At this point my feelings about John Scalzi should be clear: when I want a book that will be smart, entertaining, absurdly readable and maybe, occasionally, a little profound, I could do a lot worse.
The Collapsing Empire is in this regard no different from any other. It’s a strong start for a new series (though I do hope for another Colonial Union novel one day), and if the the characters are recognizably Scalzi-esque, they’re not retreads. And one of them is hilariously profane.
The only funny thing about it is this: having read it in ebook form, I have no real sense of how long it is. When he mentioned on his blog that it was (IIRC) his second-longest book, I was pretty startled, because I think I read it in about four hours, with breaks.
Terrifyingly readable, in other words.
