The End Is Near. Bring Snacks.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — The Interdependency Trilogy by John Scalzi

Reviewed by Beau Selby, Carrots With Knives

OVERVIEW:

This is a SPOILER-FREE review of the entire Interdependency trilogy. I just read all three books straight through and don’t particularly feel like pretending they were three separate experiences for the benefit of proper review etiquette.

So we’re doing the whole dang thing at once.

Okay, here we go.

LENGTH:

The entire trilogy clocks in at around 950 pages, which I read over the course of about two days.

This was not intentional.

At some point I apparently stopped reading a series and began participating in an endurance event for people who don’t exercise.

I honestly cannot remember the last time a story pulled me in this completely. Every time I reached the end of one book, I made the entirely reasonable decision to immediately begin another one despite possessing a family, responsibilities, and what medical professionals continue to insist is a biological need for sleep.

Worth it.

PLOT:

In The Interdependency Trilogy, John Scalzi imagines a far-future human empire built entirely around a network of wormhole-like connections known as the Flow. These routes make interstellar travel and trade possible between planets and habitats that, through a truly impressive feat of civilization planning, mostly cannot survive on their own.

This works great.

Until the Flow starts collapsing.

Scientists discover that humanity’s interstellar highway system is disappearing, potentially stranding billions of people in places that cannot sustain themselves. Naturally, everyone receives this information calmly, trusts the scientists, puts aside personal ambition, and immediately begins working together for the common good.

I’m kidding.

Have you met humans?

At the center of all this is Emperox Grayland II, an unexpectedly sharp and unorthodox ruler who inherits both the throne and the apocalypse, surrounded by scheming nobles, pragmatic scientists, political opportunists, and one spectacularly foul-mouthed Kiva Lagos.

I love you so much, Kiva.

What follows is political maneuvering, scientific problem-solving, betrayal, murder, spaceships, institutional stupidity, and rich people responding to an existential crisis by asking the most important question imaginable:

How can I personally benefit from this?

You know. Science fiction.

IF YOU LIKE:

Imagine Game of Thrones and Dune (or Foundation, take your pick) had a baby that inherited all the politics, scheming, massive stakes, and civilization-threatening problems but somehow avoided inheriting its parents’ pathological inability to have fun.

That’s The Interdependency.

There are emperors. Noble houses. Political alliances. Betrayals. Scientists desperately trying to convince powerful people that reality remains real regardless of whether it polls well.

And yet the trilogy never disappears up its own ass.

This is an important quality in a book.

PACING:

The pacing is classic Scalzi: quick, sharp, and dangerously easy to read.

But the characters are what made the trilogy for me.

If you’re familiar with Scalzi’s usual collection of sarcastic, foul-mouthed, highly competent people surrounded by slightly less competent people making their lives unnecessarily difficult, you’ll feel right at home.

The difference is that I think these may be the best characters Scalzi has ever written.

Maybe that’s because three books give them more room to grow. Maybe it’s because the ensemble is particularly strong. Maybe Kiva Lagos swore at me until I agreed.

Whatever happened, they clicked immediately.

And that’s important because political science fiction can very easily become 400 pages of Important People Discussing Important Things in Important Rooms.

Here, I actually wanted to be in the rooms.

THE ENDING (SPOILER FREE):

Excellent.

That’s all you’re getting.

It manages to feel both surprising and inevitable, which is one of those things writers are constantly told endings should accomplish, as though someone forgot to mention that doing it is extremely difficult.

Scalzi does it.

The bastard.

FLAWS:

Yes, there’s exposition.

I’ve seen the complaint. It’s true. Scalzi occasionally explains something that another writer might dramatize or leave the reader to infer.

And yet…

I didn’t care.

Because the narration is so closely tied to the personalities of the point-of-view characters, most of the exposition doesn’t feel like the author has wheeled a whiteboard into the room and announced that class is now in session. It feels like these particular people explaining their particular world in exactly the way you’d expect them to.

Could some of it have been trimmed?

Probably.

Did I read approximately 950 pages in two days?

Also yes.

The prosecution rests.

SPOILER-FREE VERDICT:

Here’s the weird part.

I’m not sure I’d give any individual book in The Interdependency five stars.

I’m giving the trilogy five stars.

The whole is simply better than the sum of its parts. Things that seem merely good in one volume become better because of what happens later. Characters accumulate history. Political decisions gain consequences. Relationships deepen. Setup pays off. By the end, I wasn’t thinking about three books anymore. I was thinking about one story.

And I loved that story.

This is easily my favorite Scalzi work, even more than Old Man’s War. The world-building is tight, the dialogue is razor sharp, the characters are fantastic, and the humor never gets in the way of the heart or the stakes.

It’s political space opera that remembers something surprisingly easy for science fiction to forget:

Reading is supposed to be fun.

Smart. Funny. Fast-moving. Occasionally filthy. Full of wonderfully terrible people making wonderfully terrible decisions while civilization collapses around them.

Five stars.

Now please excuse me while I attempt to reestablish contact with my family. My daughter probably thinks I went out for milk. Daddy's coming home, sweetheart. It was Scalzi’s fault.