The Collapsing Empire

Book 1 of the Interdependency trilogy

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In this interstellar epic, we watch as the empire that was established by a particular family millennia before, under false pretenses, begins to fall apart.

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The story includes an imaginative idea of how space travel across very long distances might work, and a cast of characters and space ships with creative and humorous names.

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Kiva was now looking at her mother in open admiration. Huma Lagos had always been someone with whom one would not wish to fuck, and Kiva had years of watching her mother argue and negotiate to draw from for her own skills with both. But it was always a joy to watch her mother deftly and profanely shove assholes like Amit Nohamapetan up against a wall, then reach down and squeeze (or reach in and twist, as the case might be).

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It was nice when you could look up to your parent, even as an adult, and think, This is who I fucking want to be when I grow up.

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The story revolves around political antics, humble people who find themselves in positions that hold a lot of power, and the lengths that some people will go to for more money and more power. It ends just before we find out how things will fall apart.

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“One thing,” Finn said to Kiva as the page came to retrieve her. “The duke finds profanity a mark of a lesser intellect. Try to avoid it with him if you can.”

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What an asshole, she thought, as she stepped into the duke’s office, as vomitiously ornate as any other part of the palace.

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There’s something peculiar about the way Mr. Scalzi crafts his characters. He gives us very little, if anything, in the way of descriptions of their physical appearance yet they are clearly defined in my head. I think this happens because John Scalzi is a master at dialog. He draws his characters with the way they speak and pulls the reader through a story with punchy, often profanity-filled banter. In this story, one of the main characters swears like a sailor and takes nearly everyone around her to bed.

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It’s a fun read!