Quote:
Originally Posted by jbcohen
The Laiden Universe will be up shortly on my reading list will someone please set the back ground of the Laiden Universe. Here are some questions that will help show what I mean by the back ground. Does this series take place on one planet (as David Weber's Safehold series does) or do the characters travel between planets (as does the characters in David Weber's Honorverse)? Are humans masters of the universe (as they are in the Warhammer 40k books) or are we conquered people (as we are in Eric Flint's Crucible of Empire)?
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Taking all the books of the series as a whole:
- The stories are set on various planets, but the "homeworld" of the series is Liad, a non-Terran world. Space travel and trade is normal and unremarkable. The series isn't hung up on providing hard science explanations for why things work they way they do (no pages and pages of tech details like in the Weber books) but the actions and activities are presented in a believable fashion so the reader doesn't get hung up on incongruities.
- Humans seem to be the prevalent species but there are three main subgroups - Liaden, Terran and Xtrang.
- Think of Liadens as the aristocratic type - they exist within a well-defined social code, and are organized into familial clans. The leader of the clan is called the "delm" and he controls the lives within the clan. Liad is a modern society.
- Think of Terrans as the scrappy mongrels of the universe, consisting of all the folks who are not Liaden or Liaden-affliliated. They probably all originated from Earth sometime in the past. Terrans have separate cultures but in the whole are a modern society, but the degrees of civilized behavior vary - especially in comparison to the Liadens.
- Think of the Xtrang as a warrior caste. We know that they are human, warlike, and feared by everyone, but we don't know why their culture is driven to conquer. They are the bogeyman to Liadens and Terrans alike but for the most part have only a peripheral role. They are a modern, militaristic society.
- The universe in which the majority of the books are set is, it appears, not necessarily the one where the ancestors of its current residents resided. Scientists are postulating that there might be common ties between the three human groups; there is strong resistance to that line of thought on Liad.
- There aren't a lot of the typical scifi non-humanoid aliens running around. No folks with cat-heads, for example. But the non-humans that there are, are a sheer delight - the Clutch Turtles, the Tree, Jeeves, for example.
- The points of intersection between the Terrrans and the Liadens seem to be the Trade/Pilot Guilds (self-explanatory), the Juntavas (think galactic crime empire so huge it has its own legal system), and the Liaden Scouts (the folks who are the natural-born explorers and questioners within Liaden society who, as a result, tend to chafe under its Code).