I kind of struggle with this audiobook. I persisted to the end though because each time I thought that it's just boring & nothing happens, I thought something was just about to happen so I kept going. In the end, I did manage to finish but I have to admit that I'm not terribly keen on this book. I'm not a fan of the author's earlier series; I think I only read a few chapters of White Tiger & decided that it's not for me. I thought this book, being scifi & all, should be different and may prove interesting. But again, it's not for me. Even now, I struggle to formulate what I liked or not liked but it is proving to be kinda unmemorable except for the thing with "french fries". And I still couldn't decide whether I found that to be hilariously clever or ridiculously stupid.

Scales of Empire has a few things going for it. It's diverse and inclusive. That's probably the part I enjoyed most. The king is transitioning, our mc is ethnically diverse as well as bi, the dragons are pansexual and gender fluid, and Richard's body was heavily damaged saving the kings life so he has prosthetic limbs and more.

Unfortunately for me the story lacked what I would call heart. It felt shallow and while I finished the book I wouldn't be picking up the next one. I didn't think the synopsis was a true representation of the actual plot. I expected some excitement, but whenever the opportunity arose the story kept moving slowly and fell flat. The humour throughout the story wasn't what I would expect from soldiers or an advanced species. I didn't find most of the attempts funny, they seemed tacky. It took away from the story. I felt like it cheapened it. I spent a large portion of the book wondering if it was a satire.

So while there were aspects of the characters traits I enjoyed, overall everything else fell short.

A really intriguing read, with unique sci-fi elements. Although - due to personal preferences in pacing - I was unable to become fully immersed in 'Scales of Empire', I found it to have solid world-building and characters that ventured into the realm of realism.

4.5 Stars

I'll admit I was surprised by how much I loved Scales of Empire! I have been meaning to read Kylie Chan's three fantasy series for years and if she writes sci-fi this good, I don't even want to think about how obsessed I'm going to be with her other works...

I'm not sure how to put all my thoughts and feelings about this novel into words coherently but I'm going to try my best. First off, that plot guys! It's been such a long time since I have read such a thrilling beginning to a series. I felt the immediacy and inevitability of every development; like of course that's exactly what has to happen next, DUH! I was absolutely sucked into this book head first; it was so compulsively readable I found myself putting off other tasks to keep going.

Secondly, the characters were off the charts amazing! I've never been one to be easily manipulated with the 'are they good, bad or morally grey' character developments but I honestly have no idea what to think at this point. There are so many nuances in each character and I love that they all believe they are doing the right thing and you can absolutely see why they are so strong in that conviction. This story would be incredibly different if even one character was added or removed.

Also if you are looking for a diverse sci-fi, this is the book for you! I can't talk about the accuracy for a lot of the representation; but just in the main character you have a bi-racial (asian/african I can't find the exact specifics at the moment) woman of colour who is openly bisexual and in a poly relationship with a M/F couple and separate relationship with another woman. There is such a range in this, I can't even begin to list it...

The world-building in 'Scales of Empire' is phenomenal, futuristic Earth its scary how quickly your brain accepts this future as the result of our current situation and the decisions that humanity is making. I also loved the nod to the humble potato as a galactic food stuff!

My only criticism is that I found certain elements jarring when they were initially introduced but I think that is due largely to my own fault in not reading the blurb and promotional material as thoroughly or as accurately as I should.

If you want a book to smile, laugh, cry and scream with, PICK THIS UP!

I'm afraid I had too much trouble getting in to this one - I found the main character kind of hard to relate to, and the beginning of the book seemed to swing wildly between info dumps and not-enough information. DNF.

Spoiler Free Section

I received this book for review from Netgalley and unfortunately I really did not enjoy it. I ended up giving it one out of five stars. For me the writing style was really simplistic and really just told you what was happening instead of showing you, throughout the whole book we really aren't given much description of anything that is going on or of the world in general which made it really lackluster for me.

We really aren't given enough background information about the time and place that this book is set in, we can see the differences as we go on, such as the water levels rising drastically, but we are not told how or why any it happened. It also becomes a bit hard to understand the different countries, and their respective governments and monarchs because we really are given no information. Having more context as to how this time period is different from our own or how certain events occurred would have really made the story more interesting and enjoyable for me as I feel the author just kind of glosses over aspects of the book as if they are common place and doesn't describe how things have come to be like this.

