Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Despite everything, its fun., 27 Jul 2002
By A Customer
...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!
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25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great start for an epic story, 22 Sep 2003
As you start to read the first few chapters, you realise that a foundation is being laid for a huge tale.
There are a lot of characters on seemingly seperate paths that begin to converge further into the book. To some extent this is both it's strongest and weakest point - where the complex threads are woven together to produce a story of intrigue, thrills, shocks, outrage and despair, there are a few too many characters to follow in the kind of depth that perhaps you would prefer.
Probably the best characterisation and story line is that of the two xeno-archeologists, studying the remnants of the lost, space-faring Klikiss civilisation. Perhaps the trees are the worst.Earth is the centre of a vast inter-planetary empire that is voraciously gobbling up as much free cosmic real estate it can lay it's hands on. It can only do this because of a seemingly benevolent contribution of technology by the much older and techologically stagnating race, the Ildirans. Having discovered some impressive technology from the long dead Klikiss civilisation, the humans decide to "press it and see". The consequences of this is that it provokes a war with a species of highly sophisticated and very dangerous aliens that no one knew even existed. Throw in conspiracies, love, tragedy, treachery, mystery, tension and massive military actions and you have a great yarn on your hands.
There are some sections you need to plough through but more still that just can't be put down - you have to keep on reading.
The book ends with an "arghhhh!" that leaves you feeling a bit gutted. I want to read the next volume straight away!.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
light weight but enjoyable saga, 12 Jul 2002
By A Customer
He is going to be judged by his previous books for Dune,Star Wars etc but I think Anderson has come up with his own original universe. Some very original ideas - green priests and the world trees used for instant communication. The politics are beautifully crafted as are the darker elements. Where it does faulter a bit is characters and the plotlines are sometimes a bit drawn out. Easy read - not for those who like the heavy weights of space sagas but never the less very enjoyable read
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