The Sundering By Jon Walters Williams

The Sundering

By Jon Walters Williams

I reviewed the first book in this series in September of last year. Since fate seems to have decreed 2020 the year of “get on with those series you were meaning to finish” I decided to end May with book two of this series. Since it hasn't even been a year yet, I won't go into who Mr. Williams is or the details of the setting. Just know this is one of those eternal space empires that was set up by an alien species to enforce eternal stasis and eternal stasis of course fell apart when said aliens weren't here to enforce it. So now the Praxis (It wasn’t that kind of Praxis, comrades. It was rigid semi-feudal structure.), as the space empire is called, is writhing in the grasp of a savage civil war. The insectoid Naxids, who were the first species brought under the yoke, believe they should become the ruling race of the empire. Of course the nobility which is made up of members from all six species of the empire is split, with the members of the other five species disagreeing with the idea of being demoted. Things didn't go great for the majority government however as the Naxids were striking from surprise (And the empire had grown so fucking decadent that they were not doctrinally, strategically, materially, tactically, or institutionally ready to wage a war of any kind. Or even, really, meaningful war games. The war games were dog-and-pony shows.). The home fleet of the capital Zanshaa was savaged by the Naxid fleet and only an insanely brave strike by one of our protagonists Lady Caroline Sula could have been considered a success in that battle. Lucky, that wasn't the only battle in the war, as our other protagonist Gareth Martinez managed to pull out a win and was rewarded richly for doing so. And so our book begins, quick note there will be spoilers here for the first book The Praxis, you have been warned.

Despite our main characters' efforts however the majority government is in real trouble; the Naxid surprise strike was an effective one. Despite heavy casualties, the Naxid fleet is now the larger fleet and it's only a matter of time until they march on the capital. A capital that can't be defended. However, even victory has proven costly for the Naxids, as traditional tactics meant for attacking people (Read: Brutally conquering them with M/AM annihilation warheads from the safety of orbit) who don't have the same numbers or technology lead to bloodbaths when used against forces in comparable numbers and technological level (They even did war-games internally. The problem was, the outcomes were always pre-determined and scripted, with commanders rewarded for the adherence to doctrine and their timing when executing their pre-scripted attacks and maneuvers.). The strength of both sides is scattered throughout the empire though, and with the first battles being the kind that would make modern admirals disgusted to be on the winning side of, never mind the losing side; both factions find themselves forced to pause to gather their strength and rebuild to replace their losses, locked in the one thing that has never happened to the Praxis before. A prolonged war. As Martinez and Sula start working on new tactics and new ideas to try and win the war (They are almost the only people with any sense, from my recollection.{There are junior officers who are very helpful but don’t have the education or experience to come up with stuff on their own}), they run into an opponent they don't have an answer for, their superiors. Their successes have bred resentment, as Sula's on the book parents (I'll explain) were traitors executed by the Legion of Diligence, and Martinez is a backwater provincial noble with a horrible accent. That they're the two most successful and skilled officers of the war is deeply embarrassing to the top tier of the nobility, which can't provide any officers who even come close (See what I mean?). It's not enough that the two best warfighters are a pair of barely noble nobodies with no patrons and connections, but they also want to throw out the book that the navy has been using for over 3400 years (I should note that's older than many of today's spoken languages). As you can imagine resistance is fierce, however, the officers who have actually been in combat have had their resentment blunted by their desire to survive (The desire to live and not get cooked inside their ships from the radiation of a M/AM annihilation is a powerful antidote against stupidity.{Or the heavy casualties act as a powerful selection pressure, you decide readers!}). The old tactics which involve clustering in tight groups and moving in highly scripted maneuvers that their enemies know as well as they do are a death sentence and that's been graphically proven over and over. Another note that while Lady Sula is still just a Lt, Martinez was made Captain and as such is writing reports on junior officers. This means he has marked men and women as unfit for command and/or combat duty, including men and women from well connected, powerful families. So Martinez's list of enemies is growing by the day. Including in his own family as one of those young men that Martinez has to blackball is the lover of his little sister. Let's talk about Martinez's family shall we?

