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Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis
So it's a damn, damn shame that DEF:tP feels like it's written by Weber, because I really like Walter Jon Williams. I liked his cyberpunkish Hardwired and Voice of the Whirlwind. I liked his fantasy City on Fire and Metropolitan. I really liked his story of how a culture may select Gods to manage the most dangerous of technologies (Aristoi), and I thought his comedies (The Crown Jewels, Rock of Ages, and House of Shards) were, well, just damn funny.
I don't know what happened here, other than maybe Williams has Weber's arm up his ass -- that's the only explanation I can come up for this book.
The background, at least, is somewhat interesting: The Shaa, an alien race, have subjugated everyone around them for thousands of years to the point where nobody even thinks of the concept of rebellion -- everyone's been assimilated into the Shaa empire. This includes the Terrans (whose process of subjugation is the cause of the naming of the battleships Bombardment of Los Angeles, Bombardment of Delhi, Bombardment of Buenos Aires, and a few others) and the Naxid, who were the first race to be subjugated by the Shaa. The Naxid, by the way, are insectile (or insectoid, as the book prefers to call them). As everyone knows, insectile creatures are inherently evil. You'll be happy to know that one of the other races, the Torminels, is a race of nocturnals hunters, with "a plump and furry body." As is appropriate for teddy bears, the Torminels appear to be relatively harmless but when pushed are discovered to be ferocious and honorable fighters. Gotta love the Ewoks!
Anyway, back to the story: Everyone's living in harmony. Unfortunately, the Shaa, who are functionally immortal, have been slowly suiciding because, well, they're bored, and finally the last Shaa kills himself. Will the perfect order his race forced the universe into remain unchanged as he wished? Don't count on it.
Remember the Naxid? They're insectile (sorry, insectoid), and so do the only thing that an insectile (or insectoid) race is allowed in sci-fi books: They try to take over. All the other races band together to try to beat them. Apparently, Dread Empire's Fall will be the saga of that war. Thousands will fight, and millions will die. No one knows who will live and who will die. Anyone's life could be snuffed out at the next moment.
Well, as long as we define "anyone" to be "not Gareth Martinez or Caroline Sula." See, Gareth Martinez (who, by the way, is tall and considered handsome by some, very intelligent, and is cursed by a provincial accent and a lowly birth that means he just gets no respect) is one of our two protagonists. And Caroline Sula, described as "pale, nearly translucent skin, emerald-green eyes, white-gold hair worn collar-length ... Martinez threw the picture into 3D and rotated it, and Sula didn't have a single bad angle" is also very, very smart. Caroline, by the way, has a nasty little secret that you'll be very, very surprised to have revealed to you if you've been recently lobotomized and consequently not figured it out fairly early in the book.
Anyway, The Praxis covers the death of the last Shaa (whose name is Anticipation of Victory, by the way. Normally referred to by everyone as Vic, I'm sure, unless his mother was very angry at which point I'm sure it was "Anticipation of Victory you clean your room RIGHT NOW!") and the beginning of the take-over attempt by the Naxid. You'll be delighted to know that Martinez figures out what they're up to, but nobody listens to him, so he only manages to save one ship. And then, against overwhelming odds, manages to escape. You'll be delighted to find out that our heroine, Caroline Sula, when put in her own precarious position (not to blow the plot, but it involves overwhelming odds against her and almost certain death) manages to do PHENOMENALLY well. Really, she becomes quite the hero. No, wait, why is everyone laughing?
Gareth and Caroline, by the way, hook up very briefly but due to Caroline's little secret not much comes of it and she runs away to ignore him for approximately 400 pages until, three pages before the ending of the book, she sends him a note that basically says "Wow, you and I are both the heroes of this saga and so are destined to be incredibly lucky. Wanna hook up?" No, I'm not really embellishing this much.