I really didn't enjoy how we are introduced to new characters, such as Edwin who we meet in the beginning, and who we learn about only through their dialogue which really doesn't tell you very much about them at all. This happens quite often throughout the book as characters are just thrown in with little to no explanation as to who they are and they are not given any backstory. I think that overall there were way too many characters added to this novel and most of them had absolutely no impact upon the story and all blur together. All of the characters also have very little amount of differences between them, they really all have the same personality and interact in the same way with others to the point where I forget who is speaking or who they are. The lack of individuality is really unrealistic and kind of makes the story boring as we see the same dialogues and actions over and over again.

Spoiler Section

I really didn't enjoy our main character Jian, to me she seems quite unlikable and I never felt any sort of interest in her or what was going on in her life. When the captain of the Nippon Maru spoke about potential seppuku she said 'charming', which I thought was quite insensitive to the situation that they were involved in. Also how she said that the women who left the Spirit of Britannia project were failures? She really doesn't seem to have much empathy for others which could be due to her military history but I really don't think that it should be a reason to not have any common human decency. She also seems quite blunt which kind of rubs me the wrong way, she at one point tells someone who is struggling with leaving their lives and families that they can 'always quit and go home' instead of giving any support to them and making them feel better through their shared experience. It also doesn't really make sense to me how she can make these remarks but also be kind to her friends in other ways and actually have people liking her.

I also particularly didn't enjoy how we were introduced to Commander Richard Alto who becomes one of our main characters, this is the character that we actually get the most background information about when we meet them but honestly it isn't done any better than the others that were just thrown in. We are told that he was a war hero who jumped on a bomb and saved the five-year-old king... and that's it?? we don't learn anything about who the king is and why he was king so young, why the bomb was put there or by who and all of this information I feel would be quite important and would actually give us some context about the world that we are in.

The characters also seem pretty flimsy in the way that they make decisions without much of a reason for it. The one that really stuck out to me was when Jain meets Commander Vince who hates her immediately because she did her reading for training remotely, he then tries to get her to fail her Wolf planet simulation by making it really hard to live there, but when they make it through he immediately trusts her and they become friends?? It is just really annoying to me how that is the extent of them forming any sort of relationship, people don't usually do that in real life you actually have to build up some form of friendship.

I also don't understand how when the aliens suddenly show up on Earth everyone is just fine with it and they actually say 'she sounds so cute'??! it's kind of crazy, like honestly shouldn't they be cautious and maybe even scared about this situation?! I think that would be a normal reaction. I feel like this happens a lot in this book , people always have unrealistic reactions to what is going on and that really bothers me.

This book had way too many plot points in my opinion and they were all kind of gone over in a very small amount of detail and very quickly. We see many things happen in this book between Shiumo coming to Earth, them starting a new colony on another planet, being attacked by the 'cats', breeding with the dragons, discovering that they are trying to basically assimilate the whole human race into dragon-human hybrids, Jian taking in two alien children to look after, discovering that the humans are then the only race who can fight against the 'cats' and then getting into the Galactic Empire??? I really feel like to make this book better they should have split up all of these points over multiple books and then actually expand on each of them instead of quickly running through everything. A lot of the things that go on in this book are very repetitive and honestly the 'relationship' between Richard and Shiumo is one of those, they constantly go back and forth between hate and love and it gets a little annoying about half way through and it is kind of the epitome of a toxic relationship that Richard keeps being sent back to against his will.  There was also absolutely no suspense or build-up to anything in this whole book we were just spoon fed everything which just makes the book a little boring.

I really cannot see how this book is going to continue into a series as it has already done everything that I can think of. With all of the plot that has already happened and over how many years it has happened I really don't know what they next books will be like but I also will never be finding out since I do not at all plan on reading the rest of the series.

https://solothefirst.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/review-scales-of-empire-by-kylie-chan/

As a long term fan of Kylie Chan, I was very excited about receiving an ARC for this book...and it did not disappoint. While it was very different to Kylie's previous books, I found the sci-fi world she has created thrilling. With enthralling characters and unpredictable plot twists, this book is a must read and one I would strongly recommend,