Book 1 of the The Interdependency series
I've been looking for a space opera series I could get into but I am often turned away from the work involved in slogging through mountains of exposition many authors fall into to set up their worlds. So I get bored, put the book down and never return to it.
Not so with John Scalzi. This first book starts off with a bang - a mutiny with some fantastic sardonic wit and self-deprecation. From the first page we are dealing with people betraying trusts and trying to get ahead, like all people since the beginning of people. This ground the story to a manageable scale and introduced The Flow, which is a naturally occurring river in space that humans have learned to use to travel between the stars.
From this an economy, dynasties and a religion were formed to give order to society. But there is a problem - The Flow changes from time to time and this can have devastating consequences to the systems newly cut off from interstellar travel. This time the change is going to be much, much bigger.
What Scalzi does best is weave exposition into the narrative, never expanding the world for pages on end but as the plot develops. And there is a lot going on here, there are ship captains and scientists, merchant guilds that compete amongst each other and try to exert political influence with the Emperox who's own life is an interesting one.
I don't know if it was intended but the changes in The Flow are very much like Climate Change today. Especially in the inertia encountered with the establishment; nobody wants to believe it and nobody wants to do anything about it until it happens. Sound familiar?
I very much enjoyed the book and immediately went out and picked up book 2.
