Conventions of War By Jon Walters Williams

 Conventions of War

By Jon Walters Williams 

Conventions of War is book three of Dread Empire's Fall, the book series that takes a look at what happens when a government set up around there being “perfect men”, no longer has those “perfect men?” Now since I went over the second book in May of last year, let me sum up the back story. The alien Shaa decided they had learned everything that was important to know and had unlocked the perfect society and government (Their whole ideology is anti-dialectical poison.  Everything in any society is changing.  I can do an in-depth Materialist analysis of their culture and layout the principle contradictions of their society that they were papering over with naked brutality.  And by naked brutality, I mean antimatter bombs from orbit.{or mass indoctrination at every level of education and life, backed up with secret police that tortured people to death on life tv}). So they marched out and conquered as much of the galaxy as they cared to, putting six species under their heels, including humanity. They stopped, mostly because they ran out of motivation and focused on creating and enjoying an ever-unchanging state. But the Shaa made several mortal mistakes. First, the Shaa had embraced immortality but had not adjusted themselves or their societies to deal with their immortality (You can guess where this goes, dear-readers.  Ritual suicide!  Yay!). Second, the Shaa destroyed their own ability to have offspring and having banned genetic sciences - not to mention innovation and organized inquiry into the workings of the universe - they were unable to find a solution for their mistakes. So after a time measured in millennia, the Shaa began to take their own lives. Some out of despair, others out of boredom they couldn't admit, and still others because there was no other acceptable course of action left to them. Our series opened with the very last Shaa in the universe committing suicide with the devout wish that nothing would ever change (Imagine how fucked up you have to be to commit suicide because you can’t stand your own existence and not having any regrets about the society you created. {You’d have to believe that you’ve done everything worth doing and that the society you’ve made will outlast you.  Which it doesn’t in this case}). But change cannot be denied forever, no matter how high or thick the walls you raise, or how deep and wide the trenches you dig, change can only be slowed not denied. So it was that change came to the Empire of the Shaa, known as the Praxis, within months of the death of the last perfect man who anchored it. Because it turns out the only center the Praxis had was the Shaa themselves and without them, their successors turned on each other (And this kids is what happens when the contradictions inherent in a society become heightened.).

The first race that the Shaa conquered, the insectoid Naxids, decided that what was needed was a new race on the top spot instead of rule by a multi-species committee of noble peers (Also fuck these guys.). Of course, everyone else strongly disagreed and now the Praxis is in a situation that it's never been before, split in two with each part facing a peer competitor (To illustrate how “out of their depth” everyone is, they have wargames.  These wargames are pre-scripted, and commanders are praised or castigated based on how well they follow the script.). Because of that our two protagonists: Gareth Martinez, a backwater noble who before this was only allowed to rise just high enough to see what real power and wealth can do; and Carolina Sula, a woman with dark secrets that had to lie, steal, claw and fight to get what others are given just for being born; may just be allowed to exercise their full talents and gifts. If they can survive their enemies and their superiors that is. Because the rallying cry and the bedrock of the ideology of the Praxis is that everything that is important is known but the only way anyone is going to win this war is by innovation and experimentation (And everyone else in a position to do anything is has taken out their brains and polished them to an obsidian-smooth finish because that was required of them to survive and advance in this society.{That’s unfair.  What was required of them was that they master complex codes of behavior while learning to keep track of increasingly interrelated webs of alliances and social debts}That is also true, but god damn.). These are things Martinez and Sula are better set up to do since they have nothing to lose by doing so and everything to gain. Martinez has been able to win important small-scale victories using radical new tactics (Which, honestly, are actually pretty basic. {he has to use some pretty advanced math to create those tactics, to be fair Sula really helped with that}), this has led mid-grade and junior officers to increasingly study his tactics but in the upper ranks resistance has only increased (Because you know… their precious system of patronage!  “We can’t recognize merit!  We have clients to consider!”). Meanwhile, Sula has been cut off from the fleet entirely and is doing something even more outside anyone in the Praxis' experience: fighting an insurgency. You see when the Praxis conquered a planet any attempt at insurgency was simply met with mass bombardment by antimatter weapons until the rebels gave up their weapons (Or, you know, got melted with gamma radiation.). So the people of the Praxis never developed sophisticated infantry tactics or a grasp of how to run (or take apart) a resistance. Sula is however operating in the capital city of the Praxis, Zanshaa, which as the foundation of the Praxis and the site of the tombs of the Shaa is the closest thing to Holy Ground the Praxis has. If the Naxids want to step into the Shaa shoes, they can hardly start by wiping their capital city off the face of the galaxy... Can they? Well, Sula is going to put that to the test, as the incompetence of her superiors has led to basically everyone but her three-man team being captured and publicly executed by the Naxids. This however might end up being a mistake for the Naxids because they've kinda taken one of the most ruthless, intelligent women in the galaxy and removed any leash on her behavior. Worse they've done that and then tried to kill her! 

