Well, I finished the series. This book, like the one before it, was a collection of related novellas that worked independently as well as telling a whole story. I really am impressed at his ability to pull that off. The series ended well, in my opinion. Not everything was tied up in a neat bow, but the major antagonist was handled and the future is uncertain. Not a cliffhanger, but certainly a way back in to the universe. I would certainly read more books in this universe, but I can also see where maybe he has mined all he really wants to from this and is moving on (next up for me is going to be the Collapsing Empire, which I am looking forward to, after I read some other people for a while).
I found myself focusing a bit more on craft rather than only story as I read. I found this book to be dialogue heavy, and maybe that is true of his other books too but this one really felt that way to me. Advancing plot and story through dialogue is definitely something that I struggle with. His characters all sort of speak the same way which I have heard is “bad,” but it’s hard to criticize a successful author and I’m not going to. It is something I want to work on in my writing for sure. His characters act in a universe that is consistent and hung together across the 6 books. You sort of know what is allowed and not allowed, and it wasn’t like there was a dues ex machina at the end… all the actors in the final novella were present in earlier ones. I had started to lose track of all the characters but in general it wasn’t an issue for me.
I noticed as well that in a few places, characters found out information that only later was revealed to the reader. No spoilers, but in an important scene, a character says they are going to tell what is to come, and then the scene ends, cutting to a new scene where the other character basically says “yep, that’s really bad,” and we don’t find out what it is for another 20 pages or so. I don’t mind it, and I understand the point of withholding information for dramatic effect. Maybe I was looking for it, or maybe it just stood out, but I noticed it. It didn’t detract from my reading.
Another thing I noticed was that some of the important characters are not fully described on their first meeting, so you assume that General so-and-so is male, and then you find out that a character is female. I wrote about this a few months ago. I think it is interesting, because it really isn’t important what gender a character has in some cases, but it is revealing how my assumptions play into reading a character. That is definitely something I want to be aware of in my life, and in my writing.
I definitely like John Scalzi’s writing. 5-stars no question. The mix of hard SF and space opera, aliens and spaceships, this is exactly what i like to read. The juvenile humor, phrases like “kill the shit of them,” it just seems real to me. But, like I said, I am going to take a break and return to my large pile of unread authors before I return to the Collapsing Empire. Candy for the future.