The Collapsing Empire is a sweeping space opera that makes you lose track of time. A book almost impossible to put down. A book full of characters so compelling and addictive that you are going to want to have book two lined up and ready to go.

The Collapsing Empire by John ScalziSynopsis – In the far future, humanity has left Earth to create a glorious empire. Now this interstellar network of worlds faces disaster – but can three individuals save their people?

The empire”s outposts are utterly dependent on each other for resources, a safeguard against war, and a way its rulers can exert control. This relies on extra-dimensional pathways between the stars, connecting worlds. But ‘The Flow’ is changing course, which could plunge every colony into fatal isolation.

A scientist will risk his life to inform the empire’s ruler. A scion of a Merchant House stumbles upon conspirators seeking power. And the new Empress of the Interdependency must battle lies, rebellion and treason. Yet as they work to save a civilization on the brink of collapse, others have very different plans.

The Collapsing Empire is a hell of a ride. From the first sentence Scalzi sets the scene with vivid descriptions, a diverse cast, action, world building and enough political intrigue to keep you completely enthralled.

“The mutineers would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for the collapse of the flow.”

I was constantly wanting to know what would happen. Who are these characters? Are they going to be alright? Scalzi writes characters that you fall in love with. Whether it is the new Empress, who everyone expects to fall in line and start using her uterus. Marce, the scientist who will bring the tragic news to the Empress or Lady Kiva a house representative that refuses to let anything get in her way and is more than happy to use violence, sex or blackmail to get her way.

“So here’s the deal,” Kiva repeated. “You tell us everything we ask you questions about, and you don’t give us any shit about it, and I don’t purge you out of the airlock without that fucking helmet. I’m not going to repeat myself again. You fuck with me and you die. Got it?”

Dear reader, she had already thrown him out the airlock, his eyes had already haemorrhaged, he was not in a good way.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a book with this level of snark and I must say, I loved every word of it. I want to be lady Kiva when I grow up. I also liked that not all of the characters read the same, each had their own way of talking and thinking. I was never unsure of whose POV I was in at any moment.

I would describe the science aspect as accessible. It’s not overwhelming and we don’t get bogged down in the nitty and gritty, yet we are given more than enough to learn about how everything works. The flow, the ships and the different settlements are all set up nicely, leaving plenty of room for Scalzi to dig even deeper in the rest of the series.

It was a very character driven story, but that doesn’t mean it was slow at all. There was plenty of action, hostile situations, political intrigue and it was a fast paced story. It leaves you wanting more.

When you do read this, make sure you read the acknowledgements. They are superb and offer you a great insight into the authors world. My favourite part was the section where he talked about his wife and daughter and compared his love for them to his love for food.

I received this copy from the publisher via Netgalley.

this was the first book by John Scalzi for me, and it was a success! This book was an amazing surprise, and I enjoyed every moment I have spent with it!

The best thing is the sense of humor. This book is humorous, funny, witty and brilliant. And I have to say that reminded me of Terry Pratchett’s writing.

And I have laughed a lot while reading. Even if, to be honest, the story itself is not so happy or funny. All the opposite, because we are dealing with the end of the world, or at least, the end of an Empire which was the whole world for our characters. And yes, the situation is as grim as it sounds, if not even worse, and yet, while you are there, with the characters who are called to face all of this and more (because there is a lot happening here) you would have a hell of a ride, and even when you would be so enthralled by the story that you can’t put down the book, because you need to know what would happen next, you would do it with smiles, because you just can’t help yourself.

It’s not only that the author manages to not be too serious about everything, but it is also that all of this is just so wisely dosed and that the balance is perfect.
And I have to say that there are also the amazing details like the names of their ships. They are just brilliant!

But this book is not just fun and nothing else. We have an interesting set of characters, every one of them with their quirks and their own voice and personality (and yes, I am thinking especially about Lady Kiva, but she is not the only one. Maybe the one with the most distinctive voice, that’s for sure, but every character has his or her own peculiarities) and we have a good story. We have action, yes, but we have a ton of political intrigues, too. Plots behind plots and we have a couple of ah-ah moments.
The book is not too long, and is a fast reading, but it happens a lot in these pages, and for a good portion of it, I couldn’t stop the reading, because I was “no! And now?” or “OMG, really?!?”.

This first book by the author was a success, and I am looking forward to read more! And I am also quite lucky, because NetGalley approved me for the second book in this series, too… so I won’t have to wait a lot. I am really a lucky girl!

The Collapsing Empire is basically space Game of Thrones. It's more nuanced than that , but it's basically space Game of Thrones.

