute a threat to their protectees – and themselves – has to get chucked out the nearest airlock ASAP if they want to have half a chance at doing their damn jobs.

And it’s a terrific introduction to Gretchen, who will be our point of view and tour guide to the currently effed up state of the galaxy – as well as to the thoroughly FUBAR’d mission she’s about to become a part of.

She needs to go to the place where Unity Colony used to be because, as those recruits just learned, Gretchen thinks outside the box to the point that the box might as well give up and go home. But that’s not the only reason. Gretchen also needs to go because she’s the one human who has a chance of being respected and listened to by at least one of the alien races – if not a few more. And that’s because of Gretchen’s ties to the people and events of two of the earlier books in this saga, The Last Colony and Zoe’s Tale. Even if her presence and participation did not make it into the movie. Which she hates. The movie, not that she’s not included in it.

Which leads to an interesting question that I can’t really answer. The Shattering Peace is book seven in a series that’s been going on since 2005. I did read the whole thing but I haven’t read any of it recently. I believe there was enough backstory to remind me of enough of the details of past events to not feel lost in the present story. I THINK that would be true for someone who hasn’t read the whole thing – however long ago. But I can’t prove that assertion because I DID.

With that caveat, let’s get back to THIS story, which is every bit as much of an SF mystery as it is epic space opera – if not a little bit more. It’s also a story about humanity out among the stars in a situation where we are absolutely not the top dogs and where our frequent xenophobic and ethnocentric behavior is a ginormous problem.

It’s also a story about a whole lot of ‘home truths’ hiding in plain sight while everyone tiptoes around them hoping that they won’t explode. Even though they have, and are, all the damn time.

The fun part of the story is wrapped around the super-advanced aliens who are messing with ALL of the species involved, not just with the colony, but with the whole, entire galaxy. While at the same time being as completely unable to deal with their own bad behavior and interpersonal conflicts as any of us ‘less advanced’ species. Emotions get the best of everyone – and petty behavior gets very petty indeed – no matter how advanced anyone thinks they are.

(Fans of the author will get a particular chuckle over the names that a frustrated Gretchen gives to the two feuding über-advanced aliens. I’m still having a good laugh about THAT part of the story, no matter how chagrined Gretchen is at the consequences of her own petty behavior.)

The solution that Gretchen comes up with is as far out of the box as it gets – only exceeded by the out of the box problem that she’s been presented with. It feels like a happy ending, but then the previous book, The End of All Things, ALSO felt like a happy ending. So maybe.

Or maybe we’ll see Unity Colony again in another decade. They’ll have either done great things – or torn a hole in the space-time continuum. Either way, it’ll be fun to find out.

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