The Last Emperox

[psocoptera]

The Last Emperox, John Scalzi. Conclusion of the Collapsing Empire trilogy. Another fast read without a huge amount of substance. I ultimately found these a little glib for the subject matter - Greg Egan's Perihelion Summer is a much more powerful book about civilizational collapse, and has turned out to be a book I find myself thinking about all the time - but on the other hand it's very genre-normal for space opera to be glib about giant catastrophes, and Scalzi delivers some funny moments and even a little poignancy, and, hey. Sometimes it's just nice to read something that isn't ever either uncomfortable or boring. (And I truly have a lot of respect for Scalzi's skill as a writer that he can deliver that consistently.)

Comments

[ruthling]

I read only the first one of that series, and I really didn't like it. It was fun in a lot of places, and he can move pieces around a board deftly, but I found it preachy (to the choir) and there was a scene of, iirc, sexual assault played for laughs because the perpetrator was a woman (am i misremembering this? it's possible). Never read the others.

[psocoptera]

Hm, I don't recall about the sexual assault scene - I read the first one a few years ago and I don't remember many details. I definitely agree that if you didn't like the first one there's no point in reading the other two, since they're just going to be more of it.