The Accidental War

A Novel of the Praxis

By: Walter Jon Williams

Narrated by: David Drummond

Blending fast-paced military science fiction and space opera, the first volume in a dynamic trilogy from the New York Times best-selling author of The Praxis, set in the universe of his popular and critically acclaimed Dread Empire’s Fall series - a tale of blood, courage, adventure, and battle in which the fate of an empire rests in the hands of a cadre of desperate exiles.

It’s been seven years since the end of the Naxid War. Sidelined for their unorthodox tactics by a rigid, tradition-bound military establishment, Captain Gareth Martinez and Captain Lady Sula are stewing in exile, frustrated and impatient to exercise the effective and lethal skills they were born to use in fighting the enemy.

Yet after the ramshackle empire left by the Shaa conquerors is shaken by a series of hammer blows that threaten the foundations of the commonwealth, the result is a war no one planned, no one expected, and no one knows how to end.

Now, Martinez, Sula, and their confederate Nikki Severin must escape the clutches of their enemies, rally the disorganized elements of the fleet, and somehow restore the fragile peace - or face annihilation at the hands of a vastly superior force.

©2018 Walter Jon Williams (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Surprised their was more

I remember reading the originals back in high school. I was always disappointed their was never more till I read this. It was fantastic made me want to listen to the whole series again.

Try this book out.

Reliving the 2008 financial crisis?

WJ Williams has an entertaining writing style and the narrator did a great job. But this story drags on in the beginning with pedestrian style concerns of everyday life and then a reboot of the 2008 Housing Crisis. The mob scenes attacking “the upper class” smacks of the French Revolution but the wealthy have even fewer weapons and no modern urban flight capability? EVTOL should be a seamless solution with their abundant antimatter energy source. The book gets better toward the end but there’s such a cavalier concern for sentient life when they attack other species.

Great entry in series, poor narration

This is the first book in a new trilogy. The previous trilogy was narrated by Stephen Rudniki who is fabulous. This narrator isn’t great. He has a very robotic quality to his voice and all the female characters sound the same. However, the story and writing is just as good as the previous books and I can’t wait to finish this new series.

Slower - interesting attempt at economics

If you've got this far in the series, you mostly know what to expect here. This one is slower, more developmental time than outcome time, and DOES NOT END IN RESOLUTION. This book leaves the story incomplete without at least one more in the series.

Most ambitious was Willams' attempt to set up the work with a plausible economic disaster. We know it's plausible because he pretty much copied the root causes of the 2008 market crash to do it. That was a complex mess to understand, and Williams was very bold to try to explain the whole thing in terms of his novel setting. It kind of works, but only if you already have a decent understand of the actual 2008 crisis and what caused it. He never actually references those events, he just mimics them.

The narrator sounds like AI

The narrator sounded like bad AI. Just need more words to fill this space to hit minimum.

Lots of setup, not much punch

If you like politics and economics, you'll love it. Otherwise, just a setup for sequel.

so much story

this story of Star crossed lovers just keeps getting better and better. I can hardly wait for the next installment to see who loves whom amd who corals.

the narrator is terrible

it sounds like an 80s computer is reading the story
and it's a shame because it's a very good book

Another great installment!

The story continues from the original trilogy just as exciting as ever. Already on to the next book

Painfully slow

Gave up with two hours left. Ploddingly slow plot involving the confusingly byzantine machinations of a bunch of aristocratic snobs