The Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi
I originally received this to review, but then I also grabbed it the minute I saw it in the shop. I’m pretty busy at the moment with ridiculous amounts of class work, which seemed like the perfect time to read something by John Scalzi. His work is pretty much universally compelling, readable and fun — often with a great deal of humour as well. The Collapsing Empire delivered more or less what I expected: I could have done with less of Lady Kiva and her foul mouth and more of Cardenia and Naffa. Or indeed, Cardenia and Marce, when he reaches her; that’s a relationship I’m going to be happy to cheer on in future books, in whatever form it takes.
(Kiva herself is fun, all the same, particularly in her indiscriminate approach to sleeping with whoever she can. Hurrah for a female character who can do that with such abandon, and a world which accepts that. Too many people port over all our society’s hangups to a world removed from ours by vast distances or even dimensions. Scalzi dispenses with that. Good.)
The set up of the Interdependency works well, though the fact that it’s a scam is obvious from the beginning — at least to a sceptical-minded Leftist like me who distrusts Empire and anything that looks like it, just on principle. I don’t know how the science holds up, if it does at all, since relativity and quantum physics all sound like wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey to me — but in-universe, it held together and seemed convincing, which is what matters. (To me, anyway, and when it comes to physics. If you fudge biology, you might lose me, admittedly.)
It’s a quick and enjoyable read; I’ll be interested to read more. Just what I wanted from a Scalzi novel.
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