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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.
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