Alex’s Reviews > The Collapsing Empire > Status Update

Half his acknowledgements is him complaining that Trump made writing hard. I cannot believe I'm reading this.

"“Everyone fuck off,” Limbar said. “For the next fifteen minutes.”
Everyone fucked off, and Limbar closed the door behind them."
That was witty the first time, but not now.

Also, he used "hemorrhaged out" instead of "bled out" in a sentence. Bad style.

That the Interdependency is unnecessary is rather uninteresting, considering the reader never had reason to suspect it was necessary. Likewise, finding out its ideology or religion (both?) is a lie does not come as a shock as every single character so far has been a cynic and an atheist. The archbishop hardly qualifies as a character to me.

He drops information that should've been in the first quartile of the novel. The world felt lifeless until now, giving me a vivid description of Hub won't change things at this point.

Also, the naming conventions for the spaceships are a soulless knockoff of the Culture-series.

"Kiva went on at length about the Yes, Sir’s entire sojourn at End, loudly and at length, with considerable editorial comment."

Now I know all about Cardenias romantic and sexual preferences. Not that I care. How can people like this book?

"For the life of him, Ghreni had nothing to say to any of this. It was literally like his tongue and brain—his two advantages—had simply shriveled up and blown away."
So he was dead, as without his brain, all function in his body ceased, and the brain cannot be sustained without the rest of the body.

Unless, of course, Scalzi meant "figuratively".

I was gonna say the twist right now was good, but PEER REVIEW foiled the villains' plans.

It's like Chris Pratt is in every scene telling me not to take things serious in the silliest voice possible. Civil war, torture, coronation ceremonies, ripping off refugees, threats of torture, inducing necrosis that necessitates limb amputation, all fun and games!

The only thing to be taken serious is Canderas' (Candeelas? Candices?) angst about losing Naffa. Which is too badly written to be taken serious.

Probably not the least erotic sex scene I've ever read, but it's an honorable effort to make it. "He put his thingy into my you-know-what"-level. Why, then, even write a sex scene? I just don't see the purpose, not even the supposed purpose.