The Not a Book Club Club discussion
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The Collapsing Empire
John Scalzi
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TCE: Part 1 - Prologue & Chapters 1-6
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The prologue was great. I like how he put a twist on the attempted mutiny.
Typical Scalzi: The stepping-out of the story to explain the Flow in 4 different ways, only one of those understandable for my mother, the last one to ridicule nerds like himself or me. I liked the XO. This is great popcorn SF.
We are definitely off to a fun start!
Mod
1) The (youngest?) daughter of a powerful Guild family whose monopoly is Fruit. I think her name is like Kiva or something close. She swears like a trucker, and seems to have Zero Filter on the things she say.
2) The crown princess/new Empress. She's got 2 names now. I can't remember either one. She is the bastard child of the Emperor and a "commoner" of sorts. She seems like a good person, whose been thrust into power after the death of her older half brother.
3) The son of the friend of the Emperor. He's a scientist whose working with his father on studying of the "Flow". His name is something like Markos.
I think all 3 are characters, but Kiva (or whatever her name is) is my favorite. I am however concerned about how she might handle the situation with regards to Markos. I get she needs the money, but I hope she doesn't screw him over.
The main antagonist on End (Gunny?) is fantastic. I despised him almost immediately. So good job by Scalzi. I wonder just what his plans are. Even as the youngest son, his family is supposed to be the most powerful of the Guild families, so why is he on End? It sounds like his whole family is terrible.
I really like Markos's twin sister. If he ends up leaving the planet, and she stays behind, I hope Scalzi makes her a POV character. I feel like there is something important about End, or maybe I just don't want to leave her behind. I also don't believe Scalzi is going to waste his antagonist character.
I'm really upset at the death of the Empress's friend. I thought she was a good character. I'm curious to see what happens next.
I'm enjoying the book so far. All three POV characters are interesting for their own reasons. I'm looking forward to how Scalzi weaves together the collapsing Flow with the antagonist. Since its probably not a coincidence that he's closely connected with the newly named Emperox and the scientist investigating the flow.Rob wrote: "I'm really upset at the death of the Empress's friend. I thought she was a good character. "
I also enjoyed Naffa, and was shocked to find out about her death.
I sadly am once again not getting much screen time to comment (babysitting this week of spring break) but I'm liking it so far! I was sad about Naffa dying too - I liked her comments and the balance she gave to the new emperor. Markos has made the least impression of the three main characters. But if he has some insights into the flow, that'd be good.
And all of the shenanigans with people trying to leave End are pretty entertaining!
Mod
So far, I have no real preference between the twins but there was only one chapter following them.
Oh I forgot to mention I enjoy the ship names!
Mod
Haha. Yes. Especially the one named after a Tiffany song
I'm through this first part which went smooth, an absolut typical Scalzi. Only the narrative speed wasn't typical and clearly pointed to it as the start of a series (the Old Man's War is more a series of standalone novels, right?).Kiva is such a Scalzi person that I have to laugh every time she talks to persons; especially when she had to refrain herself when talking to the Duke, she was nearly an exploding steam boiler. Very funny!
I especially loved the SFish elements like the memory room dedicated to emperoxes. But also the collapsing Flow and its consequences are interesting.
Sad about Naffa, not because I liked her, but I loved the dialogues with the emperox.
One thing I noticed that changed in his writing is there's a lot less "he said" "she said". That repetition was always really noticeable in the audio of earlier books but I didn't notice this one anyway.
Mod
He's talked about how he took that into consideration when writing because audio is a large part of his sales now. I forget when I read that. Maybe around the time of The Human Division
As you probably know because you're all finished, our players are:Lady Kiva of House Lagos, a merchanter that could make Avasarala blush.
Princess Cardenia, now Emporox Grayland II of the Imperial House Wuhan.
Marce Claremont, son of the current Count Claremont who is the only one who can reasonably understand his father's astrophysics around the Flow and it's imminent collapse.
Did anyone pick that the gender of the assistant purser that Kiva is with at the beginning of Chapter 2 isn't revealed? Not a pronoun or gendered observation in sight ... I'm wondering if that's setting something up later?
As befitting a book written in 2016, there's a lot of cynicism here about power and politics.
Mod
No. Interesting observation.
No, that IS interesting with the gender - good pickup. I think it is funny that I personally really did not ever pick up on Marce as a main player without reading it in the thread. Somehow my listening ear just kind of grouped him in with everyone else.
"applied a little pressure to make it clear festivities were to continue" made it kind of clear to me that the purser is male. I found the combination of anonymity of the purser and their fucking somewhat strange. It fitted Kiva who uses others as sex objects just like a nameless dildo.
Mod
No spoiler tags required. Though it would be highly appreciated if you uncheck Add to my Update Feed to avoid accidentally spoiling this for your friends.