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Emperor of Dawn | Rating | |
| A | |||
| Steve White | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | Prince of Sunset, Emperor of Dawn | ||
Over four hundred years after Basil Castellan's doomed attempt to reunite the Empire of Man, the task is finally done. But it is not to last. After a failed attempt on his life, the Eperor proves to have an insurmountable character weakness: cowardace. He flees to a distant star system for his own safety, leaving the rest of the Empire to be ruled by sector administrators that quickly turn warlord, fracturing the Empire once more. One of those leaders is particularly competent and loyal to the Empire, and sets himself the task of bringing back a single, unified government. But his eldest son is jealous of his more compentent kin and gullible besides. If the manipulations of sycophants are not halted, he may bring the whole enterprise crashing down.
This book is in many ways exactly like the last one, only better. This is largely because the most significant problem of that book, that of exposition interrupting the flow of the story, is mostly absent from this one. Exposition isn't gone entirely, of course - who would want that? - and it still does interrupt the flow occasionally. But only occasionally, and not for very long. By and large, it was integrated into the rest of the novel very nicely.
If this book has a flaw, it is that some of the main characters' ties to the characters in the last book is unneccessary. Since they don't even know of it themselves for a significant portion of the book, it doesn't affect their initial actions, and by the time they learn of it it only serves to confirm that what they were going to do was the right choice in the first place. It could have been entirely eliminated without any real effect on the plot.
But since it is used so little, I also consider this practially a quibble. The story doesn't depend on that relationship, true, but it is just as good with it as it would have been without it. The book largely rides on the characters and how they interact as they try to pull things back together - interspersed, of course, with a couple of space battles. Both aspects are done very competently. Indeed, very well. The people felt real enough to empathise with, and the battles were gripping drama.
In many ways, I feel this book is what the last one should have been. I feel it serves as a more than adequate sequel and conclusion to the story begun in Prince of Sunset. It also stands pretty well on its own - although readers clearly will not quite get the full implications of some of the statements referring to events in Basil's time. At any rate, this is an excellent read, well worth a the time to read it.
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