Book Note: Walter Jon Williams, Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Interesting setup. Humanity has been integrated into an alien empire. The founders of the empire are gradually going extinct. The process of maintaining the empire gets complicated shortly after the death of the last of the founding species. By the end of the book, though, we've just got a setup. We've introduced characters, and we've gotten an attempt to take over the empire by the second-oldest species launched.

There are a bunch of interesting observations, especially about a military force that hasn't fought fro 3400 years. There are interesting characters, including the fake Lady Sulla (who seems much more interesting than the real one), and Lt. Martinez, who clearly has just a bit of Drake Mijstral, or however that's spelled, in him.

Since it's the start of a series, these are not necessarily hopeless problems. But I do find it better for each book to tell a story, usually.