Zoe’s Tale 
by John Scalzi (2008)
read: 7 September 2008
rating: [+]
category: scifi & fantasy
Zoe’s Tale is a retelling of the story from Scalzi’s book The Last Colony. Except this time we get the story through the eyes of 17 year old Zoe Boutin Perry, the adopted daughter of John Perry and Jane Sagan, the stars in The Last Colony. It’s your basic teenage girl leaves home planet to help colonize a new planet and gets caught up in a plot between 400+ planets that requires her to save the day, all while dealing with a moody boyfriend and the fact that she is a deity like figure to a race of beings that can crush a human like a twig story. Zoe’s Tale is Scalzi’s first effort to write a book that will appeal to the teen market, and in that regard I think Scalzi scores. 17 year old Zoe is a protagonist that teenage girls will completely identify with, while teenage boys will secretly crush on her knowing that in real life, they would be completely and totally intimidated by a girl like Zoe. Note that appeals to teens and a real life YA book are different things. From a content standpoint, this is a PG-13 book for normal people. PG-you-are-going-to-burn-in-hell for fundy homeschoolers.
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