The Praxis: Dread Empire's Fall

By Walter Jon Williams

“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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061809705

Walter Jon Williams

 Walter Jon Williams is a New York Times bestselling author who has been nominated repeatedly for every major sci-fi award, including Hugo and Nebula Awards nominations for his novel City on Fire. He is the author of Hardwired, Aristoi, Implied Spaces, and Quillifer. Williams lives near Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, Kathleen Hedges.

Book preview

Reviews for The Praxis

[conalo-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Praxis is the 1st novel in the Dread Empire series and details the end of the Shaa reign and the changeover to rule of previous conquered races (Humans included). One of the previous conquered races (the Naxid) attempt to co-opt rule of the remaining races and it is up to our main characters to foil this attempt. So starts the the wide ranging story with further details of this struggle still to be revealed in the next books in the series. The first book delves into how the two main characters became the people they are today along with the current events happening as the Naxid try to take control.

4 stars for an interesting read even if I am not yet really liking the main characters. Recommended for anyone who enjoys the space opera genre.

[tadad_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A slow start to a series, mostly just character introduction and setting the background for the coming conflict. Still, other reviews had warned that this was the case and it had the potential to be the start of some fun, if pretty average, space opera/military SF.The story revolves around two protagonists: Gareth and Sula. I found Gareth slightly interesting in a Hornblower-esque way (i.e., the unusually competent military officer amidst those less so)...but the speed of his promotions and honors did strain credulity slightly. Sula was a little more problematic as I trouble seeing her backstory, as it was gradually revealed, leading to the personality she was displaying in the present.

[Daniela Tahitoe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was sick as a dog when I started reading this and it was exactly what I needed. Great pace. Uncomplicated plot. No melodramatic characters either. But in the end, you can see how the series has the potential to go to another level. Great first entry of a series.

[Hervé Solarzic · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Entertaining and well-written. A good space opera, with some promise.

[neurodrew · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The end of a rigid empire in internecine war. The last of a might alien species, the Shaa, decides it is time to die. The Shaa counquered Terrans, Naxids, and other races 10,000 years ago, and established a convocation of races with a mighty multispecies fleet to manage their Empire. Everything is decided by a rigid heirarchy of grand families. A year after the great funeral, the Naxids decide on a secret mutiny, destroying much of the fleet, and are racing to take over the capital world. Lt. Gareth Marttinez comes from a wealthy but poorly placed family. At the beginning of the novel, he guides cadet Carolyn Sula in a daring rescue of a space yacht racing pilot. A year later he maneuvers his frigate to escape the mutiney and make it to the capital. He is given a tactical officer staff position, and falls in love with Sula, who is posted aboard the flagship. They devise new tactics together, but at the end Sula walks away from him, because, as the back story explains, she is a beautiful and brilliant commoner who has stolen the identity of the real but disgraced Sula family.The battle and space scenes are scientifically realistic, if you grant the existence of wormholes. Antimatter fuels ships, missiles and warheads, and is generated by accelerator rings that surround entire planets. Wormhole relay stations transmit laser messages, and balance the mass of the ships passing through by hurling equal amounts of rock in the other direction. Everyone uses drugs to endure massive accelerations during maneuvers. There is even the mention of air embolism during decompression. The characters and plot are reasonably complicated.

[vladmihaisima · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Space opera set in the far future when there is only one powerful empire. Multiple races are subjugated by one race, that imposes by force a set of rules (no artificial intelligence, no immortality, etc.) for thousands of years. Starts a bit slow but has enjoyable actions and characters. The whole story makes a lot of sense and characters are both believable and they somehow evolve based on their challenges. Lots of descriptions of a (very) hierarchical society. Does not introduce a lot of strange technologies (except wormholes and really dense energy producing - but not much else). Was kind of nice that half of the book was just to introduce the characters and the initial action did not miraculously link with the second part when the war started

[dwwilkin_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This has been on my purchase and to read list for a long time. I remember some early works like the Crown Jewels and Ambassador of Progress by Williams that I enjoyed. So I started in on this.And it did start slow. But I stuck with it. And then it emerged as well done. Perhaps our heroes are too much involved as the only ones who can think of new solutions to the problem of warfare in an age where nothing has changed for thousands of years.A subtler way might have been for their new tactics being used to get the ball rolling and then happenstance allowing them to further refine other issues that occur.There are mores of society and political marriage that rival other times and empires where progeny were created to safeguard the family wealth and this plays out well too.In all, a read that prompted me to immediately order the next book in the series.

[aulsmith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Dread Empire's Fall" is a tightly-coupled trilogy, basically one very long novel; the 3 volumes have to be read together and in order. I found it a very compelling read; the sheer momentum of the story carried me effortlessly past flaws that in a less well-written book would have stopped me cold. (For example, in one of the military tactics that's fairly crucial to the plot, I think he's got the physics wrong and it wouldn't actually work.) There's lots of moral ambiguity; the worst single atrocity of the war is committed by "our" side (a tyranny only marginally less brutal and corrupt than the other side). In the end, we find that in winning the war, the "good guys" have accomplished nothing except to restore the _status quo ante_. The same old, corrupt, incompetent elite is back in power, having seemingly learned nothing; all the underlying issues are unresolved; it seems clear that another war is inevitable within a generation or so (maybe just in time for our hero's son, newborn at the end of this trilogy, to get his own chance at glory). The resolution of the romance subplot also seems rather arbitrary.

[dirtysnowball · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Disappointing because I expected better from Williams.It feels like his effort to produce a better than average military space opera, and he does manage to avoid flat characters and some of the excesses of technobabble and infodump typical of this sub-genre.But The Praxis failed to grab me. Maybe it works better as part one of its trilogy, but standing alone it was disturbingly predictable (even ignoring the howling spoiler in the cover blurb).

[dreamless_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Generic space opera, and predictable too. WJW's been all downhill since his earthquake book.

[michaelcruse · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Imagine Queen Victoria and Chairman Mao got together and spawned a race of technologically advanced aliens who conquer all the other intelligent species in the galaxy so that they can be taught proper manners. Then the aliens get bored and all die, leaving their former subjects to fend for themselves. What could go wrong?