The Praxis: Book One Of The Dread Empire's Fall by Walter Jon Williams
01/10/2002 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
Pub: Earthlight. 417 page enlarged paperback. Price: £10.99 (softcover); £17.99 (hardback). ISBN: 0-7434-6110-X and 0-7434-6111-8. One thing I learnt from reading the
'Wild Cards' mosaic stories was to keep an eye on any of the authors
who worked on it. Walter Jon Williams being no exception as I thoroughly
enjoyed his own novel, 'Knight Moves' that I read shortly afterwards.
This book I'm not so sure about at present.
Essentially, we have here the backdrop of a galactic empire on
the verge of falling apart after the last of the Shaa, who've held
it together for ten millennia under brutal rule through their military,
the Praxis.
 Into
this mix, we follow the lives of two individuals of noble blood
as they move up the ranks. This is a reality where whom you know
and how you're connected can get you promotion or good job placement
often better than military achievement.
There is Lieutenant Lord Gareth Martinez whose position of power
is changed with the death of the last Shaa and sent out on starship
duty. A smart officer although seen by the nobility of higher ranks
as common through not having a posh accent - snobbery also rules
in this reality!
There is Lady Caroline Sula - a space-flight cadet earning her
wings initially by attempting to rescue a sportsman whose race ends
in tragedy. Between all of this is the occasional glimpse into Sula's
life previous to joining the military as a drug-taking over-indulged
rich kid.
I must have been either feeling smart the day I read this to have
figured out where the events of this as it. I doubt if
we'd seen much of the brutality when we stay with the nobility and
military so much. Even Sula's life on one of the planets seems pretty
much like a standard quasi-ghetto/urban city.
Sula's friends frequently ran in with the law for drug-dealing
and racketeering. Nothing unusual about that situation - happens
on our current Earth a lot as well.
The real problem lies with how Williams deals with his antagonists.
They're practically a faceless enemy and we don't really see much
of them to make a judgement call on their motivations and actions.
Williams is really applying an 'American attitude' to this and automatically
is making us think that because the humans are on one side that
this is the good side. This is just painting this reality in black
and white.
I'm really hoping that in future books that he is intentionally
leading his readers up a blind alley and examining the morals of
both sides in all of this at some point.
Granted in every other space-opera series, we get to see the species
on both sides of the fence. Indeed, Williams might be seeing the
way he's done this as a unique slant by not fleshing out the opposition.
From his early work, I know he's capable of doing more than that
and this feels somewhat like a backward step relying only on his
character work. This isn't to say the story doesn't have its moments.
The major space battle is done rather well. The real problem lies
with the non-human species that should have really been fleshed
out more than being left as ciphers.
Although I can't attest to be waiting with bated breath for the
next book in the series, I will be curious to see whether or not
he will develop away from some of these flaws in this first book.
GF Willmetts
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