I've made no bones of finding Carolina Sula's story more compelling and her character vastly more interesting than Gareth Martinez in my last two reviews. It's not that Martinez is a bad character or his story is boring: in this book alone Martinez has to solve a murder mystery, deal with political intrigue and fight a war. That's without mentioning the complications of his romantic past with Sula and the fact that due to politics he's married to a woman he's known all of seven days. Sula's story meanwhile is an epic rise and fall on the scale of Greek Tragedy, all hinged on the gifts of a single woman. In this story, you'll watch a woman go from two followers to practically conjuring forth an army through pure willpower and desire. Of course, even such an army can't live off of willpower so Sula turns back to her childhood as Grendel, the bastard daughter of one mobster and the mistress of another who lied, murdered, and stole her way into the aristocracy. Turning to basically organized crime for logistics and support is a decision that insurgencies often have to make. The fact that Sula does so but manages to stay in control is amazing. The tragedy element is that Sula will gain just about everything she fought so hard to get but find it worthless because she'll basically lose everything that would let her enjoy it. Often it'll be her own fault that she lost it all as well, as her very real character flaws, mixed with the fact that she knows she's frankly smarter than just about everyone around her, lead her to push too hard. This costs her allies and makes her unnecessary enemies on the flip side, it also allows her to be among the first to realize the old rules that the Shaa have put down are gone and meaningless. The fact that Mr. Williams works so hard to make this work is what keeps Sula from sliding over into Mary Sue territory and allows him to write a competent, genius character. First give them real flaws that would make some readers feel like they wouldn't like the character in person, second, make sure they lose and make it hurt at least once or twice in the story. Third, having another protagonist who is almost as smart but with different flaws that allows them to avoid the same problems. This isn't entirely necessary but it helps.  Having someone else who can get things done keeps people from feeling that the entire world revolves around one character.  This series also serves as a great example of how to make sure your character avoids ending up in the trap where a large part of your audience sees them as a Mary Sue.  While some argue that Mr. Williams has just written a very sympathetic sociopath because Sula barely seems to acknowledge society’s rules much less obey them at times (Because the rules of the society in which she lives fundamentally suck!  Had I been in her position as a teenager, I would have done the exact same thing and not looked back.). My argument to that is, when or where was Sula given any choice but to be what she is or die? At what point did society ever provide her a moral code that didn't demand that she submit to being an object for the use of others or be otherwise crushed under a boot? I would also point out that Sula feels love for people beyond what they can do for her and keeps her word to people who keep their word to her. Even at great personal cost to herself. So I feel calling her a sociopath is off the mark (If a person is capable of doing those things, they are not a sociopath.  Full stop.). I would argue that Carolina Sula, aka Grendel, is exactly what her society made her. What that is, is a savage person, willing to lie, kill and steal to protect herself and believing that she must be ready to do so at the drop of a hat.  Because it gave her the choice of being that or being nothing and she was too gifted to choose to be nothing. I would give that as a warning, if you force your children into the mold of killers, you cannot be surprised when they kill.

Mr. Williams also uses a method I'm not sure I can full-hearted recommend. The fact is that the Naxids and the other aliens in the Praxis are ruthlessly othered here. By which I mean they are firmly presented as unknowable, none of our main human characters really form close relationships with them even if they are working on the same side. Also, the alien characters are never made point of view characters. This is subtly reinforced in the story itself, each species lives in separate neighborhoods, serves on separate ships, and almost always has patrons of their own species. Cross-species alliances aren't rare but they seem to be rather cold-blooded distant affairs. We don't see human officers spending off-hours with aliens, nor do we see the other species really mixing with each other.  Even in the navy!  You don't see cadets from different species getting together to bet on races or play cards, everyone pretty much sticks to their own species until you get to the command ranks.  This means that the Praxis isn't really an integrated society, even if you ignore the fact that the Naxids were able to get 90 to 99% of their aristocrat and military class to sign off on a coup without alerting a single member of the other five species that they supposedly live side by side with. I honestly wish we had a chance to see the world through their eyes.  (Part of this, I suspect, is that they truly are alien in terms of their cognition.  There are only a few rare gifted authors who can really write the inner life of a species with alien modes of communication and thought.  Hell, most authors cannot even credibly write the inner life of someone of a different race, sexual orientation, or historical epoch.)

Although this is just one of many cracks we are shown in the Praxis if we pay attention, another is the sheer divide between the aristocrats and the commoners; and now Sula and others are aware of it. They are also aware of the increasing incompetence of the aristocrats, while there are stray members of the aristocrat class that are skilled and competent, they are often hampered by the resistance of their peers and the fact that their skill generates suspicion in their superiors and that their natural drive towards innovation and adaptation will set them at odds with the entrenched interests in the Praxis. After all, if all that is important is already known, then what do you need to innovate for? Of course, if the only thing your elite class can agree on is that they deserve more wealth and power, and have drawn knives within months of taking power... How long before they turn on each other? How long before their desire to gorge themselves sick on the loot of the universe secure in the knowledge that they have no foe and no rival drive them to turn on the only obstacle in their way, each other? Given that two novellas and two more novels have been printed, we might not have to wait long to find out.

Mr. Williams gives us a tale full of tragedy and triumph, we see characters reach dizzying heights only to fall, mistakes are made, promises are kept and the darkest treachery is done. He doesn't only give us the war but gives us a view of the end of the war and plants the seeds of the next war as cover-ups and slander abound to make sure that the “right” people get the credit for the victory. The series itself is a story about how every empire has the seeds of its fall planted in its very nature if you look for them (This is true.  They all do.). Because whether any character besides Sula realizes it, the empire of the Shaa has fallen, the question is what is going to replace it and as of the close of this book, the question remains unanswered. I recommend this series to anyone who enjoys harder than average space opera, as the laws of physics play a large and unforgiving part in fleet battles here and there are no energy shields to make battle less lethal. I also recommend this series to anyone who likes characters who are multifaceted, flawed, and great at the same time. Conventions of War by Jon Walters Williams gets an A.

I hope you enjoyed this review, which was selected in an open vote by our ever-wise patrons. If you would like to join them to vote on upcoming reviews, themes, and projects coming down the pipe for as little as a dollar a month, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Every bit moves us closer to the day when the review becomes self-supporting. Next week, I'll be reviewing Michele West's Hidden City, which is a prequel to her other fantasy series. The writer herself has recommended it as a good jumping-on point for her universe so... We're leaping. Until then folks, stay safe and as always Keep Reading.

Red text is your editor, Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer, Garvin Anders