The first book in the completed Dread Empire's Fall trilogy, followed by The Sundering and Conventions of War.

All will must bend to the perfect truth of The Praxis

For millennia, the Shaa have subjugated the universe, forcing the myriad sentient races to bow to their joyless tyranny. But the Shaa will soon be no more. The dread empire is in its rapidly fading twilight, and with its impending fall comes the promise of a new galactic order . . . and bloody chaos.

A young Terran naval officer marked by his lowly birth, Lt. Gareth Martinez is the first to recognize the insidious plot of the Naxid -- the powerful, warlike insectoid society that was enslaved before all others -- to replace the masters’ despotic rule with their own. Barely escaping a swarming surprise attack, Martinez and Caroline Sula, a pilot whose beautiful face conceals a deadly secret, are now the last hope for freedom for every being who ever languished in Shaa chains -- as the interstellar battle begins against a merciless foe whose only perfect truth is annihilation.

"The Rift would be a very good beach book, if you could put it down long enough to get into the water." —— The San Diego Union Tribune

FRACTURE LINES PERMEATE THE CENTRAL UNITED STATES.  Some comprise the New Madrid fault, the most dangerous earthquake zone in the world.  Other fracture lines are social—— economic, religious, racial, and ethnic.  

What happens when they all crack at once?

Caught in the disaster as cities burn and bridges tumble, young Jason Adams finds himself adrift on the Mississippi with African-American engineer Nick Ruford.  A modern-day Huck and Jim, they spin helplessly down the river and into the widening faults in American society, encountering violence and hope, compassion and despair, and the primal wilderness that threatens to engulf not only them, but all they love...

" A breakout book that you'll swear the author lived" —— SF Age

"I don't like disaster novels. I would not have even glanced at The Rift if it weren't backed by Walter Jon Williams' reputation for excellence. And I definitely would not have kept reading if Williams hadn't demonstrated on every page that he deserves his reputation. The result? I was so engrossed in—— and engaged by ——The Rift that I forgot that I don't like disaster novels. This book is an impressive achievement.”
 —— Stephen R. Donaldson, New York Times bestselling author of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

"The Rift is bloody wonderful! Williams brings an historic disaster back for an encore and metaphorically flattens it again. This is the stuff for which sleep is lost--and awards are made." —— Dean Ing

"The Rift shakes up the world like it's never been shaken before." —— Fred Saberhagen

"[For fans of the disaster novel] Williams delivers the requisite thrills and setpieces—— but he also, to paraphrase Conrad, offers a bit of that truth for which they forgot to ask." —— Locus

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 the 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 that 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.

Following The Praxis, Walter Jon Williams’ critically-acclaimed mix of space opera and military science fiction, the conflict grows for the fate of humanity…and the universe.

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.

At last, the climactic final episode of the Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy--what started with The Praxis and The Sundering comes to the brilliant conclusion in Walter Jon William's epic space adventure.

Working on opposite sides of the galaxy--one in deep space, the other undercover on an occupied planet--and haunted by personal ghosts, Captain Gareth Martinez and Lieutenant Lady Caroline Sula fight to save the Empire from the vicious, alien Naxid. In a desperate, audacious bid to stop the Naxid fleet, Martinez makes a move that could win the war...and lose his career. Meanwhile, Sula’s guerilla tactics may not be enough to stop the Naxid, until she tries one deadly, final gambit.

And make sure to see what happens after, in the first new Praxis novel in ten years, The Accidental War, available Fall 2018!

Earth lies prostrate beneath the lash of the Orbital powers, and Earth’s Balkanized nations have no choice but to let the Orbitals plunder their remaining wealth. Below the zone of Orbital control, buttonheads, panzerjocks, dirtgirls, and hustlers scramble for their ticket out of the gravity well.

But now, if the criminal underworld and the guerrilla underground can join forces, there is a chance to shift the balance of power— in a war fought on the ground by hardwired commandos, in the air by high-flying deltajocks, and by genius hackers in the neural interface.

As Roger Zelazny said, “Hardwired is a tough, sleek juggernaut of a story, punctuated by strobe light movements, coursing to the wail of jets and the twang of steel guitars— glittering, nasty, and noble— and told in a style perfectly suiting its content. It has all of my favorite things— blood, love, fire, hate and a high ideal or two. I wish I’d written this one.”

The Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of this cyberpunk classic includes essays by the author devoted to the origin of the novel, the unexpected source of the term “panzerboy,” and an amused guide through some of the oddities of the first German edition.

“Williams' use of language is as explosive and as techno-tinged as the world he describes. Reading the book is like taking a jet ride across a futuristic America, with acceleration forcing you back in your seat all the way.”

Rockland Courier-Gazette

“Cowboy is no Rambo; he is a thoughtful, intelligent hero. He and Sarah are two of the many good things about HARDWIRED. Another is the world they inhabit--- an incredibly detailed future of personality transfers, bizarre drugs, cybernetic implants, and complex political and economic power maneuvers . . . It is one of the best SF novels I have read in years; I heartily recommend it.”

Fantasy Review

“The story moves with the speed of a hovercraft, the climax has all the action and excitement of Star Wars and the ending has a delightful twist.”

Providence Sunday Journal

“Hardwired is his best book to date...as the parallel plotlines of a hotshot contraband flyer and a sleek bodyguard/assassin develop and gradually intersect, the book takes on a life of its own.”

Locus

Having offended her superiors by winning a battle without permission, Caroline Sula has been posted to the planet Earth, a dismal backwater where careers go to die. But Sula has always been fascinated by Earth history, and she plans to reward herself with a long, happy vacation amid the ancient monuments of humanity's home world.

Sula may be an Earth history buff, but there are aspects of her own history she doesn't want known. Exposure is threatened when an old acquaintance turns up unexpectedly. Someone seems to be forging evidence that would send her to prison. And all that is before someone tries to kill her.

If she's going to survive, Sula has no choice but to make some history of her own.

Reviews:

"Well told with story plot, well-drawn characters, and excellent wordsmithing...It feels like Williams is having a great time with Impersonations." — Locus

"Readers will savor this intriguing glimpse into the life of a woman who struggles with her own identity and the price of her action." — Publishers Weekly

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Following The Accidental War, the second book of a brand-new series set in the Praxis—an epic mix of space opera and military science fiction, from a grand master of science fiction, Walter Jon Williams.

The Praxis, the empire of now extinct Shaa, has again fallen into civil war, with desperate and outnumbered humans battling several alien species for survival. Leading the human forces are star-crossed lovers Gareth Martinez and Caroline Sula, who must find a way to overcome their own thorny personal history to defeat the aliens and assure humanity’s survival.

But even if the human fleet is victorious, the divisions fracturing the empire may be too wide to repair, as battles between politicians, the military, and fanatics who want to kill every alien threaten to further tear the empire apart. While Martinez and Sula believe they have the talent and tactics to defeat an overwhelming enemy, what will prevent their fellow humans from destroying themselves?

Little Jamie lives with his family in an eerily perfect environment, entertained by characters from literature, sung to sleep at night by the Woman in the Moon. But cracks begin to appear in Jamie’s world that reveal rifts within his family, and he begins to see the terrifying reality behind the walls of his life, and to understand that perfection has its price . . .

"Knight Moves uses an unmatched cast of characters, human and otherwise, to tell an intriguing story."
–-- Fred Saberhagen, author of the Book of Swords Trilogy

Brig of War (originally published as The Raider) is one of the historical novels with which Walter Jon Williams began his career.