The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency, #1)

by John Scalzi

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. But when it's discovered that the entire Flow is moving, possibly separating all human worlds from one another forever, a scientist, a starship captain, and the emperox of the Interdependency must race to find out what can be salvaged from an empire on the brink of collapse. --

• ISBN10: 076538888X
• ISBN13: 9780765388889
• Publish Date: 21 March 2017
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 22 August 2022
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Tor Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

I had put off picking up this trilogy for a while, because given the state of *gestures at the world* whenever I read a synopsis that invokes societal collapse (or climate disasters or a post-apocalyptic setting) I nope right out of that and look for something less likely to be on the news that evening. Luckily, book #1 is not about despair and hopelessness and grim descriptions of everything going wrong. Very little, if any, of the titular empire has collapsed by the end of this book. Additionally, this is a John Scalzi book, so it has all the trademark Scalzi snark and I am not sure if he will venture into particularly dark corners in the remaining books.

The most striking thing to me about this book was that it really just serves as a set-up for everything that will come. It introduces the characters, explains the rules of the universe, and puts all the pieces in place where the plot will go later, but the plot itself doesn't really make a strong showing here. That isn't to say this was boring - it most certainly was not. But unlike some trilogies where book 1 has a fully contained story with threads that a book 2 can pick up, this is absolutely not a standalone and would not be satisfying without knowing that the rest of the story will be coming.