Jefferson P. Swycaffer

I just reread this volume so that I could finally go back and finish the two remaining books in this trilogy. I started to read Swycaffer at some point after playing the Traveller Role-Playing Game where his first fiction efforts were based on.

I gave this book a seven out of ten and when rereading, I will stick to that. There is a plot twist here that is hard to believe, that a university team and a merchant team think a first contact mission is well within their scope as the plot develops. show more Salvage seems to motivate over common sense.

Then we have the plausibility of a ruler eliminating all knowledge upon his death. Hard enough to do when the matter is just contained to a small land area on a planet, as we know from history, so playing that out over the course of a galactic empire would make the odds for success so minuscule that I do not think we can count the number of zeroes after the decimal place in our lifetimes.

But when re suspend our disbelief, then we can sit back and enjoy the ride. show less

This is part of a trilogy that looks like low standard Sci-fi adventure. But it isn't. This is Swycaffer. The discovery of an ancient Empire station brings to light more of the Origins of the Humans of the Concordat, and plumbs the question and assumptions of Slavery and Freedom.

The Empire of Archive was felled by Rebellion. What arose was the Praesidium. Just Read it. This book and this author takes Sci-Fi and brings it into the realm of FICTION. The Concordat is NOT about Technology and spaceships-- it's about People, Power, Politics and Questions about the Balance between Autocratic Power and Individual Freedom.

Ignore the cover-- it says NOTHING about this book. The final in the Tales of the Concordat Series, it is about the past-- the End Days of the Empire, and the Present, the Praesidium of the Concordat and the attempt by one man to change the course of history. . .with an Opera.