The book follows a galactic empire made of humans who, long ago, traveled from Earth and spread out across the stars, connected only by a mysterious way of travel called the Flow. No one really knows why the Flow does what it does or why it exists, just that it makes it possible to travel more quickly across the universe. When the Flow starts receding, and connections are being lost between planets, the empire starts to see the first signs of crumbling. With a newly crowned Emperox at the head, will the empire be able to stand?

I say this is like Game of Thrones because of the sheer scope of it, with rival houses and different lands being brought together by the Emperox. There's political intrigue, assassinations, and rivalry that gives it that feel. As a fan of political drama and the chaos of humanity, this is has been a fun series for me to start reading.

I'd say my only complaint is that the thing that happened with the Emperox's advisor...yeah that was maddening. Trying not to spoil here, but a thing happened that I wish hadn't just because I liked the character. It's a testament to Scalzi's writing that I've loved the entire cast right from the start, even the ones who seem to be operating on one brain cell. Looking at you, House Nohamapetan. Also I love Kiva Lagos to bits and she's easily my favorite character of the entire story.

I'm definitely looking forward to reading the rest of the Interdependancy Trilogy. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read The Collapsing Empire as an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

John Scalzi is careful to point out in his Acknowledgements that The Collapsing Empire “was not intended as a commentary on the current state of the United States, the UK, or that of Western Civilization in general.” Despite the fact that this book dates to 2017, it does have a lot to say in retrospect about the current state of the world.

The Interdependency is a great concept, a colloquial shorthand for the Holy Empire of the Interdependent States and Mercantile Guilds. Here the balance of power is juggled between parliament (laws and justice), the guilds (trade and prosperity), and the church (spirituality and community). “And above them, the emperox, mother of all, for order.” Trade is essentially controlled, or monopolised, by a number of families, who are forever competing (and feuding) against each other for leverage.

Said Holy Empire consists of a far-flung collection of human settlements, the majority of which are on technically uninhabitable planets. The only reason why humanity can endure in this fashion is due to the Flow, a hyperlink-type network stitching the Empire together. Stitching, however, tends to fray and unravel.

Cardenia discovers this soon enough when her father Batrin Wu passes away, placing her firmly in the spotlight as the supreme authority of the Interdependency, the emperox. Not only did Batrin think his daughter unsuitable for the role, but she does not want to be in the firing line either – especially when she enters the Memory Room to commune with her father’s holo-ghost, and he informs her of the last great secret he took to the grave with him.

Cardenia is only one of a range of vivid point-of-view characters, many of them women. Very strong-willed and opinionated women like Kiva, a starship captain from the Lagos family, who unwittingly becomes engulfed in a political spider web of intrigue and machination that quickly envelops the Interdependency in its sticky thrall. Kiva is no walkover, though:

The family legend had it that Kiva Lagos’s very first word as an infant was ‘fuck’, a legend that was entirely liable to be true, given the swearing propensity of the Countess Huma Lagos, Kiva’s mother and head of the House of Lagos.

Yes, Kiva swears so profusely, and with such linguistic fervour, that it is enough to make Chrisjen Avasarala from The Expanse blush. Scalzi has lots of fun with Kiva’s character as a result:

Kiva motioned to them. “Tell the rest of them to fuck off, too,” she said to Limbar.
“Everyone fuck off,” Limbar said. “For the next fifteen minutes.”
Everyone fucked off, and Limbar closed the door behind them.

Together with spaceship names like ‘Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby’, this book wears its street-cred proudly on its sleeve. There is nothing spectacularly new here, of course, but Scalzi injects his story with an energy and a joie de vivre that makes for infectious reading. The ending is, predictably, a cliffhanger for the second instalment.

The space opera sub-genre seems to be enjoying something of a weird renaissance at the moment, with envelope-pushing writers like Yoon Ha Lee and Kameron Hurley taking it to one extreme, while other writers like Scalzi, Becky Chambers and Ian Whates take it to a completely different extreme, in the form of a ‘retro’ Golden Age type of space opera, but focused firmly on modern issues. And with plenty of f-bombs.

What a fun ride of a book this was. It tells the story of the Interdependency - a loosely collected series of habitats, moons and planets ruled over by an Emperox and connected by the flow, which allows for travel between worlds with great speed.

The Positives: I absolutely loved the tone of the narrative. It is incredibly funny throughout, with witty dialogue and fantastic ship names! The characters were really well drawn for the most part and felt authentic with understandable motivations and behaviours. The world Scalzi has created here is very interesting, with fascinating political implications and intrigues, without ever getting too bogged down conceptually, which was refreshing. I also thought that the plot of this opening book was fast paced and well constructed.

