Dread Empire's Fall : The Praxis (Mass Market Paperback)

~ Walter Jon Williams (Author) "Of course, following the Great Master's death, I will kill myself..." (more)
Key Phrases: master weaponer, med injector, lords convocate, Home Fleet, Lord Pierre, Midnight Runner (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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.

About the Author

Walter J. Williams has taught martial arts, small-boat sailiing, and English grammar and composition. In order to research peoples and locales for The Rift, he drove the length of the Mississippi from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Hannibal, Missouri. He lives in rural New Mexico with his wife, Kathleen Hedges.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: HarperTorch (August 26, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038082020X
• ISBN-13: 978-0380820207
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #56,327 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superior!, January 7, 2004

By	tranq45 (from inside your closet of nightmares.) - See all my reviews

While there are many excellent space opera stories, this one far exceeds the pack. I frankly am in awe of Williams' work on this story. Williams is one of the relatively few authors in the genre who can effectively and convincingly write intricate, functional, detailed intrigue. Many try, only to bore or disappoint their readers; Williams writes intrigue as if he was living it. This book contains relatively little action, though what action there is, is fast and furious. Mostly it's about setting the stage, yet for all that, it's very enjoyable, and pulls you in. You very quickly begin to identify with, and care about, the principle protagonists; the young officer, Lord Gareth Martinez, and the cadet Lady Caroline Sula.

The basic setup is reasonably standard: It's placed in that hoary old cliche, the last days of glory for a massive stellar empire. What Williams *does* with this tired cliche is what's so impressive. To start, he gives the empire a reasonable excuse for existence. Almost every one of the usual reasons for interstellar empire falls apart under any reasonable examination, and most space operas blithely ignore this as they move on with the action. While that's often just fine, and many excellent genre books have been written without any rational explanation for the existence of empire, Williams actually gives a plausible explanation for such a cumbersome and inefficient social structure: Religion. Old-fashioned, fanatical, unyielding, uncompromising, burn-the-heretics religion. In another break from the 'usual,' the religion isn't human. Humans don't run the empire, they're not even second in charge. Nor, to avoid another cliche, is humanity an oppressed bottom-of-the-heap victim. Instead, humans are respected, powerful, third members of the empire; essential parts of the machinery of empire, but nothing more special than that. Earth itself is merely one planet among many human worlds, and only mildly notable.

The religion in the case is the "Praxis," an uncompromising, vaguely feudal philosophy belonging to the undisputed masters of the empire, the Shaa. The Shaa have bent every species they've ever met to their will, and their will is the Praxis. No level of brutality has been spared in converting the various species to the Parxis, but once a species adapts to the Praxis, they are incorporated into the empire with full rights, and are assumed to be equals to all other species (save, of course for the Shaa... no one is equal to the Shaa). That's the theory, anyway. In practice, so long as the Shaa live, `practice' is pretty close to `theory.' Unfortunately for everyone, the Shaa are dying out. Having renounced immortality, the Shaa have diminished, and now only one remains. When the last Shaa dies, what will become the empire? At least one group has plans for the empire that don't include the status quo...

Williams breaks a number of other stereotypes: There is no pan-galactic integration, but rather the various species keep to their own planets and clusters for the most part, with the notable exception of the civil service and military. Likewise, crews of spaceships tend to be broken down along species lines in the name of efficiency. Communication between species is still an inexact science, though practical means to do so are available. Spaceships follow known physics and orbital mechanics, with strategy and warfare both being dictated by this. Interstellar traffic is via wormholes, with fairly fixed destinations. These facts will become crucial to the plot, and to the course of the empire.

Drop into this environment a skilled and ambitious young lord of a wealthy but very minor family, and the disrespectful last scion of a disgraced family, and the elements of the space opera are complete. What will young Lord Martinez do, when his patronage is lost with the death of the last Shaa? How will young Lady Sula, bereft of patronage from the start and possessed of an irreverent attitude, make her way in this new, unsettled universe? What plots are afoot, and what do they mean to the future of the empire, now that the Shaa are no more? What intrigues will take place, and where will personal ambition and species interest take the empire? *I'm* not telling, but finding out is a GOOD read.

Read it!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good, December 23, 2003

By	Peter Dykhuis (Grandville, MI USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The remarkable thing about Dread Empires Fall is that very little actually happens. There is action and there is intrigue but it is rather understated. This is understandable as this is obviously a first novel in a proposed series. Even without the action I found myself interested and engaged. I found myself caring about the characters and the Empire as a whole. The author even managed to instill in me a sort of Xenophobic Human pride. I found myself being offended that Earth was a backwater planet and humanity nothing more then one more cog in the giant Empire of Species that is the Praxis.

As usual I do not wish to give too much of the plot away so the review lacks some specifics but trust me when I say this is a novel well worth reading and an author well worth watching. The only reason this is four stars versus five is that I don't believe it transcends the level of very good to great. This may change as we see the novel fit into the matrix of the series as it is written.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Science Fiction at its best, January 12, 2004

By	Clayton D. Strand (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

H. Beam Piper was a favorite author of mine, Walter Jon Williams is a favorite today. His "Ambassador of Progress" and "Hardwired" are two of the best Science Fiction novels ever written. In the past few years I have lost my taste for fiction, generally, but the Science Fiction of this author is the exception.

This opening tale of "The Praxis" is some of his finest work; the book was impossible for me to put down, and I searched until I found a copy of "The Sundering", the second novel in the series, and couldn't put it down until I finished it, either.