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Books Read
Aug. 29th, 2019 08:25 am130. The Praxis (Dread Empire's Fall, Book 1), by Walter Jon Williams.
I hold certain authors in such high esteem that I deliberately buy their books to hoard against times of need. I have several unread Iain Banks novels (sadly, none by Iain M. Banks) ready for the collapse of civilization. I've been saving this trilogy against a rainy day.
The Praxis starts, approximately, with the deliberated voluntary death of the last of the (biologically immortal) Shaa, who ruled a multispecies interstellar empire linked by natural wormholes for thousands of years. The motto of the empire was "All that is important is known." Surprisingly, no particular plans for succession were made. Unsurprisingly, the internal wars begin just a few weeks later. Our viewpoint characters are Lieutenant Lord Gareth Martinez, who wishes he lived in a more romantic time and will get that wish, and Lady Caroline Sula, who has a secret worse than the insolvency of her disgraced-yet-still-noble family. They're interesting, but I am repeatedly reminded that none of these societies are particularly worth saving, and their artistocracies are inbred parasites. It's clear that Williams intends all this.
WJW also wrote a great three-book series about foppish and foolish aristocrats amusing themselves: the Drake Maijstral books. The essential difference between the empires is that in those comedies, the Empire really doesn't do much except act as a sort of entertainment for people who live in post-scarcity utopias which don't really need governments at all; in this drama, the empire is actively malevolent.
I hold certain authors in such high esteem that I deliberately buy their books to hoard against times of need. I have several unread Iain Banks novels (sadly, none by Iain M. Banks) ready for the collapse of civilization. I've been saving this trilogy against a rainy day.
The Praxis starts, approximately, with the deliberated voluntary death of the last of the (biologically immortal) Shaa, who ruled a multispecies interstellar empire linked by natural wormholes for thousands of years. The motto of the empire was "All that is important is known." Surprisingly, no particular plans for succession were made. Unsurprisingly, the internal wars begin just a few weeks later. Our viewpoint characters are Lieutenant Lord Gareth Martinez, who wishes he lived in a more romantic time and will get that wish, and Lady Caroline Sula, who has a secret worse than the insolvency of her disgraced-yet-still-noble family. They're interesting, but I am repeatedly reminded that none of these societies are particularly worth saving, and their artistocracies are inbred parasites. It's clear that Williams intends all this.
WJW also wrote a great three-book series about foppish and foolish aristocrats amusing themselves: the Drake Maijstral books. The essential difference between the empires is that in those comedies, the Empire really doesn't do much except act as a sort of entertainment for people who live in post-scarcity utopias which don't really need governments at all; in this drama, the empire is actively malevolent.