The Negatives: There were a couple of characters that felt a little bit one-dimensional or convenient and I do think that the book wouldn't have suffered for being a little bit longer, just to get more of a sense of the different worlds.

Overall, this was a really funny and enjoyable book and I have immediately started book 2.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

When I finished the last page of John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire there was no question I was going to continue this trilogy. I can’t wait to start the next book.

In The Collapsing Empire a collection of human habitats in space are connected through an interstellar highway called The Flow. This space highway allows ships to travel faster than the speed of light and enables trade and commerce between these fifty-or-so human outposts. Now The Flow is collapsing and those in charge of the empire are scrambling to seize power or save humanity.

The novel jumps between the point of view of a few characters. It’s easy to keep track of the characters and the places, because they are all so different. Cardenia Wu is inheriting the title of Emperox and will be in charge of the empire even though she didn’t plan to be in charge. Lord Marce is a young scientist who knows about physics of what’s happening. Kiva is a comical, f-bomb dropping entrepreneur with a strong will to survive and make money. There are other characters surrounded in mystery and I don’t want to spoil the plot by describing them.

The characters are what make The Collapsing Empire fun to read. I really enjoy stories following rich people problems. Those with money are maneuvering and backstabbing to get information and power. There are several strong female characters. It’s refreshing to read a novel where females aren’t questioned and they can simply do their jobs without putting men down.

Even though survival of humanity is at stake there are moments of humor and intrigue. The plot is clear to follow, but also interesting enough to keep the reader guessing at what is going to happen next. I especially liked how the cities in space and the ships are described without being too technical. Sometimes a character will marvel how humans can live so close to the vacuum of space and then the story moves on.

If you love good stories set in space then this book is for you. Even though The Collapsing Empire may be described as a space opera the book moves fast and isn’t very long.

This is my third John Scalzi book and it’s my favorite one so far. His mix of witty dialogue and a captivating plot make this an enjoyable science fiction novel.

5 out of 5 stars

I would like to thank Tor Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thousands of years in the future humans have spread to different planets comprising the Interdependency Empire. All the planets are connected by The Flow which allows starships to travel between them. The Flow has been thought to be unchanging. But a new Emperox finds out that is about to change and very soon.
I have previously read Old Man's War by Scalzi and really liked it. So I was pretty sure before starting this book that I would like it. What I didn't anticipate was that I would absolutely freaking adore every page of it! It was just a perfect book for me. The writing,the plot,the pacing,the characters, the humor,the sad bits-all of it was awesome.
We are mainly following three characters: Cardenia,a reluctant emperox, Kiva,a daughter of one of the merchant guilds,and Marce,a scientist whose father discovered the problem with the flow. The female characters in this book were excellent! We have an emperox, who is suffering from cramps on her coronation day. I loved that she is genuinely a good person. In this tough situation when an empire is about to collapse you would think that she is the worst candidate to be the leader right now. But what would have made her a bad emperox in peaceful times now makes her the best person to lead this whole thing. Precisely because Cardenia is not a politician and would actually care to save people's lives. It will be a delight to watch her navigate her life in the future books.
Kiva was my favorite character. Constantly looking for sexual partners, very unapologetic about it. Also swearing like every other word. And she also has a zero bs policy. What's not to love? I loved how morally grey she actually is. She is only helping our other characters because her interests align with theirs. But if that changes I can see her changing sides immediately. Her remarks,the way she treats people, her schemes- all a plus. I wanna know where she is going to end up in the next books.
Marce was the character we got to know the least about, but what we did find out about him I really liked. A scholar and a gentle person. It was really funny when one of our antagonists decided to kidnap him instead of his sister,because his sister is actually a soldier and would most likely kill her kidnappers and the person who sent them. Also,his interactions with Kiva were hilarious.
And as a cherry on top,there were LGBT themes in this book,as if it wasn't already perfect. So, read it,read it now, it was so good and I cannot wait to read the sequel.
Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fantastic fantastic start to a trilogy that will be ending this year! Well-rounded characters of all genders, races, etc., and a true masterclass in worldbuilding and plot. John Scalzi is such a solid author who always delivers.

The first in a trilogy, Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire is a great example of how to draw the reader in within the first few pages. His characters feel real; their actions vivid and matching their personalities, their voices unique and constructive. Scalzi’s worldbuilding takes center stage, as he is able to introduce his universe without heavy handed exposition; what he does have to explain, he does with classic Scalzi flair and comedy. One of the best SF novels I’ve read in years, and I can’t wait to see where this trilogy goes.