Captain Martinez is the youngest son, with an older brother and two older sisters. We learn in this book that Martinez is likely his Mother's son in temperament, because Roland, the eldest son is clearly formed in his Father's image. See Poppa Martinez tried to break into Zanshaa high society many decades ago and was run off as the provincial pretender he was. Poppa Martinez spent his social exile building up his fiefdom into an industrial powerhouse and raking in enough money to buy and sell his social betters any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but money wasn't enough. Poppa Martinez realized he needed tactics and an opening. Roland was trained in the array of economic, political, and social tactics needed to shatter that glass ceiling and propel the family into the .01%. The war has given them the opening of their dreams as they work to put the cream of Zanshaa's nobility in their debt and Roland is working frantically to wedge that opening over wider. This involves cutting loans to families whose properties have been seized by the Naxid government, working with Naxids who are loyal to the majority government, and wringing every military and civilian contract that their fief can fulfill at the best terms possible to keep the coffers full. Oh and of course making marriages for the Martinez sisters to powerful families, This becomes a problem as the man that Captain Martinez blackballs? May be his little sister's lover but it's not her fiance and as the emotional fallout starts to ramp up, keeping that secret is becoming difficult (Yeah that is definitely something of a problem…). Additionally, as Captain Martinez finds himself exiled from ship duty due to his superiors' resentment, the cost of staying relevant to the war effort might involve putting himself up on the marriage block. If only these people would let him fight the damn war and save their hides Captain Martinez would be perfectly happy but as always people have to drag politics into it. Oh and Captain Martinez has to figure out if he can salvage his romance with Lady Sula and maybe merge that into his family's marriage demand, as despite everything her family name is an old and until recently respectable one... Or is it?

As many of you likely remember from the last review I hinted that Lady Caroline Sula had a dark secret of her own. She wasn't born Lady Caroline Sula, she was born Gredel, the illegitimate daughter of the mistress of a crime boss. Despite her many, many talents Gredel was locked out of developing, no schooling beyond the basics available to her, no opportunities for career or advancement (And this, kids, is why inherited privilege of any kind is an absolute fucking waste.) since even becoming a model or actress required some noble backing you (even that would be a waste of her talents mind you although she'd be good at both). Instead, Gredel was sinking into the same life path as her mother when she ran into the real Lady Caroline Sula, a noblewoman who could have been her identical twin. A young woman of barely 15, her parents had been executed when she was very young for treason and she was thrown out of her foster family when the father of the said family seduced her (Because of course, you punish the child rape victim. Ah, nobility. Or, real life, really. God fuck this planet, I want off.). Sula had a trust fund that would let her live in comfort but not much else. So she spent her time partying, drugging, and drinking into an early grave because... What else was there? Except that her birth still entitled her to a spot in the naval academy and if she did well officer rank. The original Lady Sula however knew that she would be stuck as a Lt forever and so didn't care. Gredel, on the other hand? She thought life as an eternal Lt sounded better than being her Mother. She forged records, murdered, lied, studied, and sweated and worked her ass off to get to a place that some people just get dropped into for being born (Good for you Gredel! Usurp the aristocrats! Kill them and take their place! Just kill them all and have done!). Since then she's made it a point to outperform all of them out of a combination of trying to attract a patron for further promotion and spite, which is the greatest of motivations honestly. With the war kicking off, Sula has gone into overdrive. It's not enough for her to excel, she knows this is her one opening in a lifetime to claw the kind of advantages that others get out of the system and she means to do it. Of course, Martinez is going to complicate things enormously, as love interests tend to do. In the meantime, Sula has been shuffled off into an obscure logistic division for the crime of making radical suggestions on war strategy that are completely right. Her response to this is to volunteer for ground combat duty. Which is something they're even worse at than ship combat on account of preferring to let the police deal with uprisings and insurgents, or just orbitally bombarding any population that the police can't handle. Course if the Naxids take Zanshaa they can't bombard the capital city built by the founders of the Empire... Can they?

In the Sundering, we're watching a civilization stumbling around trying to learn how to fight a war against a peer power. Made worse by the fact that the peer power in question is itself. Civil wars are inherently messy and ugly things that are better to avoid nine times out of ten. The tenth being a situation where not fighting it means living the rest of your life under someone's heel or watching a bunch of sore losers carve up your country (We all live under the heel of capitalists.{I suppose we could live under the heels of the party members instead}). Mr. Williams takes the time to show us the internal workings going on here as the elite and military classes of the Praxis try to adapt to the new reality, some more successfully than others. He also takes the time to show us that for many in the underclasses of the Praxis, it doesn't matter who wins, one overclass who monopolizes power and wealth is much the same as another one if you have next to nothing (And they have created a fantastic system to keep those underclasses from rising up and spitting their masters on pikes.). As one character put to Sula, it doesn't matter who takes all the good and decent jobs if you're not allowed to have a job in the first place. Which explains why the majority government isn't seeing a lot of buy-in from the populace. Not that the populace is resisting mind you, resistance is too dangerous for them. They're simply not putting in any extra effort just because they're at war. This shows the kind of disconnect that can develop between the elite classes of society and everyone else. It's in little touches like this that Mr. Williams shows amazing talent in examining just what kind of society the Praxis is and what the implications of that are. I'm honestly glad to be rereading this series (as I mentioned in the last review my first read-through was in college). The Sundering by Jon Walters Williams gets an A.

I also give it my Stamp of Approval.
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