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A review by thearbiter89
The Accidental War by Walter Jon Williams
4.0
The Accidental War is a promising start to a new trilogy of Walter Jon William's criminally underrated Praxis series of sf space operas.
A little nostalgic bias here - The Praxis novels were a big part of my teenage years and were seminal books in development as a science fiction fan. They hinged on an interesting premise - military sf told from the perspective of aristocrats who rule over a galactic empire established by blood and ruled by an unshakeable, hierarchical political system known as the Praxis.
But, far from being a simple, evil-empire-decrying morality tale, the original Praxis novels told a story of two brilliant military heroes - Gareth Martinez and Caroline Sula - fighting for survival and glory in the midst of a succession crisis brought about by the demise of the empire's alien masters. Thrilling, unexpectedly comic, yet suffused with a subtle cynicism, the books constructed an implicit thesis for the shortcomings of an inflexible, tradition-bound system of power, while not condemning its ethical shortcomings.
Years after the conclusion of that saga, The Accidental War came along, to my great surprise and pleasure. Reading it brought back memories of fictitious events that I was surprised to have retained so strongly in the back of my mind, yet The Accidental War seeks to update the Praxis for a post-2008 universe. If the first series was about the succession crisis in the aftermath of a power vacuum, the second seems to be shaping up to be a story of in-out species tribalism arising from an economic collapse, with humanity as the out-group - a kind of combination of post-depression Weimar Germany and post-2016 US politics, if you will. In this series, it is the backwardness and ossification arising from the long incumbency of extant power structures that leads to the whole edifice toppling down, rigid and unable to bend to the winds of changing times.
For the reader who is in this for the series' signature gritty, realistic (sounding) space battles full of g-forces and tricks of orbital mechanics, the beginning of the book can seem rather slow, as Williams slowly assembles and arranges the component pieces to set up the crisis that will lead to the emerging civil war. Much of it has to do with political and economic posturing in the halls of power, punctuated by the kind of snobbish class-based politics of inclusion and exclusion that would not seem out of place in a Regency novel - slow as they might be, they are fascinating insofar as they represent William's effort to create a science-fictional allegory of our times.
But then, near the end-third of the book, the space battles start to come to the fore and Martinez, whom I had rooted for so hard in the first series, starts to display his unique brand of tactical brilliance, and in so doing helps usher in the unfolding conflict between humanity and the rest of the empire.
Given the quality of this first entry, I have every confidence that the next few books will continue, in typical stellar fashion, the stories of Martinez and Sula for a more cynical age.
I give this: 4 out of 5 congratulation rounds from "Lord Fizz Takes A Holiday'
A little nostalgic bias here - The Praxis novels were a big part of my teenage years and were seminal books in development as a science fiction fan. They hinged on an interesting premise - military sf told from the perspective of aristocrats who rule over a galactic empire established by blood and ruled by an unshakeable, hierarchical political system known as the Praxis.
But, far from being a simple, evil-empire-decrying morality tale, the original Praxis novels told a story of two brilliant military heroes - Gareth Martinez and Caroline Sula - fighting for survival and glory in the midst of a succession crisis brought about by the demise of the empire's alien masters. Thrilling, unexpectedly comic, yet suffused with a subtle cynicism, the books constructed an implicit thesis for the shortcomings of an inflexible, tradition-bound system of power, while not condemning its ethical shortcomings.
Years after the conclusion of that saga, The Accidental War came along, to my great surprise and pleasure. Reading it brought back memories of fictitious events that I was surprised to have retained so strongly in the back of my mind, yet The Accidental War seeks to update the Praxis for a post-2008 universe. If the first series was about the succession crisis in the aftermath of a power vacuum, the second seems to be shaping up to be a story of in-out species tribalism arising from an economic collapse, with humanity as the out-group - a kind of combination of post-depression Weimar Germany and post-2016 US politics, if you will. In this series, it is the backwardness and ossification arising from the long incumbency of extant power structures that leads to the whole edifice toppling down, rigid and unable to bend to the winds of changing times.
For the reader who is in this for the series' signature gritty, realistic (sounding) space battles full of g-forces and tricks of orbital mechanics, the beginning of the book can seem rather slow, as Williams slowly assembles and arranges the component pieces to set up the crisis that will lead to the emerging civil war. Much of it has to do with political and economic posturing in the halls of power, punctuated by the kind of snobbish class-based politics of inclusion and exclusion that would not seem out of place in a Regency novel - slow as they might be, they are fascinating insofar as they represent William's effort to create a science-fictional allegory of our times.
But then, near the end-third of the book, the space battles start to come to the fore and Martinez, whom I had rooted for so hard in the first series, starts to display his unique brand of tactical brilliance, and in so doing helps usher in the unfolding conflict between humanity and the rest of the empire.
Given the quality of this first entry, I have every confidence that the next few books will continue, in typical stellar fashion, the stories of Martinez and Sula for a more cynical age.
I give this: 4 out of 5 congratulation rounds from "Lord Fizz Takes A Holiday'