Book: John Scalzi's "The Collapsing Empire"

My last read of 2018 is another John Scalzi book.  It is my fourth Scalzi book of the year and I think I have concluded that my Scalzi Limit is three.  Scalzi's "The Collapsing Empire" starts a new series in a new world with new physics, politics, and intrigues all populated with the same old characters from his other books.  While I was reading this book I thought any of these characters could have been lifted right out of the Old Man's War series.

The book is about an empire dominated by an emperor (an Emperox), a religion, and monopolistic trade guilds.  The 'Flow' which allows interstellar travel is discovered to be collapsing which would result in the end of the empire and the near extinction of the human race.  All of this has so much potential but as I read it I just couldn't get into it.

I wonder if I'm being to harsh and that I may not be in the right mental space to appreciate this book.  There is a second book to the series out but I think I will wait (unless I run out of books to read) a bit before I dive back into Scalzi's works.

I gave this book three stars out of five on Goodreads which may be too harsh but it is how I felt as I read this book.