The Collapsing Empire is the first novel in The Interdependency series by best-selling American writer and blogger John Scalzi, and sets the stage for a story of universe-spanning crisis told through the lens of three very different characters, as they try to come to terms with the upcoming catastrophe. An interesting premise, entertaining characters, and great dialogue do an excellent job establishing the story for the rest of the series.

Coming into the first book in this series, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Seemingly rare in the SFF world, I actually haven’t read much Scalzi previous to this. Just the first Old Man’s War and Fuzzy Nation and while I enjoyed them well enough, they didn’t pull me in as much as they might have. Now reading The Collapsing Empire which I definitely enjoyed the most out of these three entries, I think I might finally have a read on how I want to characterize Scalzi’s writing.

Certain authors have a knack for one sometimes very specific subset of elements of writing, and while their overall execution can be anywhere from questionable to excellent, it’s the focus on that one area of excellence that defines them for me. No matter what you feel about, for example, Brandon Sanderson’s writing overall, to me, unique magic systems are his primary characteristic. For Tanya Huff, it’s an extremely compelling protagonist. For Ken Liu, brilliantly poetic prose. And so I think at this point, for me at least, the primary characteristic of John Scalzi is novel starting concepts. Which is not to say he can’t execute on them, far from it. But while I might put his characterizations, pacing, dialogue, settings etc at a strong 6s to 8s out of 10, the 10/10 for me comes from fantastic ideas to write a novel about.

There’s been no shortage of stories about a horrible crisis facing far-flung space-faring civilizations (Kevin J Anderson’s Saga of the Seven Stars being a great example) but just the combination of tropes and ideas that went into this starting point: the fact that the threat is seen coming in time to do things about it, butting up against the collective inertia and greed of guilds that have been in control of their chunk of pie for hundreds and hundreds of years, the strong will but inexperience of the leader, the actual nature of the consequences of the disaster. All of this combines into something really original and new and awesome.

There are of course, other really interesting and novel elements to the setting that I don’t want to be explicit about for spoiler purposes, but let’s just say that the special room for the Emperox was one of the cooler sci-fi concepts I’ve seen in a while, and I can’t remember it being done or at least done in this way, before. Super cool.

In fact, I only really have one real “problem” with anything in this book, and I’m probably reading too much into the intentionality of the author in doing it this way, but it rubbed me the wrong way at the time, and continued to bother me throughout the process of thinking about and writing this review. It includes a small spoiler, but it’s a pretty obvious spoiler and it comes very early in the book.

The Emperox has a best friend and confidant. She’s known her for years, they get along super well, are very close, are entirely platonic in their feelings. The main thing she represents in their relationship is the tie to normalcy pre-being-Emperox. She can call her by her actual name, agrees that everything about being Emperox is ostentatious, excessive and pointless, basically her tie to staying human while in a massively important role that is full of being a symbol and high-minded things. Then the best friend dies. Suddenly. Largely pointlessly from a story perspective.

That in itself is…fine. Sometimes the way you build stakes is to kill people who are important to your protagonists. When the person you kill is a woman, you get into dicey territory, but in this case she represented ‘friend’ rather than ‘lover or child’. But where this really got icky to me, was in the introduction of another character shortly thereafter. A man, he’s a scientist and son of the scientist that basically discovered the upcoming crisis, and his sole story purpose is to deliver that information to the Emperox. He even pretty much states explicitly ‘My sole plot purpose was to deliver this information, I have done so, time to exit stage left’ except…he reminds the Emperox of her dead best friend. He agrees with her that everything about being Emperox is ostentatious, excessive and pointless, he can be a tie to her humanity while in a massively important role that is full of etc etc, oh except also she’s attracted to him.

And so she asks him to stay, and basically slots him into her life in the place where her dead best friend was, except also maybe romance? And I just…wish her friend and confidant were still the awesome sardonic also-woman who was clearly so important to her and not the slightly nerdy, awkward science boy she might smooch in book 2?

I know for a lot of people that will be a pretty minor quibble, so for those people who say “okay whatever, but how is the book?” Like I said, the concept is super novel and interesting, and Scalzi executes on it more than well enough to show why he’s considered one of the top writers in the genre now. I’m definitely going to read the other two books, and enjoy them. This was a 4-star book, but it could have been a 4.5/5 star book if I wasn’t thrown by the particular choice to basically replace a best friend with a love interest for not much necessary reason I can think of besides deciding they needed a love interest more than a best friend.

So if you like Scalzi, and if you like political space disaster stories with several excellent disaster characters that are an absolute delight to read, The Collapsing Empire is a solid choice.

