Big Books of 2026
The Praxis (Dread Empire's Fall, #1)

Questions About The Praxis (Dread Empire's Fall, #1)

by Walter Jon Williams (Goodreads Author)

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Praxis, please sign up.

Answered Questions (1)

What is the space opera genre, and being newish to sci-fi, would I like it, or is it an acquired taste? I've enjoyed John Wyndham and Arthur C.Clarke so far.
Wes I've been a science fiction fan for a while, but the closest thing to Space Opera I had read before this was "Ender's Game" and the books that followe…moreI've been a science fiction fan for a while, but the closest thing to Space Opera I had read before this was "Ender's Game" and the books that followed in that series.

Back in summer 2012 I picked this book up used almost completely on a whim. I was looking for some good space-based sci-fi that I could REALLY sink my teeth into. Space Opera is exactly that.

Basically the thing that makes a work "Space Opera" instead of just Sci-fi is that it takes common dramatic plots and themes and characters, and projects them onto the scale of outer space. Thus the stories generally have the fate of BILLIONS of people hanging in the balance and they can span whole star systems and beyond. The scope is so incredibly grand yet they usually focus in on the actions of a handful of people, so in order to keep the tension high it usually resorts to melodrama. In order to keep the characters from being dwarfed by the enormity of the development around them it gives them appropriately dramatic lives with a lot of emotional turmoil that spills out at times. Thus the character interactions and politics tend to drive much of the conflict.

In a way, you could view these stories as a sort of 'compromise' between the rigor of hard sci-fi in the vein of Arthur C. Clarke and the epic, 'operatic' and less-realistic but viscerally satisfying stories of "Star Wars."

Is it an acquired taste? I think that good Space Opera will grab you and suck you in even if you're not a sci-fi fan in general. However the books can require a certain amount of patience and tolerance for its tendency to side-track and spend a lot of pages on character interactions when it could be getting to the action. They're not hard to read, but they're not really 'light' reading either. They tend to be slow-burning with big payoffs.

As for *this* series in particular, after reading through the first book I very quickly picked up the second then later the third, and they are consistently my favorite in all of the genre. In my opinion its a very worthwhile and accessible entry point and you should be able to tell very quickly whether you are enjoying it or not. If you find the characters bland and the plot boring, then there's not much else here to entertain you. If you get swept up in the gravitas, however, you should find it hard to put down.(less)
flag

Unanswered Questions (1)

About Goodreads Q&A

Ask and answer questions about books!

You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.

See Featured Authors Answering Questions

Learn more