Hidden Empire

I highly enjoyed this novel, it's a great start to a sci-fi series! You could read my full review/commentary of the book over at my blog (may contain some spoilers): http://www.rulethewaves.net/blog/?p=3077 ( )

I couldn't get past the first 30 or so pages. One cliche after another. ( )

A very average space opera with a story that takes ages to develop. Some of the threads I felt like skipping and it turned out that they didn't contribute anything (at least by the end of the first book).

I can't comment on the plot much because for most of the book nothing significant is going on. Nevertheless, the premise is ok and there is some promise of twists and revelations to come. The book ends more or less mid-sentence. I understand that this is part of a series, but other authors have managed to write a good, self-contained (to a degree) part one to a trilogy or longer series. This one feels more like a 600 page introduction with a teaser for the next book.

The writing is nothing extraordinary but ok nonetheless. I did find the very small chapters distracting since I was constantly switched between characters, planets, etc. At least the number of characters was within reason and I didn't feel lost.

I am thinking of trying the second one, but if it continues like this I will end the series there. ( )

Having never read any epic scfi series I decided to borrow Hidden Empire from my local library on the strengh of the reviews on the cover. Well of course this is just asking for trouble. Lets face it, it's not good for business for a publisher to put the bad reviews on is it!

One of the biggest problems is that Anderson spends far too long introducing new characters without developing a stong narrative alongside. Instead he seems to leave most of the story telling to the last section of the book by which time i have to admit I was too bored to care! This, coupled with his adequate, although rather pedestrian writing style made it hard to read Hidden Empire through to the end. Another problem that I had with the book was the lacklustre characters who never really developed into anything more than scifi stereotypes.

Hidden Empire while not a terrible book is far from brilliant and probably wasn't the best introduction to the scifi epic genre for me. Hopefully I'll have better luck next time. ( )

It took me a while to get into this book. There are a lot of characters and many settings and factions to digest, and much of the book is like setting out pieces on a playing board and reading the instructions before playing a board game. Necessary to play the game, but not the fun part. Hopefully the rest of the series will be the fun part, playing the game now that everything is in motion.

The basics of the story are that you have the humans, divided into the majority Terran Hanseatic League, the gypsy-like roamers, and the green priests (humans who have bonded with sentient trees and can communicate instantaneously across any distance so long as their are worldtrees on either end), and the Ildirans, who are aliens that helped the humans into space. There is also an extinct race of aliens called the Klikiss, and their robots, who are left over but have no memory of how their masters became extinct. Finally, you have the Hidden Empire of aliens who live inside gas giant planets (no spoiler if you have read the back cover of the book). The humans anger the Hidden Empire and everyone has to deal with the consequences.

There are some cliched ideas in here, and you have to suspend your disbelief that the characters do not put two and two together about several plot points for a long time, sometimes only figuring things out or being told something several hundred pages after the reader already guessed at it (like why the gas giant aliens are angry). However, I went into this book looking for an epic space fantasy, and it promises to deliver. By the end of the book, I was turning the pages faster and looking forward to the next volume. ( )