History Literature / TheSuccessionDuology

''Succession'' consists of the two novels, ''The Risen Empire'' and ''The Killing of Worlds'', by Creator/ScottWesterfeld. They take place several millennia into the future, when humanity has spread and altered itself vastly.

As two of Westerfeld's earliest novels, it's easy to see where inspiration and concepts in his later works came from. It is in need of WikiMagic.

* TheCaptain: [[CaptainObvious Captain Laurent Zai]].

''Succession'' consists of the two novels, ''The Risen Empire'' and ''The Killing of Worlds'', by ScottWesterfeld. They take place several millennia into the future, when humanity has spread and altered itself vastly.

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''Sucession'' consists of the two novels, ''The Risen Empire'' and ''The Killing of Worlds'', by ScottWesterfeld. They take place several millenia into the future, when humanity has spread and altered itself vastly.

* AttackDrone: Virtually all craft besides full-sized capital ships are remote-piloted or AI-controlled drones. They're also rather small -- "intelligencer" survellence craft are comperable in size and weight to ''a speck of dust'', while FTL-comm equipped forward command drones (necessary to eliminate light-speed lag during battles taking place over interplanetary distances) are roughly the size of a large coffin. Also notable are "flockers", finger-sized AI-controlled kinetic-kill missiles that are rather dumb individually, but are deployed in swarms numbering in the ''thousands'', allowing them to form very clever democratic intelligence networks.

** Laurent and Nara are on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum, and his crewmembers refuse to even countenance the possibility of a relationship. [[spoiler: For once, a HighHeelFaceTurn does not take place- instead Laurent is the one to switch sides. When their relationship is revealed, at least some of Laurent's fellow officers approve.]]

* AerithAndBob: Names like Laurent and Anastasia juxtaposed with those like Katherie and Nara. Like in {{Uglies}}, Westerfeld plays with these - people with more traditional and 'gray' backgrounds have more normal names, while people who are more radical politically or socially have more exotic ones.

* UnusualUserInterface: Most military officers and political workers have forms of surgical synesthesia and in some cases eyescreens like those later seen in ''{{Uglies}}''. The surgery to give people this synesthesia can cause strange side effects, like Oxham's empathy.

'''Sucession''' consists of the two novels, ''The Risen Empire'' and ''The Killing of Worlds'', by ScottWesterfeld. They take place several millenia into the future, when humanity has spread and altered itself vastly.

The Risen Empire are made up of the Eighty Worlds, planets ruled by the Risen Emperor, who found a way to become immortal in order to save his twelve-year-old sister. This defeat of the Old Enemy, death, led to his becoming the ruler of the empire along the Senate with his sister, the Child Empress, for 1600 years; anyone who is "elevated" (i.e. considered worthy) who dies cleanly can be given the symbiant, [[ResurrectionImmortality which returns them to life]]. Of the other civilizations, the most prominent is the Rix Cult, cyborg women devoted to spreading compound minds (meaning intelligent AI that takes over anything electronic it can get access). The Empire and the Rix are often at odds with each other, as most of the Empire sees intelligent machines as unnatural.

''Succession'' consists of two novels, ''The Risen Empire'' and ''The Killing of Worlds'', by ScottWesterfeld. The series takes place several millenia into the future, when humanity has spread and altered itself vastly.

The Risen Empire are eighty planets (the Eighty Worlds) ruled by the Risen Emperor, a man who found a way to become immortal in order to save his twelve-year-old sister. This defeat of the Old Enemy, death, led to his becoming the ruler of the empire along the Senate with his sister, the Child Empress, for 1600 years; anyone who is 'elevated' (considered worthy of reanimation) who dies cleanly can be given the symbiant, which brings the dead person back to life. Other civilizations also exist; the most prominent is the Rix Cult, which is a race of cyborg women devoted to spreading compound minds (intelligent AI that takes over anything electronic it can get access to). The Empire and the Rix are often at odds with each other, as most of the Empire sees intelligent machines as unnatural.

Two of Westerfeld's first published novels, it's easy to see where inspiration and concepts in his later works came from. It is in need of WikiMagic.

** Rana and the [[spoiler: Rix commando]].

* AIIsACrapshoot: Played with. The AIs are hostile to the protagonists, but only because the Risen Empire itself is violently opposed to compound minds because the Emperor ''really'' hates the idea of competition.

''The Risen Empire'' begins with the Rix taking the Child Empress hostage in order to spread a compound mind on her home planet, Legis XV. Captain Laurent Zai, a war hero piloting a prototype reconnaissance starship in the Legis system, is commanded to save her and the political prisoners also trapped with her. These hostages are so important that any of their deaths on Zai's part will lead to an Error of Blood, a ritual suicide without reanimation for not completing the Emperor's wishes. Complicating things on Zai's end further is his relationship with Nara Oxham, a senator who he's fallen in love with and who is openly against reanimation and the Emperor's rule. The plot thickens through many desperate twists and battles as Oxham and Zai try to keep the empire and each other from falling apart. The books were originally meant to be one book but were split for publishing reasons, so ''The Risen Empire'' just kind of ends; ''The Killing of Worlds'' picks up directly where it leaves off.

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Averted for the most part. Westerfeld takes time needed to travel and space distances into consideration, with travel between the distant Legis system and the Empire's central planet, Home, taking ten years in absolute time. The series also has two different scales, one the vast reaches of space and the other on the level of nanotechnology.

* BulletTime: One of Zhai's marines has reflexes in the top hundredth-percentile for the ''entire human race'', so he spends his entire life like this.

* DatingCatwoman:
** Laurent and Nara are on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum, and his crewmembers refuse to even countenance the possibility of a relationship. [[spoiler: For once, a HighHeelFaceTurn does not take place- instead Laurent is the one to switch sides.]]
** Rana and the [[spoiler: Rix commando]].