This three-volume story is a future history that put me in mind of Cordwainer Smith’s work, and part of the Polesotechnic League series of stories. It’s “written” by an an alien historian and details episodes in the history of the League leading up to the founding of a joint colony between his species and Humans. The first and third of the three volumes consisted of short stories while the second consists of one single story featuring the recurring character Nicholas van Rijn.
I enjoyed this book quite a lot. There’s a lot of detail in the future history and the stories themselves are interesting, spanning a period of human exploration and expansion, and then consolidation and capitalism before it finally starts to collapse into an empire. It’s pretty short and easy to read.
