A review by marafov
Bloodline by Claudia Gray

3.25

The politics in this were so frustrating. The Senate is totally incapable of action, with every issue locked in sectionalist gridlock. On the side of Good are those whose idea of the best course of action is to continue the stalemate and ignore any systems that actually need help. On the side of Evil are those who believe it might be helpful to have a functioning executive portion of the government (for a historical comparison we should root for those who supported the Articles of Confederation, an ineffective system that left the federal government toothless and unable to perform its most basic functions while interstate rivalries and trade wars rage unchecked, rather than the Federalists who introduced the Constitution, which has led to mostly stable government for more than 200 years). But don't worry! All those Centrists are actually evil!!! Every single one of them wants the literal Empire back so you don't have to think about the necessary compromise between complete autonomy and a government that functions for all of its citizens. Turn off your brain and root for The Status Quo, which mainly consists of allowing crime syndicates to run rampant over poor star systems. I think the thing that makes it the most annoying are the easy parallels to the Federalist/Anti-federalist issues of early America, which had many of the same problems, and although the Constitutional Convention occurred under some pretty sketchy circumstances and was to some extent a power grab by those with questionable motives, it was necessary for a functioning country. In this the idea of agreeing with the Centrists is considered unthinkable on its face when they are merely calling for some kind of executive power to exist in the government, but then it turns out that somehow all of them are secret neo-fascists so the reader doesn't get confused by thinking that the Other Side might have a few good points.

Other than that though its pretty good 6.5/10