The Collapsing Empire had me hooked pretty much from the get-go. I have not read a book written by John Scalzi before, but I have a feeling this will not be my last. I'm very excited for the opportunity to read the next book in the series.

I’m a newbie to the work of John Scalzi, and the only previous experience I have with his work was the fun audiobook edition of The Dispatcher. But, given how much those sad/rabid/pathetic puppies loathe him, while simultaneously attempting to ride on the coattails of his success (with one even going so far as to write a knock-off book of this particular title, with knock-off cover art that pretty well screamed copyright infringement, and a fake name that played off John Scalzi’s actual name in the hope of duping unaware readers to make a quick buck!), I figured he had to be worth a read, or in this case, a listen. Happily, I was not the least bit disappointed. So, thanks to all the doggie idjits bemoaning Scalzi’s work for prompting me to finally check out some more of his books!

Scalzi has a pretty large body of work behind him thanks to the Old Man’s War series and several other stand-alone titles. The Collapsing Empire is the first in a new series, and it’s the perfect starting point for new readers like myself.

Thousands of years in the future, humanity has formed the Commonwealth of the Interdependence and spread across the stars. Each of their various habitats are connected by the flow, a spatial anomaly akin to a river in space. The flow has allowed the Interdependence to grow and succeed, and without it humanity would wither and die as each star system becomes cut off from one another. Well, there wouldn’t be much room for drama if there wasn’t a massive problem, and so as it happens, the flow is beginning to collapse. Couple this with a bunch of political and trade guild drama, crosses and double-crosses, a newly crowned emperor, a fermenting rebellion, and random acts of terrorism, and you have The Collapsing Empire.

Scalzi keeps the pace rapid-fire and the tone light, despite a simmering undercurrent of darkness that could quickly turn the whole affair into pitch-black nihilism. Thankfully, there’s room for plenty of hope, and a whole lot of humor. The author also injects some wonderful heroines as the primary leads, and the foul-mouthed, sexed-up, aggressive Lady Kiva might just be one of my new favorites. She’s a total jerk, and I loved all of her expletive-laced rants as she chewed out anybody who attempted to cross her or get in her way.

Narrating all of this is Wil Wheaton, making The Collapsing Empire my first introduction to both the author and narrator. I found there to be a wonderful bit of synchronicity between the pairing of Scalzi and Wheaton, and the latter does an outstanding job narrating. Each character has a distinct voice, and there’s enough range and acting chops to give this audiobook a nice bit of oomph. The science fiction plot itself is easily digested and technobabble is kept to a minimum, while the listening experience itself is highly engaging and kept my attention the whole way through.

The bottom line is, The Collapsing Empire is just flat-out fun. The story is wonderfully conceived, it has some truly terrific character beats, and plenty of laughs. More importantly, it left me fully invested in this series going forward. As soon I reached the end of this audiobook, I immediately wanted to dive into the second installment. But since that’s not out yet, I’ll just have to content myself with some of Scalzi’s back catalog in the meantime.

4/5 STARS

John Scalzi makes his return to Space Opera with ‘The Collapsing Empire’, the first in the Interdependency series (set to run through 2027… Just a decade, no biggie). Not having read his Old Man’s War series, but having heard plenty of great things about it, I knew I could trust what reviewers are saying about this one and not be disappointed.

I wasn’t.

First off, I listened to the audiobook for this one, as I do when I come across narrators that make the books more enjoyable for me. Wil Wheaton (pronounced Hwill Hwheaton for you Family Guy fantatics) does a fantastic job, as usual, and it just helps the overall nerd thrill to have Wesley Crusher from Star Trek reading Space Opera. Patrick Stewart is the only other person I would consider, but I’m not sure he could pull off female voices.

There are plenty of things to like here. Scalzi’s wit, political intrigue, murderous plots, and a new way of way of star system travel known as ‘The Flow’. Since the universe is still bound by the laws of physics (no faster than light travel), Scalzi has introduced a network between connected systems to create quick travel pathways. All pathways go through the Interdependency, aptly named because all settlements connected via The Flow need one another for survival. After Earth is cut off from The Flow, few real civilizations are left and the pathways are beginning to shift more often.

The only things that I didn’t enjoy, which I assume Scalzi will fix in the next installments, were the characters. Most fell flat and were unlikeable to say the least. Most were of the ‘no f@#ks given’ variety, and there were definitely plenty of f-bombs to go around throughout a lot of the dialogue. Having said that, I did enjoy Lady Kiva’s brash way of getting things done. You either have sexual dominance over someone or you scream cuss them until they do what you ask.

I am looking forward to continuing the series and I am sure that Wil Wheaton will continue doing the audio which is completely fine by me.