I had been meaning to read Old Man’s War ever since I found out about it on John Scalzi’s blog since he writes so well there. But I had too many books on my reading list and I never got around to it until I found out about the features and offers with Tor’s new website.
we’ve got a little “holding page” currently at the tor.com URL, where we’re urging people to sign up as preregistered users. In exchange for their advance support (and their permission to email them our newsletters) we are, For A Limited Time, sending them links through which they can download free, un-DRMed digital editions of various recent Tor books in a variety of formats. For instance, if you sign up now, you can download The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory; in a few days, that will go away but you’ll be given the opportunity to download Farthing by Jo Walton. Since we’re rotating books in and out of the program at a fair clip, the earlier you sign up, the more free books you’ll score.
And this is how I got the Old Man’s War ebook, along with a dozen others and continuing.
This was also my first experience of reading a book on my Treo. While I won’t read long works on my PDA/phone, I found reading short novels pleasant.
Old Man’s War is the story of 75 year old John Perry who joins the Colonial Defense Force and battles aliens around the universe in his new, young, green body. It is well written and interesting throughout and reminds me somewhat of Robert Heinlein.
John Scalzi’s first novel, Old Man’s War was nominated for a Hugo award in 2005.
Farthing
A murder mystery set in an alternate history where Britain made peace with Nazi Germany and the US never entered the war, this is a good, fun novel.