Book details of 'The Sundering : Dread Empire's Fall (Dread Empires Fall)'

Title	The Sundering : Dread Empire's Fall (Dread Empires Fall)
Author(s)	Walter Jon Williams
ISBN	0380820218
Language	English
Published	February 2004
Publisher	HarperTorch

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Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Once upon a time, a long, long time from now (and far away) there was a great space war. Given that it's a long time from now, it's rather bemusing that technology hasn't advanced very far, aside from discovering traversable wormholes and producing antimatter in commercial quantities. This isn't entirely the fault of human beings, since a mysterious and powerful race has come along and generally interfered with social and technological development, although they now seem to have stepped out for an extinction. But you can forgive a lot to a book which understands that space battles, even those confined to a mere solar system, take place over days, and that the ability to withstand crushing accelerations for long periods of time is what makes the difference. Faster than light communications would certainly help, but that may be too much to ask from the universe. Smarter computers would *definitely* help, and should have been possible. The use and operation of computers in this brave new world is not clearly spelled out, but they seem to run on scripts, rather than machine code. The mysterious and powerful race have ensured that all computers are registered and known, thus fulfilling Microsoft's dreams for Palladium. (Apparently no Linux hackers, or other amateur computer enthusiasts, have survived.) Serious cryptography seems to have been forgotten: there is one reference to the fact that nobody can use cryptography since everyone has powerful computers and can therefore break any ciphers. This indicates that everyone has forgotten that, when computer power increases, you can just increase the key length. The fact that computers are known and registered is used to prove the need for low-tech communications solutions when the bad guys move in and take over the seats of power. However, a few pages later, our merry band of counter-revolutionaries is happily using communications devices that seem to have a lot of computer-related functions (even real-time broadcasts seem to be "store and forward"). Our underground heroine manages to become a fully-fledged intruder in the space of twenty-four hours. Along the way she does learn something that I wish every security professional knew: when you have functional security, you'd better have an assurance activity as well. (Of course, if anyone had put "defence in depth" in place, she'd have been sunk.) copyright Robert M. Slade, 2004
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Book description:

The Dread Empire of the Shaa is no more, following the death of the last oppressor. But freedom remains elusive for the myriad sentient races enslaved for ten centuries, as an even greater terror arises. The Naxids -- a powerful insectoid species themselves subjugated until the recent Shaa demise -- plan to fill the vacuum with their own bloody domination, and have already won a shattering victory with superior force and unimaginable cruelty. But two heroes survived the carnage at Magaria: Lord Gareth Martinez and the fiery, mysterious gun pilot Lady Caroline Sula, whose courageous exploits are becoming legend in the new history of galactic civil war. Yet their cunning, skill, and bravery may be no match for the overwhelming enemy descending upon the loyalist stronghold of Zanshaa, as the horrific battle looms that will determine the structure of the universe -- and who shall live to inhabit it -- for millennia to come.