🚣🍂 The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
Not a Book Report
I enjoy reflecting on the movies, TV, books and other media that I consume. I’m notoriously sentimental. This series documents the books that I read. These aren’t reviews or recommendations. Just a list. For me. Mostly so that I can page through what I read, where I was, and when.
Why did I read it?
After a couple of years of effort, I finally caught up to the current state of Jack Ryan novels. I had previously read Scalzi books that I enjoyed quite a bit, so I decided to check out the rest of his catalog in the interest of picking more SciFi back up.
Like the Ryan novels, the real goal here is to have something fun to read for 20 minutes before I fall asleep. And this met that goal.
What is it?
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | The Collapsing Empire |
| Author | John Scalzi |
| Year Published | 2017 |
| Format | Kindle |
| Pages | 336 |
| ASIN | B01F20E7CO |
Publisher Summary
The first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe by the Hugo Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Redshirts and Old Man’s War
Our universe is ruled by physics. Faster than light travel is impossible—until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars.
Riding The Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. Earth is forgotten. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war—and, for the empire’s rulers, a system of control.
The Flow is eternal—but it’s not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well. In rare cases, entire worlds have been cut off from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that the entire Flow is moving, possibly separating all human worlds from one another forever, three individuals—a scientist, a starship captain, and the emperox of the Interdependency—must race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.
How did I read it?
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Date Started | January 28, 2025 |
| Date Finished | February 10, 2025 |
| Places Read | Lisbon, Sintra |
Notes - No Spoilers
- This fly by - in a good way. I enjoyed the world-building, the characters, and the stakes.
- Definite Foundation influences (tiny world at the end of the universe becomes important) and Dune influences (galactic empire in peril).
- My only gripe is that this ends on such a clear and obvious cliffhanger set-up for Book 2, which is not a big deal to me (I opened Book 2 immediately) but I could imagine would have been annoying when these were being released in real time.