Books.

[dsrtao]

Finished: _Conventions of War_ (Book three of Dread Empire's Fall), by Walter Jon Williams.

To be fair, I would read Williams' grocery lists if he put them in novel form. This is the conclusion of a trilogy, and neatly wraps up most of the loose ends that it should. The first installment featured some physics blunders; the second installment suffered from some middle-novel-of-a-trilogy issues; this volume does the author full credit.

Space opera, character-based, with the unusual early twist that the Galactic Empire is *not* ruled by humans, but rather the Shaa; singularity issues are sidestepped through the tradition of the Praxis, which is a philosophy somewhat like Confucianism but not as progressive. A rigid aristocratic class division and a wormhole network tie the whole thing together.

Has anyone written a story in which the young dashing inventor of new military tactics puts them into effect against the orders of his superiors... and is completely crushed as a result?

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I think there's an example of it somewhere in Lawrence Watt-Evans' anti-heroic epic, the Worlds of Shadow trilogy. He reverses nearly every fantasy stereotype in it, which makes it an interesting conceit but difficult to read emotionally.

I have them somewhere, if you're interesting; they sit on the cross between fantasy and sci-fi, which in this case really makes it fantasy.