The aforementioned 400 pages pass by relatively quickly (how quickly? I bought the book approximately ten hours ago, and have spent much of the intervening time having dinner with my family, downloading p^Hdrivers from the net, and writing this minireview). They are filled with one-dimensional characterizations (see this good-for-nothing non-com? Don't worry about him -- he'll be good-for-nothing until the last drop. This tough but incredibly smart retired weapons chief? Good guy. You can trust him not to screw up. Ever. This aristocracy Captain who likes soccer more than having a functional warship? Go ahead and write him off) and questionable strategic thinking.
Williams does throw some interesting twists into the DEF universe. The Shaa empire is ruled by the laws of The Praxis, the major religion everyone's bought into. The Praxis forbids most of the more interesting uses of technology -- bioengineering is forbidden, as is AI. FTL weapons are non-existent and FTL travel is done only through wormholes. This means that when dealing with intrasolar warfare, the main weapons are missiles. However, because missiles can't be controlled by AI, and because communication can't be FTL, the further away the missiles are from you (and the closer to the enemy), the less able you are to control them. Hence, missiles are shepherded by pinnaces, small one-person ships. Typically, a pinnace controls a volley of missiles and flies with them toward the enemy. If the pinnace pilot is very lucky and very good, they even survive, though most people don't think of this much as the last conflict the Shaa empire had (before this upcoming rebellion) was 3400 hundred years ago and lasted six days. Aside from wormhole travel, all other tech is decidedly hard sci-fi -- lasers and missiles, and both explosive and propulsion power is provided by simple anti-matter. Acceleration couches are an important fixture on ships. In fact, acceleration plays a pretty important role in most of the battles (and Williams makes one of the races both supreme tacticians and incapable of anything more than 2G. OK, that's different).
Really, though, there's nothing there to redeem the one-dimensional characters, the simplistic prose, the improbable odds our heroes manage to slog through with great distinction, and the waste of your time. If you like Weber's Harrington series, you probably want to check it out. If you're the sort of Walter Jon Williams fan who simply has to read everything he writes, your decision will be clear. As to the rest of you ... stay away.
In case you're interested, Williams has a homepage.
You can purchase Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I couldn't agree more about the Honor Harrington series. Its absolutely terrible. Sci Fi books commonly have problems with depth of characters but at least in most books there is some. Stephen Donaldson's Gap series is an example of how SciFi should be (although I generally prefer the Fantasy for this reason). Why do people like the Harrington series?
Remember the Naxid? They're insectile (sorry, insectoid), and so do the only thing that an insectile (or insectoid) race is allowed in sci-fi books: They try to take over. All the other races band together to try to beat them.
The Khepri in China Mieville's stellar near-sf steampunk fantasy Perdido Street Station do not try to take over. It's an amazing book. Coincidence? I think not.;)
Of course, there is a different nasty insectoid race in the even better same-universe The Scar, but they gave up on the take-overing millenia before the book.
I highly recommend China Mieville's writings.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
I thought the first few Harrington books were alright- the first 3 or 4. Then it got really weak...
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
David Weber is the Jackie Collins of sci-fi.
I will admit to loking his starfire series, though.
I'm glad someone else out there hates Honour Harrington as much as I do. Whenever I find books as bas as that never ending series, I always go back to the Falkenberg universe and sigh as I read about characters who have some motivation and depth.
On that note, who wants to start a petition to get Jerry to take a pause from writing Janissaires novels and get back to a book or two about the time between the Seccesion wars and the 2nd Empire?
No story on bad Sci-Fi is complete without mention the Second Foundation trilogy. I got stuck reading all 3 in a similar situation to the poster. I haven't read Weber's books, but I'm willing to bet heavily that they're a lot better than than Brin, Bedford and Bear.
But that is a great review. Shitty sci fi books deserve to get pummeled imo, especially from authors who are known to do better. Speaking of which, i would like this guy to rip a non sci fi but equally deserving book apart (ahem "Rainbow Six"?). As someone who enjoys fiction, authors who *are capable of writing good fiction* who put out a bunch of stagnant predictable characters deserve scorn (*cough* Lucky Starr).
