The Praxis - Book Review

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 kind of convenient for the author if he wants to simplify the tech and stick with classical space opera... While I do like these on my SF, the classical space opera is quite satisfying, specially because a lot of stuff has to be thought out by the author in the battles.

Anyway, the last of the Shaa is dying. Now the Empire will have to rule by committee. As usual, disagreements occur and soon there is a big war.

As is standard in so many space opera series, we follow two relatively down on their luck lower rank military, as they accomplish huge things and climb up. It sounds silly when you mention the formula, but as usual, it works very well and the action was quite satisfying.

Overall, strongly recommended for fans of well thought space opera.

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