Alexis A. Gilliland

Things I liked:
The political and economic considerations of life on a worldlet. The Corporate persons. The discussions of labor and management. The details of the worldlet. The varieties of war. The project-manager protagonist.

Things I really, really didn't like:
The mail-order brides. The gratuitous blow job at the governor's desk (15 years before Clinton and Lewinsky). The systematic debauching of the missionary woman. The simultaneous "exaltation" of sex-for-pleasure and the equal-and-opposite denigration of marriage as a utility barely worth five minutes' thought.

Things I didn't care for:
The casual racism. The corruption, cronyism, and other flaws of the governments and other institutions on Earth. I get that both the people and the systems were The Bad Guys over against whom the protagonists were protagonizing, but it wasn't very pleasant to be around.

I shan't go reading the rest of the series, but I wish I could find more SF that had the things I liked without the gratuitous garbage.… (mere)

The End of the Empire starts like a typical military action story: Senior Colonel Karff, security officer in the service of the Holy Human Empire, is part of a losing effort to turn back rebel forces intent on overthrowing the government. Defeated, the Imperial forces (including Karff) flee the last planet in what was Imperial space, and set out for Maulsia, a distant world settled nine hundred years earlier and forgotten. On the way, Karff deals with some internal politicking (notably involving his commanding officer General Bloyer), but survives with his reputation intact.

Once at Malusia, the story takes a left hand turn. Karff maneuvers himself and a picked crew into scouting the planet on behalf of the refugee Imperial fleet. Malusia, it turns out, was settled by people who made anti-government sentiment into a religious tradition. It is, at first glance, a functioning anarchy. On further investigation, it turns out that Malusia is rigidly controlled by the "Great Holders" who have an iron clad grip on the food supply of the planet, and run just enough of a government to keep a substantial government from forming (a "minarchy"). Gilliland demonstrates quite convincingly that an anarchy will devolve swiftly into a de facto dictatorship, or collapse. The Great Holder's control of Malusia is predicated upon their control of the planet's food supply via a space elevator, and Karff uses the technology at his disposal to destabilize the situation, and a government quickly forms.

In the midst of this, the pursuing rebel fleet arrives at Malusia, driving the Imperial fleet off, and leaving Karff's tiny force behind as the sole voice of the Empire. Karff adjusts his strategy as the rebels try to conquer Malusia (for almost no apparent reason). Eventually, with Malusian politics fundamentally changed by their actions, Karff and his crew sacrifice themselves to destroy one of the rebel's space cruisers.

Fundamentally, the story is mostly a framework to explore the implications of what it would take to create a stable anarchy, and what sort of society would result. Under Gilliland's withering eye, the result is not pretty. Those who are devotees of anarchist philosophy will no doubt find this book unsettling (and will probably vociferously argue that somehow Gilliland got it wrong), but everyone with an interest in political systems will probably find something interesting in the book.

The only weakness I found in the book was that the various Imperial figures plotting around Karff seemed to lack much in the way of motivation, or at least their motivations were poorly explained. They also repeatedly claim (as do the Great Holders who meet him) that Karff is "not a team player" - but never explain why other than the fact that he is competent at his job. I suppose those comments are supposed to show that the figures arrayed against Karff are incompetent or foolish, but all they did for me was raise questions about Karff. Karff's unswerving loyalty to the Empire, despite its mistreatment of him and his crew, is also left unexplained.

In the end, the book is an interesting mix of pulpy action and serious political thinking, and well worth reading.… (mere)

I read this book in an exercise of not judging a book by its cover (and to get the book with the most embarrassingly ridiculous title off my shelves). Unfortunately, you may feel free to judge this book by its cover.

The other unfortunate thing about this book is that I didn't realize before starting it that this is the third book in a series. Perhaps some of what was lacking in this book is explained in the first two books in the series, but I'll never know as I have no intention of ever reading them.

This story started out with a whole lot of characters with unrememberable names doing things for unknown reasons. It skipped back and forth between different plots confusingly. I had difficulty paying attention and found myself thinking about other things as I was reading this. Eventually, though, things settled down, plots were thinned out, characters were killed off and it became easier to follow what was supposed to be happening. I don't know if it was really because the writing got better or just because I got a little more used to it.

Throughout the book, though, the writing was clunky, the plot was disjointed, and the characters were shallow. Plot lines were dropped at seeming random and characters would suddenly do things that previously there was no suggestion they ever might do.

The best I can say for this book is that halfway through I still wanted to finish it, although if I had somehow lost my copy, I wouldn't have bothered to pick up a new one.… (mere)