I have read the first six Honor Harrington books and I find the books interesting and quite enjoyable. The plots are not the same. I also enjoyed Weber's The Apocalypse Troll. (I find mentioning the Troll book very appropriate to this little review).
It would seem that the reviewer, who did not enjoy the books, yet read more than one. And the reviewer, who could navigate across country, yet could not find a single book seller along the way to find more appropriate reading, should seek help.
What I found interesting was the entire system of government that Weber sets up. On the original planet, he creates a parlimentry democracy with power balanced between The Queen, The House of Lords (aristocrats desecneded from the original settlers), and The House of Commons(elected representatives of the people). (Can you say British Parlimentry with a twist?) On a more feudal planet Honor Harrington is one of 72 Steadholders (a feudal lord with the power of life and death). Thier evil(TM) enemies are the republicans, who have a quasi-communist society that borrows names shamelessly from revolutionary france. Despite this it all blends together and seems workable.
I find the idea that a futuristic society could consist of something other than a Planetary Council/Senate/clone of modern american system very interesting. And I do feel you're being just a touch unfair with the one-dimensional concept, I actaully enjoyed reading all of them.
I do and that's why reviews like this are great to have. I just keep reading, hoping something will happen to redeam it. Once in a while, I'm rewarded, and I'm usually just reading myself to sleap anyway. I would never have started reading the Weber book I just finished had I read this review first. The review will, however, save me the pain of reading another Weber book or this particular Willson book. His review hit Weber on the head, so I trust the reviewer's opinion of this book by Willson. There's better stuff to read.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He's entitled to his own opinion of course, and can present it with as much vitriol as he likes. What I personally object to is where he tries to force his opinion on others. The whole sentence:
Needless to say, I do not like David Weber, nor do I like the Honor Harrington books. I am deeply distrustful of anyone who does.
In other words, my opinion is right, and if you disagree with me, there must be something wrong with you.
That's where CrankyFool crossed the line from reviewing to preaching. In my opinion, of course.
For those not familiar with the books, the story revolves around one Mister Thomas Covenant, author and husband in contemporary America. He seems to have everything one could ask for, a loving wife, a newborn son, and a best selling novel. However, things start to unravel as success is not everything it's cracked up to be. His wife takes his son for an extended visit to see the relatives and Covenant begins on his second book. His wife returns to see that he has not taken care of himself, and he has appeared to have a gangrenous sore on his hand. A trip to the doctor verifies the wound as the first stage of leprosy -- at which point his life comes crashing down around him.
After spending months in a leprosarium, Covenant returns to his little town to discover he is an outcast. His neighbors pay all his bills, deliver groceries to his doot, etc. Out of sheer will to surive Covenant walks to town to pay his telephone bill, and on the return trip sees a strangely dressed beggar. Covenant nearly gives him his wedding ring out of disgust, but is refused, and goes on about his business. Just as he is crossing the street he hears sirens and is hit by a patrol car.
He wakes up, not in the hospital, but in a cave where he meets the the Cavewight Drool Rockworm who has summoned him from his world with the Staff of Law. Covenant, of course, believes he is hallucinating... and the story goes on from there.
In Lord Foul's Bane, and the other two in the trilogy The Illearth War and The Power That Preserves, tell of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever in this trials throughout The Land, a fantasy world populated by wights and giants and men. Covenant is called 'unbeliever' because he refuses to accept what he sees at face value -- the strange world around him -- and goes slightly mad at the prospect of being magically healed of an incurable disease. He bears a weapon of great power, his wedding ring of white gold, something altogether unlike anything else in the Land, which is part of its power. Like the Lord of the Rings often the story centers around the ring of white gold and there is an evil lord seeking it and to destroy the Land. That is where the similarity ends, however, and much in this novel is, well, novel.
