The Dark Between the Stars: The Saga of Shadows, Book One

The Saga of Shadows #1

by Kevin J. Anderson

Twenty years after the elemental conflict that nearly tore apart the cosmos in The Saga of Seven Suns, a new threat emerges from the darkness. The human race must set aside its own inner conflicts to rebuild their alliance with the Ildiran Empire for the survival of the galaxy.
In Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars, galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and factions of humanity are pitted against each other. Heroes rise and enemies make their last stands in the climax of an epic tale seven years in the making.


At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Fiction, Fantasy, Audiobook, Science Fiction Fantasy, Unfinished

673 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 13, 2014

About the author

Yes, I have a lot of books, and if this is your first visit to my amazon author page, it can be a little overwhelming. If you are new to my work, let me recommend a few titles as good places to start. I love my Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. series, humorous horror/mysteries, which begin with DEATH WARMED OVER. My steampunk fantasy adventures, CLOCKWORK ANGELS and CLOCKWORK LIVES, written with Neil Peart, legendary drummer from Rush, are two of my very favorite novels ever. And my magnum opus, the science fiction epic The Saga of Seven Suns, begins with HIDDEN EMPIRE. After you've tried those, I hope you'll check out some of my other series.

I have written spin-off novels for Star Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E., and The X-Files, and I'm the co-author of the Dune prequels. My original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series and the Nebula Award-nominated Assemblers of Infinity. I have also written several comic books including the Dark Horse Star Wars collection Tales of the Jedi written in collaboration with Tom Veitch, Predator titles (also for Dark Horse), and X-Files titles for Topps.

I serve as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest.

My wife is author Rebecca Moesta. We currently reside near Monument, Colorado.

Reviews

[Lyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

WHYYYYYYYYYY?????

Why did you have to make this six hundred and seventy something EFFING pages???? And so damn dull I don’t want to finish???

It could be a weird but fun retro gem.

But, OK, to be fair, I should take some of the blame for why this did not work out. I know it is a very rare plus size novel that I like, and I had seen many of the luke warm reviews, but what the hell man, this had promise?!!?

Author Kevin J. Anderson has given us what could be a fun space opera written in the style of Poul Anderson, or perhaps even a Heinlein juvenile. Actually, in the one third of the book I was able to get through before abandoning, Anderson made clear references to many classic SF books and writers: Asimov, Silverberg, Le Guin, Larry Niven, etc. And much of his characterization was good; I was especially liking the virus doctor and investigator with issues.

I mean, it was nominated for a Hugo.

But it was just too long, TOO GODDAMN LONG!!! And just not enough going on, too little to hang onto, too little and too stretched to make me care. I could not take anymore and the rest of the novel looked like a marathon course that I just had no interest in. And this is supposed to be the first in a series???

No thank you.

You’re making a series anyway, so just find a good stopping place somewhere around 250-300 pages and wrap it up and maybe someone else will tune in later for the sequels.

True, Anderson’s imaginative world building is superb and really the highlight of this work, what with the intricate Roamer clan backstory and the off stage references to a galactic struggle. I also liked the short chapters and the shifting perspective narrative,

but

I just could not go on. When a book is a chore, it’s not worth it. Life’s too short and there are too many other great books.

[Phrynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was long but I enjoyed it so much! I had no idea when I started it that it was a continuation of The Saga of the Seven Suns. It is set twenty years later and most of the characters of the previous books are featured plus their now grown up children and a few new ones like Tom Rom and Zoe who are amazing! It was such a pleasure to return to this wonderful universe with the Verdani, the fantastic World Trees and the Green Priests. I loved every minute of it. Short, choppy chapters keep the momentum going and stop the reader putting the book down even when sleep is calling in the early hours of the morning. So many wonderful characters populate an absolutely amazing universe. I think Kevin J. Anderson is a genius and I can't wait for the sequel.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the definition of mediocre space opera. It had its moments, and will entertain anyone who wants space battles with robots and random alien powers and everything cast on a grand scale, but from beginning to end it smacked of unoriginality and uninspired writing - Babylon 5, Star Wars, Dune - Keven J. Anderson is trying to write something on the scale of Frank Herbert or Dan Simmons's epics, but his characters are flat archetypes and his ideas are flat derivations.

The Dark Between the Stars is set some time after another series Anderson wrote, which I have not read. There are frequent references to the wars and events of the previous books, and the accelerated worldbuilding made it evident that there were previous books to read if you really want to catch all the references, but I will say that it dives right into the current story without leaving you behind even if you're not familiar with the universe.

The main plot is the appearance of a race of beings of pure darkness called the Shana Rei, who exist to return all matter in the universe to primordial chaos. As is typical in big sci-fi epics, they are mentioned in ancient dread prophecies (apparently they showed up before but somehow failed to destroy the universe), so when they begin attacking human and Ildaran star systems, there is lots of "disturbance in the Force"-type shock and horror.

