Gateway To Empire

by David Drazul

It's been two years since the Armistice Day Ceremony bombing. The Imperial Expeditionary Force is hard at work building the Hyperspace Conduit Gate in orbit over Earth. Upon completion, it will connect Earth with the rest of the Krendorian Empire. But not everyone thinks this is a good idea.

Factions in the fleet and on Earth seek to wrest control of the gate for personal gain, while others seek to destroy it and keep Earth isolated from the galaxy at large.

It falls onto Aaron Osborne, Reekinizi, and Jeekyri, heroes of the Armistice Day Ceremony investigation, to navigate a maze of treachery and deceit to defuse the situation and prevent another war.

227 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 24, 2025

About the author

Before I started writing, I was a reader. I came to Goodreads as a reader, but since then, I've become a writer as well. But the way Goodreads handles these things, you're kind of one or the other. If I had to do it all over again, I think I would've formed two separate accounts. But since it's too late for that, engage with me as a fellow reader or as a writer.

Anyway, here's my "new and improved" bio:

I live with my wife and kids among the foothills of the Berkshires. I like to grow plants from seeds obtained from produce and cuttings from geraniums. I like to observe the birds that come to our three feeders and other wildlife that stroll through our yard. I occasionally brew a batch of beer or note the passing of planets overhead and remember when stars were more than a wisp of light in the sky.

I enjoy writing and wish I did it more. But I seem to be enjoying playing TTRPGs online a bit too much.

Reviews

[Richard Abbott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gateway To Empire and Armistice Day definitely stand as a pair, and so I am talking about both. However, their actual appearance on the book scene differs by as much as 16 years - 2009 for Armistice Day and 2025 for Gateway to Empire. It is no small feat that David Drazul has made them dovetail so smoothly together. For simplicity, I'm going to cover both books together in this review.
I read Gateway to Empire as soon as it appeared this year (2025) and thoroughly enjoyed it - it can definitely stand alone as a novel if you haven't read Armistice Day, as enough back-story is dropped in just when you need it. However, I realised during that reading that I wanted to go back to the earlier book and remind myself of the details of the plot there, as inevitably with the passage of time some of it had drifted away.
The basic situation is that Earth has been contacted by an alien empire, consisting of a small number of races who have established for themselves particular niches within the operation of the whole. In the first book this is taken for granted, but in the second, a certain amount of internal questioning and faction-forming is beginning to take place within the Empire. There is a definite sense that the status quo, and the traditional roles of each race, are about to be challenged and shaken up.
Armistice Day takes place not long after a major military intervention by the Empire to eliminate what they perceive as unstable elements within Earth's population. At the same time, as though by coincidence, other parts of the world have been wracked by natural disasters. The armistice day of the title is intended to be a celebration of a new era of peace and reconstruction, but not all parties are agreed that this is a good thing...
Gateway to Empire is set a few years after this, when the promised renewed prosperity is starting to become apparent, and the Gateway of the title (a portal to other parts of the Empire) is about to be completed. Once again, not everyone agrees that this is a good thing...
As I was reading, I thought that Gateway to Empire was a shorter book, but in fact it is slightly longer - I think that my assumption came from the fact that the plot, while undeniably more complex and multi-layered than that of Armistice Day, is more tightly written, and (at least for me) carried me along more rapidly. I suppose this is inevitable - Armistice Day introduced the basic scenario, whereas Gateway to Empire is able to take certain things as written and propel you more rapidly into the action.
Both books are action-focused, but along the way there are opportunities to consider what kind of future different people might be wanting. When does security turn into passive submission? Should justice for individual wrongs be publicly enacted, even if this threatens a wider status quo? What is the relationship between individual good and social good?
In short, this pair of books makes for a good, fast read, especially if you like military action SF. It is not clear to me if there will be a third volume coming along at some stage - there's certainly ample material in the world that has been depicted to support another book. If so, hopefully we won't have so long to wait this time!