I disagree that the books are badly written. On the contrary, Butane Bob's hatred of the books and the main character are not by chance but by design. Thomas Covenant is, without a doubt, the most un-heroic and dislikeable character in fantasy fiction. He would be pitiable if he weren't such an ass. But as I said, it is not because the books are poorly written or because the author's concept is weak. No, these books are remarkable and intriguing, yet uncomfortable to read. Finishing them requires an effort of will, not unlike the effor of will the main character exerts to maintain his sanity. If you, dear reader, pick up these books do not expect a light and fluffy reading experience filled with tales of heroic deeds and comic relief. No, this is a story of woe, the protagonist is an anti-hero, alternatively pitiable and despicable, and his magical ring remains unscrutable, beyond the ken of the character in question.
Though it is difficult for me to say I enjoyed reading these books, I can honestly say that I am not unmoved by the story. I feel I have accomplished something by making it through to the other side but unsure that I am the same. One of the qualities of Great Books is that the reader is moved. In some stories, one is moved in faith such as in the Chronicles of Narnia, or moved to love and modesty such as the Lord of the Rings, or even to despair such as from The Brothers Karamazov. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are not comfortable books. After reading them you will not feel happy, or content, or with peace of mind. But you will feel. The sensation of negative enormity is great in this book, yet not without a kernel of hope. Not without a small satisfaction after a great loss. A silver lining this cloud has, if you can weather the storm.
Cheers.
I'm a professional book reviewer myself and I'd never start a review like that but in this case I have to admit that it kept me reading it. It certainly was different :-)
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
I used to be a pretty big Walter Jon Williams fan. I really enjoyed Hardwired, Voice of the Whilwind, and (to some extent) Angel Station. I also enjoyed The Crown Jewels and The House of Shards. All of the above mentioned book were released between 1987 and 1989 (i.e. the heyday of CyberPunk.)
:)
As far as the SciFi goes, I felt they were pretty good books. Maybe not classics, but certainly very good. Williams presented some interesting variations on the CyberPunk theme and I felt his books compared favorably to other stuff being released at the time. However, starting with Days of Atonement (or maybe Aristoi) I felt that his "vision" started going downhill.
At first I thought, maybe I just resented his moving away from CyberPunk. His first couple books could be loosely classified as CyberPunk, however, few of his books have any sort of consistent "world" or "environment". It's pretty clear that WJW like to play around and invent different "world" for almost every book.
But then I realized that the different "worlds" had started taking precedence over the "characters". The characters started becoming imminently forgettable, they were just there to populate this new world he'd invented. The biggest problem is that some of the worlds are interesting (Hardwired, Voice of the Whilwind,) and some are not (Metropolitan, City on Fire).
I actually felt that DEF:tP is better than some of his more recent attempts. However, there were still times I was tempted to just put it down and forget it...
The reviewer doesn't trust me at all. I'm hooked on Honor Harrington right now. :) I also read Weber's Mutineer's Moon and couldn't put it down. I don't know where the reviewer concluded that the main characters are flawless two dimensional characters. Honor's flaws come out a lot. She has a low self-esteem because she thinks she's not pretty (granted, this is normal for a woman). She's also pretty smart, but not so good with math. She has a quick temper that she struggles to keep under control (she loses it a few times here and there and it's always entertaining). She is a good leader and her people love her, but she makes mistakes. I'm on her side in The Honor of the Queen. It's entirely her fault that Admiral Corvosieur bit the big one (It happens in the first third of the book, so this isn't a spoiler), and I liked that guy! The thorough discussion of sexism in that book was good, although I do think he dropped the ball a little bit on it. The thing you can't tell about him, though, and I like it, is "who is he going to kill next?". In Basilish Station he spent most of the book delving deeply into all of the top characters (mostly the officers, since the main theme was leadership), then he kills over half of them! He wasn't nearly as bloodthirsty in the second book, though, I noticed.
Anyway, his characters may be a tad on the stereotypical side, but they're not two dimensional. Sure, they always pull through in the end. Characters that don't are either the antagonists, or the book is referred to under a very specific genre (I forget what it's called, but it's the one with the anti-heros, where the bad guys usually win or they end in draws or whatever).
Hell, even Corwin pulled through in the end for the sake of Amber. At least Weber didn't create the Heinlein SuperMommy. Talk about two dimensional....
