The Collapsing Empire

Struggled through to the end but felt like quitting early. This work falls far short of Old Man's War series, IMHO. The theme of The Flow was a novel and interesting sci-fi concept, but the political/social backdrop, the intrigues of the houses & guilds, the Interdependency were all frankly mundane. No treatment of any of typical space exploration concepts, minimal tech, alien worlds, encounters with other civilizations. Wasn't really amused by ship naming conventions, despite what was clearly intended. As an aside ... it puzzles me how in the entire book, only the female protagonists are developed as the "tougher than nails", alpha dog, hero archetypes, but most of the male characters (duke, Nohampoten brothers, ship captains) are portrayed as bumbling, incompetent, physically and cognitively (except the Claremonts) weak fops. Hopefully that was just a random component of this story and not a harbinger of a wider theme in his coming books. Much easier for willful suspension of disbelief like in OMW series with genetic engineering in play. Otherwise without some other context, one wonders if this is fully intended as fictional art or quasi socio political posturing on gender. Just my 2 pence.

Overall, a good book. I enjoyed the worldbuilding here. Aspects of it remind me of classic Asimov tales. However, the plot and characters are a little lacking. As with a lot of Scalzi's novels, several of the "good guy" characters all speak with nearly identical voices, most notably Lady Kiva Lagos and Cardenia Wu-Patrick. And the plot is rather simple, with all that's required for it to resolve is for the three protagonists to all be in the same place and share information. The bad guy's scheme seems to have been rather poorly thought out and should have been utterly transparent to the good guys, and yet somehow wasn't. But the positives outweigh the negatives, and in the end I did enjoy the story. As it seems to be setting up for a sequel, I'm looking forward to it.

good book. Scalzi has a good way of making characters interesting in every scene. ultimately this book is set up to introduce characters, world, and problems for future books. that goal was accomplished however at the cost of a gripping end it felt as though it trailed off leaving me a little unsatisfied. But i read this book after the release of the second in the series so that alleviates some of that issue