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A Review of John Scalzi’s Latest Book: The Collapsing Empire

John Scalzi’s latest book, The Collapsing Empire, is a far-future space opera, packed with political intrigue and classic Scalzi humour.

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The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. Photo by Todd Herzman.

In The Collapsing Empire, Scalzi creates a fascinating new method of interstellar space travel, across an empire spanning over forty planets in dozens of star systems – only to explore its demise.

To travel the lightyears between planets in the empire of the Interdependency, ships enter the ‘Flow’, a naturally occurring phenomena acting as a kind of river, sending ships down ‘currents’ to different parts of the galaxy. Without it, travel and communication between worlds becomes impossible.

The ‘Flow’ has been stable for a thousand years but it has started to collapse, threatening to send the citizens of the Interdependency, who rely on travel between worlds and stations for food and other resources, into disarray.

The Interdependency relies not only on the ‘Flow’ for its survival, but it’s complex political structure of royal houses, guilds, and the Church, with the Emperox at the centre of it all.

The underlying themes of the book are about power and abuse, and the wilful ignorance of those in power to recognise inevitabilities. The collapse of the ‘Flow’ has been ignored for years, bringing to mind the real world’s treatment and dismissal of climate change.

The Collapsing Empire is the first book in a new series. It’s also the first book from Scalzi’s 3.4 million dollar 10-year deal with Tor to cover his next 13 books; so if you’re itching for more Scalzi, you won’t be waiting too long.

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