Emperor of Dawn

It has been a long time since I read a good old-fashioned space opera.  I really liked this book.

In some ways, this book was sort of like Pournelle's CoDominium books.  But it also brought out something close to the universe of Mike Resnick's books, like Oracle and Birthright: The Book of Man.  Not anywhere near as large, but just the feeling that there's a lot more going on in the society than is spelled out in the book.   There's also powered armor used fairly early in the book, which of course reminded me of Starship Troopers.

I read this book in spurts, and some of the names were similar enough that I had a lot of trouble keeping track of who was who.  I often had to go back and refresh my memory.  I think a list of characters like Pournelle does at the front would have been really useful for me.

The book has to spend a lot of time trying to describe the spatial relationship between the various sections of human space.  It would have helped even more to have some maps and drawings, either at the front or interspersed where needed.

The good parts included a lot of decent-verisimilitude magic technology.  A "time distortion" field that let them enjoy FTL travel.  It was also a big plot device in the space battles.

And there were a fair number of space battles.  One plot device he seemed to use a lot was, "...the plot showed that the reinforcements would not quite be able to join the battle in time to affect the outcome."

They also had very limited teleportation, some psychic ability.  The transit times were great enough that star systems are similar to the continents for economic and political concerns.

The main story was about the fall of an empire and the rise of a new one.  A little bit of political intrigue and some back-stabbing, but they manage to work through those pretty quickly.

I really enjoyed this fairly simple space opera.  On Mighty's Total Book Value Scale, Paperback.

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