But as adversaries, they're about as flat and stereotypical as they sound - beings of darkness who want to destroy the universe because. Booga booga! They are aided by evil black robots who used to serve a now-dead genocidal bug race called the Klikiss. (Yes, the bugs are called "Klikiss.") The robots just want to kill everything, so they manage to ally themselves with the Shana Rei, even though the Shana Rei really don't seem to need their help. They are basically unopposed until the big climactic battle when a space fleet that has conveniently discovered an ancient weapon called a "sun bomb," joined by fiery alien beings called Faeros who are recruited by a messiah-character who can communicate with and summon the aid of Faeros because.

The B-plots include a crazy super-rich girl named Zoe who collects diseases on her very own planetary research lab. Zoe lives in complete isolation because of her fear of viruses because she was so traumatized by Daddy's death, and when her scientists (who she treats as completely expendable) find new cures, she keeps them locked up with her viruses because she's mad at the world. She has a henchman named Tom Rom, who's a sociopathic killer who inexplicably is completely devoted to Zoe. These two characters could have been interesting, but their purpose in the story is not evident by the end of the book, and they never develop beyond being a monomaniac comic book supervillain and her loyal igor.

There is a spacer clan called the "Roamers" who are constantly going on about how resourceful and adaptable they are. There's a disaster on a lava planet, and the man responsible then discovers a bunch of "floaters" in space that are full of "ekti," the magical space-fuel needed for starships. He starts harvesting the floaters even though it's perfectly obvious to the reader that this will be a mistake and they are going to turn out to be some sort of cosmic McGuffin.

I could go on - there is a telepathic world-tree, through which "Green Priests" can communicate instantly at interstellar distances, and there's the Ildaran Mage-Imperator's half-human offspring including the two warrior princesses who fight with "crystal-tipped katanas" (seriously, why is it always katanas?), and a bunch of other ideas that in the hands of a more skilled author would perhaps have been more impressive, but like I said, I just kept feeling like KJ Anderson wants to write a Great Big Epic Space Opera on the level of Lensmen or Dune (or something that will be optioned as a big-budget movie), but isn't really good enough to escape his tie-in fiction background. I'm giving this book 3 stars because it was pleasing enough for what it is, but it's a generous 3 stars - the writing and the characterization was flat enough that 2.5 stars is closer to the mark. I will not be reading the rest of this series.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've finally got around to reading the last official entry to the 2015 Hugo Nominees and I'm caught in a conundrum.

I wanted to give this novel a thorough dissection, but only because it didn't leave me feeling like I'd just passed through something wonderful and grand. No beautiful metamorphosis of my soul or imagination, nor even a romp through a digestive track.

Instead, I find myself wanting to say that this tale was paid in homage to the old space-opera tales, notably Lensman. The other homages are a little more murky for me, strangely enough, because I'm reminded of Hyperion of twenty-six years ago which was, itself, a homage to other authors' imaginations.

There's nothing wrong with this, of course. Ideas are always stolen. As a novel of BFI's, this novel ought to sit up there with Ringworld or Rama or any number of comics like the ones I've enjoyed by Dan Abnet. Big Ideas are fun, and executed well, they overflow with a sense of wonder.

But there's still a catch.

The writing must be superlative.

I just don't think the writing was as good as it ought to be if it is going to be nominated for a Hugo. The writing is fine for pulp fiction. It's fine to get from point A to point B, but it just didn't grab me as so many novels have. It took me a full 2/3 of the novel before I felt like I was flowing with either the characters or the action, and that's because the grand space battle was finally beginning.

As for the cast of characters, I only started feeling kinship with them as they either died or got into supreme danger. Those who missed that ride were either an ex machina to resolve conflict or amp up the melodrama. I didn't feel like I was cheated, per se, because I already know that I'm going to have to read the books that follow in order to reap the real benefits, but as a standalone novel, it rests very heavily on events that have already passed or on those that will be. The action of the big NOW was sort of... well... Alderaan didn't explode.

Maybe I'm too harsh. I didn't dislike the novel. It was industrious and accomplished a lot.

Unfortunately, the writing didn't sparkle. The characters weren't awesome. The tension didn't aggravate. I actually wondered at various points if the big battles could have benefitted more from a horror perspective, full of hints and drama but no perfect reveals. Maybe so, but that wasn't the novel I read.

I've read a pretty decent amount of Mr. Anderson's novels, and this one is pretty much on par with them. It is a bit better than most, and a lot better than a few. It hearkens people back to some of the old grand space-opera days, and successfully so.

Unfortunately, This isn't my primary choice for the Hugo Award, and, worse, I'm not certain it really belongs as a nominee.

Brad K Horner's Blog

[William · Rating 1 out of 5]

There seems to be another powerful elemental abroad in the saga universe. The great elemental stupidity. Read and listen as the elemental infects everyone. Not a single damn person in this book acts or reacts like common sense is any thing but a new thing on the block. I regret that I bought the audio book and not the hardback at least with the hardback I could beat my self about the head untill the memory fled. The one star is because the narrator was pretty good.

