Hidden Empire (Saga of Seven Suns) [Hardcover]

After some of the reviews that I read, I expected a lot more.

660 pages, but very little happens - I thought there would be more resolution in the last 50 pages, but the book stopped abruptly - the last 50 pages turned out to be appendices and adverts.

115 chapters, but you lose an average of one page at the beginning and end of each chapter, so the average chapter length is less than 5 pages -not a lot of room for any real development of either the plot or the characters.

The chapters flit from one character to another, and many of them seem to have very little to do with the main story.

The first real action takes place on page 193 (by which time most good authors would have told a complete story!). So then there is the mystery of who is attacking and why. Sadly it is all very obvious, so when, finally, one of the characters states the answer on page 556 it is a tremendous anti-climax.

I'll stick with Peter F. Hamilton for my space epics! Life is too short to read any more volumes of this series.

This is turgid stuff. And the more you read it the worse it seems to get. Anderson has written a science fiction that is more like a 1960s space opera than the true science fiction works of Asimov, Clark and Heinlein. In this world the English speaking interbreeding aliens sometimes have some special force integrating them, but not always.

The writing is dreadful and monotonous and character development is so inconsequential that I now, mere months after reading this book, cannot think of any important character name, nor anything worth bothering about them. I simply lacked any involvement in this work.

How this should be spun out to 7 books, I do not know. I think the author should concentrate on one good book before attempting such a long series.

This is a book to make you embarrassed to read science fiction. Needless to say I will not be bothering with the sequels (despite the shameless way this book stops mid story in an attempt to force you on).

...space opera it is - sadly, Night's Dawn it isn't.
Anderson starts off well. He has obviously put a lot of thought into the creation of his universe. There are some quite ingenious races and ideas: a race of humans ("Therons") who can communicate telepathically through a symbiotic relationship with alien trees; a race of aliens ("Ildirans") who have similar powers through their emperor. Other concepts are more mundane (not to say derivative), such as a dead alien race whose archaeological artefacts hold the key to some promising technological advances; mysterious alien robots who you just know are going to turn out to be bad guys and worst of all, comic-book, stereotyped space gypsies, the "Roamers".
There are numerous sub-plots. The archaeologists researching the dead race; the human political chairman manipulating events from behind the scenes, whilst the King is a mere figurehead; the Navy chasing pirates; Theron priests spreading their sentient trees to other planets. In it's multiplicity of sub-plots, Hidden Empire wears it's debt to Night's Dawn clearly on it's sleeve.
On the surface it all sounds good.
Sadly, where Anderson drops the ball is in his characterisation, pacing and dialogue.
The characters all tend to be two-dimensional. There are numerous races and factions, but every Roamer is painted exactly the same as every other Roamer - every Theron is a mirror image of every other Theron - every human-built robot is a C3-P0 clone (unsurprisingly, Anderson has written some Star Wars novels).
The subplots all seem to be very hurried. Whereas Hamilton's Night's Dawn spent a large proportion of the first book setting the story of a doomed colony in beautiful detail, Anderson attempts to gloss over large aspects of his subplots in order to get to the inevitable war. Because of this, we never get to really empathise with any of his characters.
But by far the worst aspect of this book is the dialogue. It is embarrassing. I literally cringed at times. Most of the characters speak in continual rhetorical questions and spend an awful lot of time telling other characters things that they (and we) already know. Particularly tiresome are the Roamers. It seems that whenever two or more Roamers get together, they spend most of their time telling each other "We are Roamers, we must always bear that burden with stoicism but yet hold joy in our hearts". Yes, they really do talk like that!
And it gets worse. The bearer of bad tidings rushes into a Roamer conference and declares "Oh! But I have terrible news!" One can almost hear him swoon! The Admiral of the Earth's battlefleet calls his men to arms with the immortal cry "All ships! All commanders! Fire at will! Let's get those b*******!" Come back Captain Picard, all is forgiven!
Anderson also displays a dreadful lack of scientific knowledge. One of his skymines, floating in the atmosphere of a gas giant planet has an observation deck which is open to the atmosphere - air which the crew can breathe! Add to that a couple of plot holes the size of New Mexico (the Ildiran leader knows the events of the first few chapters will spark an interstellar war that could result in the extinction of his race and the humans, yet he still allows the events to take place. The humans cannot fight the new enemy, yet the very thing that sparked the war is the one thing against which the enemy has no defence) and it all starts to look pretty dire.
But happily, it's not!
Despite my (many) reservations, I did enjoy this book. As a previous reviewer has stated, it's a fun albeit lightweight read. Although quite a hefty tome, running to more than 650 pages, it took me less than three days to read. I found it to be a welcome break from the likes of Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds, which has been my preference of late. The scope is wide and the overall plot is quite compelling.
The book *is* space opera, but think more along the lines of EE "Doc" Smith, rather than Peter F Hamilton. Would I recommend it? If you are looking for a SF classic, then no. But if you don't set your expectations too high and are willing to forgive the plot holes and execrable dialogue, then yes, I believe you will enjoy it.
As for my part, I *will* be buying the second book of the saga when it is published, so make of that what you will!