I think I have read this before. I think I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it this time. And - as the author confesses in his end notes - it is decidedly Heinleinesque - perhaps part of the reason I enjoyed it. Shades of Starship Troopers! One of the more notable features of the Heinlein is the course (or courses) in History and Moral Philosophy which were primarily a device for Bob to drop in a good healthy dose of his political theories. Scalzi doesn't need to do that because his characters are old - and have plenty of history, moral, and political philosophy of their own already.
His primary device is intriguing. Take people at the point of system failure - 75 years of age - and offer them youth. Sort of on the "if had known then what I know now" principle. Enlistees can reason that if they do not survive the ten years of their enlistment, they hadn't had very good odds at surviving the next ten years anyway - and they would have spent the time old. The military get soldiers who have a lifetime of experience and knowledge and practice in exercising judgment. The big surprise for the enlistee is that he is not rejuvenated as he expected; he is planted in a genetically modified body grown from the DNA that he put on file when he "pre-enlisted" ten years earlier.
Our hero, John Perry, is a retired advertising copywriter who had planned to enlist with his wife of 42 years. His wife had a stroke and died; their kids are grown and gone; and he doesn't have a dog. So, off he goes, and discovers that he has a gift for soldiering.
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