Dread Empire’s Fall: Conventions of War by Walter Jon Williams

Walter Jon Williams has to be one of the most overlooked of SF’s very good writers. Throughout his career – starting with the Zelaznyesque Knight Moves, through the Hard Wired, Aristoi, Metropolitan, and others, he’s produced a series of good books, written in a number of different styles and modes. He has handled each different style well, then tried something different. But he’s only rarely been on the Hugo ballot, certainly not as often as his body of work deserves. Perhaps this is because he didn’t first firmly establish a readership by sticking to one style before moving onto another. (For all it’s supposed delights in originality, a portion of the SF readership really doesn’t always react well to authors who try something different each time.) Williams’s most recent project has been a space opera trilogy, Dread Empire’s Fall. It’s been a major contribution to the new space opera subgenre.

The first two volumes of Dread Empire’s Fall – The Praxis and The Sundering – were published several years ago. As the series starts, the empire has been ruled for centuries by the Shaa. They rule ruthlessly and impose a secular religion called the Praxis on al the races of the empire. But the Shaa are a dying race, and when the last one dies, a battle for power ensues as the insectoid Naxid try o take control. During this, the two main characters whose stories are intertwined in the final volume – Conventions of War – come to prominence. Gareth Martinez is a lord in a minor but rich family. Caroline Sula, who we find out isn’t really a peer but has taken over the life of one, is an ambitious young woman. Together, they devise battle tactics that enable elements of the fleet – bound by centuries of tradition and not open to new ways – to win major victories.

At the start of Conventions of War, Sula is on the planet Zanshaa, which is firmly under the control of the rebel Naxid government. Her story takes up about half the book (intertwined through most of the book with Martinez’s story). Essentially, in an effort to overthrow the Naxid regime, she becomes a terrorist, and soon leads an underground army in the attempt to take back the capital city. This in many ways is a disquieting part of the book. Williams shows us Sula’s point of view and makes us root for her, even though she often isn’t the most likable of people. Moreover, her tactics – which include assassination of Naxids and those who support them, blowing up hotels and administrative buildings, and so on – are particularly unnerving given the current world political situation. Because while we are made uncomfortable by Sula’s tactics, at the same time we hope she is successful. It’s made a bit easier by the fact that the Naxid are over-the-top brutal in their response, hurting their own cause. Had they not been so, it perhaps would have been even more unsettling to follow Sula. But follow her, and cheer for her, we do.

Meanwhile, Martinez, part of Chenforce (a larger squadron under Michi Chen), is using the tactics he and Sula devised to make raids into Naxid space. They are very successful, yet when they finally return to the larger fleet, they find it now controlled by Lord Tork – who believes that all fleet actions should be fought like they were hundreds of years before – in a calculated, conservative, mechanical way, where the winners are know as soon as the battle starts. He decrees that no innovations like the tactics of Martinez and Sula are to be used. Tork is a bit of an exaggeration of some real life attitudes; some admirals in the age of fighting sail likewise didn’t like innovation, though in the end, they were forced to give into it in the wake of men like Nelson better than Tork does in the wake of Chenforce’s great successes.

Conventions of War is a good conclusion to a very good series. It’s only real flaw is that it feels a bit more padded than the previous two volumes. There is a subplot in the first half of the book that’s essentially a murder mystery that Martinez must solve. It’s actually a pretty interesting mystery in its own right, but it really isn’t essential to the book and could have been cut.

Despite that though, this volume, like the previous two, is a very nice mix of space adventure, military SF (including fascinating working out of space tactics and how battles could work), political intrigue, and speculation on the ethics of warfare (what if you have to commit “piratical” or even “terrorist” acts to win a war?). The characters are interesting (and not always likeable in some ways, including our protagonists) and the background well done.

Recommended. I look forward to what Williams does next.