Book: Empire from the Ashes Book 1-Mutineers’ Moon

I read this in 2022 and now picking the book back up to finish book 3. The concept really intrigued me and I was wondering where Mr. Weber was going to go with it. I have read enough of the Honorverse series that I kind of get Weber style – epic but still personal. I don’t always get the military lingo but I am catching on. I like military sci-fi to a degree but I also love his epic stories and his world building. This has a lot of both and I was really drawn in from the start.

My main complaints is with most of his books and other authors as well (GRRM for instance) – too many characters to keep up with. I tend to read slow and a trilogy like this may take me a few years to read. So I blame myself more than anyone for this issue. It’s just hard to keep up with so many characters from book to book. Books like this need a character glossary for reference (or a good fandom wikia.)

This is a pretty epic story because it starts with an extremely epic premise – the moon isn’t a moon; it’s an ancient self-aware battleship that’s been waiting for it’s crew to return. This concept of the moon being a megastructure is not something new but how he handles it is very unique and fresh. I don’t want to give too much away but the first book wastes no time getting into the story. The ship has a name – Dahak – and represents an ancient empire that is presumed dead. The space battleship has been up there for thousands of years because it lost it’s crew in a mutiny and the ship has been on lock down ever since.

Imperials as they are called are not much different from humans. I relate them to the Ancients from Stargate: Atlantis in some ways, but not originally from Earth. Those that integrated onto Earth could be at the root of elf or giant legends. They took on roles of Egyptian Gods in the early years and influenced human evolution as well as human culture. The Empire is an ancient stellar confederation the size of which you never really get a sense of but you guess it was pretty big. They were at war with some unknown alien race when the mutiny happened and no one knows what has happened since.

The main character – Colin McIntyre – is the astronaut that stumbled across the ship Dahak, It opened up because McIntyre just so happened to be the descendant of the original captain. These genetic traces allow the ship to grant Colin a series of upgrades to his body in order to communicate and control the ship. He quickly learns the full story – as far as Dahak knows – of the Empire and the mutiny – which amazingly even after thousands of years, is still being fought on Earth.

There are two sides to this mutiny – loyalists and the mutineers. The bulk of the book deals with the war between them but also the changes to the world as the realities of an ancient empire begins to change society. It is not totally public until the second book but a lot happens that the governments can not simply lie away in the first book. That is part of the epic story telling that Weber is able to tell. While he doesn’t glaze over it, the changes in society that sure to come slowly begin to seep into the story. By the second book, you are dealing with international reactions to everything and that makes for a great read.

This was a great start to the series and you already know there is more to tell when you reach the end. Where is the Empire now? What happened since Dahak took orbit around Earth? Did the war end? Was the enemy defeated? This leads into the second book. This was a great book, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It has a Stargate SG-1/Stargate Atlantis feel to it but turned up to 11. I enjoyed the characters and you really learn to hate the enemy in this one. There is some real dark stuff in this that clearly defines the good guys and the bad guys. It was a fun read.