STG's

The Sundering: Dread Empire's Fall, by Walter Jon Williams, is the second book in the Praxis series. The story continues where it stopped. Thanks to the main heroes (Martinez and Sula) things are not so hopeless for the loyalists, and everything changed in the war. One of the things that changed is that now they go to full on guerrilla warfare, which is an interesting change of pace from the ship only battles. Overall, very much fun for military space opera fans.

The Praxis , by Walter Jon Williams, is the start of a SF series about an interstellar empire. I've read Impersonations  earlier this year and I sort of regretted it reading before this one. It gives away a very big plot point which I might have suspected, but would have been much more fun to find out. I ended up reading it on Google Play Books, because the author's newsletter warned about a nice discount. While it isn't bad, it feels markedly inferior to Amazon's Kindle app. I had used it before on some EPub books, but most shorter technical volumes. The plot is interesting. An older race, the Shaa, has forced several races, including humans, into their federation, mostly by bombarding them. Mildly crazy side note: As a Brazilian, I am conceptually offended that aliens keep bombing Buenos Aires. After all, São Paulo is much bigger. It is not the country's capital though. The Shaa forbid a lot of things, including AIs, nanotech, immortality, etc, which is ...

Walkaway is a Cory Doctorow SF novel about a future where automation is rampant, the rich are richer than ever and most people can't make a living. These walk away from default society, and go to make adhoc groups where regular society has given up, such as abandoned areas. I found that the way it was a dystopia and an utopia (the walkaway) at the same time. Some of the tech is really near future (such as most everything being easily printable if you have the templates) and other is made up. What I have some difficulty believing is how, generally, everything goes well with a society with no accountability. I really doubt that would work in practice. It also feels a bit like propaganda against capitalism. I was reminded of the reputation economy by Charles Stross - I can believe more on that working out as there are actual direct incentives from helping, and it feels harder to game the system. Overall, very interesting and recommended if you like the author.