2003 space opera, first book of Dread Empire's Fall. The Shaa
subjugated the galaxy, binding all the races they met – including
humanity – under their universal philosophy, the Praxis. But ten
thousand years later, the last Shaa has chosen to die.
I think fans of space action will hate this book: it starts off
very slowly, and the explodey spaceships don't come in until around
two-thirds of the way through. It's much more about the people and the
world.
Gareth Martinez is a noble from a provincial world. He's dependent on
patronage to get ahead in his Fleet career, like everyone else, but
his patron has chosen to kill himself after the last Shaa ends its
life.
Caroline Sula is a naval cadet from a family whose heads were
executed, similarly lacking in patrons; but with Martinez' remote help
she manages to pull off a daring space rescue, which generates a small
amount of useful publicity for them both. One downside is that Sula
clearly has a Dark Secret in her back-story; while the reader's meant
to wonder what it is, it's so thoroughly telegraphed that by the time
it was formally revealed I had got bored with waiting for it.
The world is one in which oppressive and explicitly static rule has
been the standard for so long that everyone has grown up knowing that
that's the way things must be. It's sometimes a little archaic (some
of Sula's childhood flashbacks seem remarkably twentieth-century, with
cars, restaurants, divorces, etc.), but like the bans on thinking
machines, nanotech, and other non-space-operatic technology, these may
well be deliberate archaisms.
The physics doesn't really work. Williams appears to get confused
between acceleration and velocity, and has ships increasing their
speed within a single star system by accelerating, doing a "slingshot"
round a planet, then continuing to build their speed by accelerating
back across the system again – which really doesn't work when you're
doing an appreciable percentage of lightspeed, as you flash past the
planet too fast for it to have a noticeable effect on your course. On
the other hand, the interstellar wormholes make rather more sense,
with interesting tweaks to the standard jump-gate setup; and the
actual battles are influenced rather more by doctrinal rigidity in a
fleet that hasn't fought a war in over three millennia than by what's
physically possible. The battles are still a weak spot, but their
effect on the characters is still more important than the actual
explodey spaceships.
The book cuts off pretty abruptly, with no major points resolved. I
plan to read more. Followed by The Sundering.
Recommended by vatine.
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