Redheaded Reviews: The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi

"The Interdependency with it's religious and social ethos of interconnectedness combined with a guild-centered, monopolistic economy, they'd created possibly the most ridiculously complex method of ensuring the formal caste system of nobles intertwined with a merchant class, and common workers underneath, complicated proceeding even further. And yet it worked. It worked because on a social level, apparently enough people wanted it to, and because at the heart of it, billions of humans living in fragile habitats prone to mechanical and environmental breakdowns and degradation, and with limited natural resources, were better off relying on each other than trying to go it alone. Even without the Interdependency being interdependent was the best way for humanity to survive." (The Collapsing Empire p 276) At the head of the whole thing is the emperox who had the largest guild, was the head of the church, and had a seat on parliament.

River-like things called Flows are located between habitats with one Flow going in and one going out to a particular habitat. The Hub is the only one that has Flows going to nearly all habitats. The End is the only habitat that you can grow things on in the ground. The Flow leading from the End to the Hub has collapsed. It is the first but it won't be the last to do so. The emperox's scientist from the End Lord Marce is studying this problem and what can be done while the Emperox Grayland II is dealing with the church, the parliament, and the guilds by saying she has had visions just like the first Emperox Rachela I did. She is trying to get her kingdom to accept the collapse of the Flow system that will leave the habitats isolated and the Interdependency no more.

Meanwhile, her two Wu cousins are both working to overthrow her and put themselves on the throne. One wants to work with the House of Nohamapetan through the Countess and her daughter Nadashe who is in prison for treason and trying to murder the emperox and for murdering her own brother the man who was in contention to be the emperox's consort. Jasin Wu tries to have her murdered in prison while Deran saves her life.

Countess Nohamapetan does not have control of her House finances, Lady Kiva of Legos does. I love Lady Kiva. She's such a cool bitch and a half. She knows what she wants and goes after it, but it you cross her you better think about moving to another planetary code before she can find you and mess you up. She becomes a close ally to the emperox and helps her with the work she needs to get done, especially against the Nohampetan.

Lord Marce who first figured out there were problems with the Flow and is the scientist trying to figure out the problems of the Flow and Emperox Grayland II become closer emotionally and she wants them to become closer physically but how to go about it? It's pretty funny how she does. This book is quirky and funny in its own way. The characters are great. Nadashe is cunning and ruthless and out to win the crown for herself in the way she wants to as soon as she can get out of this prison situation which she sees as a temporary setback. Scalzi in this series writes very strong female characters. I applaud him for this. Not that there aren't strong male characters in this novel. Lord Marce is one as is Lord Assan a member of the executive committee of the Interdependency that consisted of members of the guild, parliament, and the head of the church. Lord Assan plotted cross-purposes with the Wus trying to decide which one to back. He is a real asshole, which he would tell you himself. This is a stellar book and I would give it more than five stars if I could, but since my meter only goes to five I'll have to settle for giving it a strong five stars out of five.

Quotes

The now-dead-and-somewhat-smeary Amit Nohamapetan’s office was room was befitted the head of his family’s operations in the Hub system, tastefully appointed in the manner that strongly implied it was furnished entirely through the preferences of a hired interior decorator rather than Amit’s own inclinations, if he had any, which he probably hadn’t, and landed with all the modern technological assistants and innovations that any modern executive could want or need. “All except for a ‘Hey your fucking sister is planning to shove a shuttle up your ass’ alert,” Kiva thought to herself. Which to be fair was admittedly a specialized item.

-John Scalzi (The Consuming Fire p 70)

Kiva considered that she might be developing a thing for Fundapeldo, which on the one hand was a very not-Kiva thing to do, but on the other hand who gave a fuck if it was “not-Kiva”, because she wasn’t some fucking fictional character destined to do whatever some goddamn hack wanted her to do.