I also think the GPs comment about Weber and David Drake was totally off the mark. Heh. The only writing David Drake ever got right was when he was collaborating with Eric Flint. :)
Like what I said? You might like my music
Because so very much of sci-fi is excrable
I would postulate that 90% of all writing is crap. Several conclusions your comments and this postulate.
(1) You read a lot of science fiction and realize that 90% of it is crap
(2) You don't read a representative sample of anything else (Otherwise, you'd know that 90% of everything is crap and that science fiction is no different)
(3) From (2), it follows that EITHER (a) You don't don't read much except for science fiction, OR (b) You read a lot that's not science fiction, but only what others recommend (and people don't recommend crap)
From other statements you make, I infer that (3)(a) is not true; thus (3)(b) must be the case. Outside of science fiction, you only read what's recommended to you - from best seller lists, Oprah, your boss ("Who Move My Cheese?"), all your friends, etc.
My recommendation, therefore, is that you become a literary adventurer. Exercise some independence - don't just read what everyone else is reading! Go out there and mine the stacks for good books. Tell other people about the arcane gems you find - "She can't write a good protagonist to save her life, but her minor characters make it all worthwhile." "The plot sucks, but the setting blows away everything else written in the 20th century." "Why isn't everyone reading this guy? He's AWESOME!"
Have fun. Oh, and quit judging the folks over in the romance section. 90% of it may be crap, but there are some GREAT authors writing trashy romance novels.
I started this series, and finished it out of sheer "I want to say that I've managed to get through the whole thing".
It does have some things that I like I think that Covenant (the main character) is a bit over-the-top when it comes to self-loathing, but despite that, it's interesting to see a series that focuses so much on despair. The magic is interesting -- a ring that can be phenomenally powerful, but only occasionally, and tends not to be there when one would like.
That being said, the read is also very tedious. I'd even call it the most tedious fantasy series I've ever read, and I tend to like fantasies that one reads slowly through (Paula Volsky is a hellofa writer). The books are quite similar to each other and start to blur together. At some point, you get tired of the sheer overload of "pure and clean" and "dark and twisted" and "appears clean, but is actually corrupted" imagery. At six books, each book having about a zillion pages and spending a huge portion of its time in this kind of imagery, it doesn't take a short attention span to start to wonder whether there's anything else.
Second, while the darkness of the series is nice for a change, I at least occasionally like to see good things happen. Real life at its worst just isn't anything like this. Covenant just loses, loses more, appears to gain and then the reader realizes that he actually lost. Just when you think things can't get worse, they do. All through the series.
Third, Covenant is a caricature. The reader cannot identify with him. I like my main characters to be understandable -- something where I have a vague idea why and how they operate. Covenant is just too much.
I agree with one respondent that you're too harsh on Covenant for the rape of the teenage girl. There were some awfully extenuating circumstances...and most of the rest of the series deals with Covenant's self-loathing for what he's done and what follows.
If Donaldson sped up his books -- a lot -- and varied his theme from purity/corruption over the *huge* number of pages in the series, I think that there might really be something there.
May we never see th
In addition to the oft-pimped Baen Free Library, you can also find their CD-ROMs included in several of their hardcovers which contain such gems as the entire Honor Harrington series. Or, if John Ringo's more your style, there's another CD with the entire Legacy of the Aldenata series available. Baen allows free distribution of these CDs, so long as no money is charged. I find it convenient to keep them on my webserver.
Lots of other good books not available on the BFL can also be found on the CDs, incidentally. It's a horribly effective marketing scheme. The BFL has cost me close to $300 over the last two years in books I would not have otherwise purchased.
Comparing Dread Empire's Fall (DEF) to the execrable Honor Harrington series is a low blow indeed. But I think maybe the reviewer was in a bad mood when he read this book--he seems to have missed a lot of the subtleties. Or perhaps he should read more slowly.
