The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi

The Ghost Brigades is the follow novel up to Old Man's War. Though it is not required, I would definitely recommend reading Old Man's War first.

In Old Man's War we are introduced to a future where humanity has spread to the stars and found the universe crawling with intelligent life, all in a mad rush for the rare inhabitable planets. To protect earth and it's colonies the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) take volunteer senior citizens of Earth (70+), clone/upgrade their bodies and transfer their consciousness into these new bodies. After a 10 year stint in the military, (if they survive), these soldiers can then be transferred into yet another cloned (unmodified) body and start over as a colonist, or continue to serve in the military.

The Ghost Bridages are the CDF's special forces. Rather than having an existing consciousness transferred into a cloned body, they are "born" directly into a radically modified engineered body. As the name of the book implies, our main characters this go around are part of these special forces.

As with Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades is a fast paced, fun, humorous and, at times, gripping adventure. The whole CDF system is an ethics nightmare, and this is pursued a little in the book. Everything is nicely wrapped up, but we are given some hints where the series is heading. I enjoyed how the Ghost Brigades filled in and expanded on the world introduced in the first book. While there were not as many "wow, this is cool!" moments, it was satisfying to spend more time immersed in Scalzi's world.

I give it a 7.8 out of 10.