The Course of Empire

I picked this up almost on a whim, after finishing one of the author's previous books (1632; my review). I was interested by this one's political situation, and saved it for a very long plane trip. Overall, Course of Empire was worth it. The plot concerns the aftermath of humanity's conquest by aliens. Our species is more or less subjugated, but the occupying aliens, the Jao, are having political problems. Their control is uneven, and a terrible alien race is approaching. Humans and Jao struggle to outmaneuver each other and to prepare for the third party's attack. There's much to like in Course of Empire. The two major alien species are very well realized, having complexity and actual alien-ness. The Jao culture is interesting, especially their elaborate body language system. The depiction of humanity is fairly convincing, complete with multiple types of collaboration, civilizational despair, a useless resistance, and an undying love of blowing things up. Characters are good, serving both to illuminate social and political elements while being at least basically convincing as individuals. The first half of the book is somewhat slow, at least in part because of world-building and setting up many plot pieces for events to come. Flint and Wentworth repeat themselves, trying to show us different parties' perspectives on shared experiences, but falling into redundancy too often (is this an artifact of the collaborative writing process?). We see one of the Jao heroes investigating human military prowess far too many times. Yet the second half of the book kicks into high gear, activating many of the laboriously set up pieces (why spend so much time on submarines? ah...), then backing up to shed new light on earlier developments. A few aspects bugged me besides the repetition. The human plots are far too American. We don't visit any other country, nor do the Jao, at least in plot and information terms. One other part of the world appears towards the end, simply as an atrocity target lacking any human detail. Many discussions of history ensue, courtesy of a history prof and some well-read aliens, but they tend to focus on the English-speaking world (19th-century India being the main subject, but wholly from the British point of view). At worst it echoes Independence Day, which is unfortunate. Human culture is a weak part of the book. For example, there isn't enough about humans willingly collaborating with the Jao, and changing culture to reflect that; we seem too untransformed for my belief, after some tantalizing hints early in the book. Flint and Wentworth emphasize military details, and underplay nearly everything else: language, literature, mass media, politicking, sexuality. Human-on-human racism pops up a couple of times in a perfunctory manner. And yet I appreciated the way Course of Empire resisted other cliches. There's a villainous and self-defeating Jao overlord who seemed way too simplistic, until depth appeared at the end. The human resistance movement is simply pointless, and never becomes the heroic focus. The Jao and Ekhat are not Star Trek: Net Generation humans-with-forehead-latex, but actually different civilizations. Military battles are well described, but not fetishized. The Jao learn to appreciate typical human wackiness, but humanity shows signs of evolving to embrace alien attributes - an all too rare sf achievement. I also enjoyed the space opera dimensions, which might lead me to read the sequel. Recommended, given my grumbling caveats.