The Praxis
Dread Empire's Fall
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4.0 • 187 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“Space opera the way it ought to be [...] Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.” -- George R.R. Martin
The first book in the completed Dread Empire's Fall trilogy, followed by The Sundering and Conventions of War.
All will must bend to the perfect truth of The Praxis
For millennia, the Shaa have subjugated the universe, forcing the myriad sentient races to bow to their joyless tyranny. But the Shaa will soon be no more. The dread empire is in its rapidly fading twilight, and with its impending fall comes the promise of a new galactic order . . . and bloody chaos.
A young Terran naval officer marked by his lowly birth, Lt. Gareth Martinez is the first to recognize the insidious plot of the Naxid -- the powerful, warlike insectoid society that was enslaved before all others -- to replace the masters’ despotic rule with their own. Barely escaping a swarming surprise attack, Martinez and Caroline Sula, a pilot whose beautiful face conceals a deadly secret, are now the last hope for freedom for every being who ever languished in Shaa chains -- as the interstellar battle begins against a merciless foe whose only perfect truth is annihilation.
Customer Reviews
Memorable for me
I usually can’t remember much of the books I’ve read. This series was memorable for me. Not sure why. Various parts of these books often pop into my head and I can always put them in context. Recommended.
Wonderful space Opera with Militry Sci-fi!
Highly enjoyable. Thrilling and a page turner. GRRM likes it and page by page I could read why.
A solid attempt at a hard SF Space Opera
I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I did enjoy it quite a bit and, especially once things actually started happening it finally became a bit of a page turner.
The setup and world building are intriguing but kind of slow. The alien races are poorly described. I have no clue what most of them look like. And the fascist alien ideology doesn’t really seem to have much impacted the characters interior lives. Society seems simultaneously not at all sexist and totally sexist. It doesn’t make much sense.
The space combat tries to be “realistic” but the idea of doing gravity slingshots at 0.7c is silly and the premise that just having a huge velocity is an intrinsic advantage is silly. And then the writer seems not to understand the implications of these ridiculous velocities (if you can slingshot around at 0.7c it ain’t going to take weeks to cross a star system). So I found the elaborate explanations of space combat and tactics annoying and tiresome rather than engaging. Instead of being hard SF it’s just faux Newtonian window dressing.
Looking ahead, I see that the conclusion of the trilogy is less well regarded than the first two books. Good endings are hard, but it makes me wonder if I want to finish the series.