Walter Jon Williams is something of a chameleon as an author. In fact, he seems to have challenged himself to write each of his books in a different style. If you were to pick up a copy of Hardwired, Aristoi, and Day of Atonement with the covers ripped off, I don't think you'd guess that all three books were written by the same author. Not only are Williams' books usually set in different universes, but his writing style changes to match the setting.
DEF is Williams doing High Space Opera. He uses all the familiar tropes, and cliches, and he does it quite consciously. Indeed, on one level this is a parody of the genre. Doesn't it strike you as slightly funny that the captain of a mighty space dreadnought should devote its entire resources to producing a winning football team? That the Evil Insectoid Aliens (actually, I thought they were kinda like squids--but hey, anything with more than 2 arms is equivalent to an insectoid) pull off their coup de main by holding a sports festival and then rounding up the participants? --It had me ROFL.
And there are surprises hidden underneath the well-worn space opera trappings. The plot isn't as simple as the reviewer seems to think. Yes, you should have a good idea by mid-book that Sula is a shady Lady. But this is precisely what I thought was so clever about Williams' portrayal of this character: you think you know what Sula did (I'm going to try to stay away from spoilers)...but the full impact of it doesn't hit you until Williams actually takes you to the scene of the crime (in a flashback scene). At least, that was the effect of the narrative on me: I felt very different about Sula at the end of the book than I did three fourths of the way through. Williams gives you an intellectual understanding of Lady Sula early on, but it is only when you witness the act and then understand her motivation for fighting like a demon during the space battle that you feel the emotional impact. And frankly, it sent shivers down my spine. Lady Sula is scary!
At the end, Our Hero receives a little note from Sula. It says something like, "I'm coming to meet you now. We are destined to be together, and we are going to make an irresistible team". If you have read the book, what did you feel when you read that note? I felt spooky...and I felt pity for Our Hero. Compared to her, he's a naif. He's hamburger to her meat-grinder.
I'm dying to read the follow-on books not because I want to see if the Good Guys defeat the Evil Insectoid Aliens (come on!), but whether Our Hero survives Lady Sula.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Mike (from Moon) and Jane (Ender series) are the same to you? What, are those the only books you've read where there was some sort of human-like AI character that had a part? Very different characters in so many ways.
If you couldn't figure out why everyone hated Ender, then you didn't read too much. The Buggers were not just space monsters. What books did you read exactly? There are many, many pages where the whole not-just-some-one-dimensional-space-monster thing is gone into and in some depth.
I read the damn things, you pompous jerk. Just because I din't like it doesn't mean I didn't understand it.
Michelle and Jane are VERY similar. Their spontaneous awakening, etc. If you like it so much, read Harsh Mistress and read it just after, you'll notice the similarities.
And I didn't need to "figure out" why everyone hates Ender, they go on and on and on about it in the book. At great lenght.
Apparently, if you repeat something that doesn't make sense often enough people will accept it.
I don't know about you, but if someone destroyed the only other sentient race humanity has ever known in 3000 years of relativistic light-speed travel, over a misunderstanding, I'd be pissed to. Maybe not to the extent everyone hated Ender, but masses of people are dumb, and they didn't have anywhere near the whole story...
He was a KID who was FORCED to destroy them out of SELF DEFENSE.
So, after the fact, it turns out that the space monsters that WERE coming to perform xenocide on us were doing it because they misunderstood us? Boohoofuckinghoo. How many billions would they have slaughtered in search of our psychic-queens before they would have understood the concept of idividuality? No one ever considered that?
What was that other book he wrote..blue eyed guy with psychic powers on a backwater planet having a hick kid write a book about his life?
There was a planet full of SPOILER WARNING!!! INEFFECTIVE SPOILER WARNING blue-eyed supermen (ah HEM!) that upon being told that they are hypocrites for denying others their pain while keeping their FLING THEIR PLANET INTO THE SUN! Right away!
"Hey, you're a bunch of hyppocrites!"
*flings planet in the sun*.
Maybe those behaviours make sense to mormons, but I find them completely insane. He establishes these civilisation-wide concensus that basically pop up over night in an extreme paradigm shift...I don't buy it.
You can't take the sky from me...