Scalzi is very reliable in delivering fun, page-turny-but-smart sci-fi and this book in a new series is no exception. The politics are twisty, almost all the characters or manipulative politicians, either because of necessity or nature, and the imminent collapse of an intergalactic empire and all the human reactions to it are presented believably. And yet somehow, the book doesn't _feel_ weighty at all, and you can zoom through it while the characters snark and curse and otherwise are barely affected by some of the pretty weighty things that occur (which include kidnapping, almost torture, multiple assassinations, death, more death, etc). 
 One character in the book which hits my guilty-pleasure button is an awful, ambitious cretin son of a guild family, in a galaxy where guild families have monopolies over essential commercial fields as part of a way to ensure that no colony can live independently from the others. He's one of the few characters engaging in excessive amounts of betrayal, kidnap, torture, assassination, etc., but it's kind of fascinating how by the end of the book, he's confronted with a choice of having to actually do some good if he wants to survive the collapse of the empire. Bad-guys-forced-to-be-good is a favorite trope of mine, and I look forward to seeing how his character evolves.