[Rowan Czaja · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would like to thank this book -- my kitchen is clean and the laundry is folded because every time I picked up this book, I found something more interesting to do.

The writing is stilted and wooden. The dialog is flat. It's all telling and no showing.

I knew I was in trouble when I read:

Pannebaker had silvery hair and intense eyes, as well as a mustache that framed his mouth all the way down to his chin. Every day in the Sheol lava mines excited him like an adrenaline rush, and his extreme competence sometimes led him to take unwarranted risks for the sheer fun of it.

By page 120 I was skimming instead of reading, waiting for something interesting to happen so I put the book down and abandoned it.

If this is the kind of writing that gets you going, you may enjoy this tedious space opera that has more characters than a Russian novel with none of the charm or drama.

I may try again closer to the Hugos, but for now this is my first DNF in more than a year.

[Timothy Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just what I was hoping for in a space opera after having discovered this genre through his Dune prequels. Great pacing and scope in a unique war through the stars. My favorite character interaction was the father rescuing his son from his wife and her desire to raise her child while working at the most dangerous place in the galaxy. I also liked the coldness of the scientists researching genetic advancement. The plant priests (my term, not the authors) were a cool kind of warrior/magic system, as were the darkness monsters (again, my term). There are a lot of people and plot lines, but listening to this multiple hours a day allowed me to just enjoy the ride and hope I'm not quizzed on names. I was able to enjoy this without having read the previous series set in this world, though now I certainly would like to go back and catch up. Excellent audio production and vocals for the characters.

The only thing that keeps this from a five star is that, while it kept me entertained straight through to the end, I wasn't really blown away by any of the POV climaxes. They were all exciting and fulfilling, but none really made me think, wow. Of course, this is book one, so let's see what happens next.

[Rebecca Reddell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a wild ride! Definitely worth the time to read, but beware, you will spend a long time in it! At 660 pages, it is one of the largest books I've recently read. I enjoyed the plot and several of the characters. If you want to learn more, check out my blog review: https://rebeccaswriteinspirations.blo...

[Maggie K · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK-so this is a book I normally would never have read, and I have to say I did enjoy it better than I thought I would, but it still had a lot of issues.
What did work was the actual story, although Im not sure how original it was, but it was a good story of various aliens coming together over a common foe.
I think the problem was that there were SO MANY characters. I really didn't connect to ANY of them, and they seemed to ALL have viewpoint chapters. Now, I know that CAN work, here it just seemed a hodge podge. Plus, they were all kind of wooden, everyman type characters. Only the villain seemed a bit out of the mold. All the dialogue sounded like it came from the same person.
The writing was okay. Yeah, just okay. No way with words, no brilliance. Just okay. Even with all the viewpoints, I really felt I was being told, not shown.
But like I said, there was a good story. That saved a lot of it.

[Carole P. Roman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richly diverse, this is science fiction at its best. The Dark Between the Stars is an intergalactic epic involving a wide range of creatures with rich and varied history. There is trouble brewing at Iswanda Industries. It begins with the revelation that big business won't listen to a report about the instability of their investment planet. Garrison, a worker there, escapes with his young son leaving his power hungry wife. His action of kidnapping his son reveals the gaping differences between his wife and his own background. The books jumps from species to species, the plot thickens revealing a background of conflict between humans and aliens. The opposing forces realize they must put their enmity aside to battle an enigmatic new enemy. Anderson builds credible world, filled with imaginative but believable beings. Fascinating and lush,it was a joy to read.

[prcardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Storyline: 3/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 3/5

The Dark Between the Stars came to my attention because it was a finalist for the Hugo Award for novels. I’ve been using the finalist list as my science fiction reading guide, but there was a controversy in the years around the 2015 awards. The nomination and award stages were overtly politicized with what might be referred to as the Puppies campaigns. I wasn’t actively following science fiction happenings at the time and have only learned about it after-the-fact. From what I understand, the Puppies started off as somewhat of a self-deprecating joke, writers of contemporary pulp science fiction grumbling that only message fiction was being considered for the top awards. They wanted the fun put back in and the leftist politics taken out. Some statistics-minded Puppies figured out how the nomination process could be gamed – indeed claimed that it had been gamed for years by a Hugo voting clique – and used the rules to their advantage, getting a slate of their favorites nominated as finalists. The Dark Between the Stars was a Puppy nominee that made it to the finalist round in just such a fashion. I find the feud between the Puppies and the Social Justice Warriors particularly interesting because it presaged a divide that has manifested itself more widely in the American political and social spheres. The Puppy debate evolved to a point, where it seemed that ultra-radical progressives were as vociferously narrow-minded and condescending as the far right. Many on the left condemned the entire conservative awakening as racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. Surely there were those such as Vox Day and his Rabid Puppies element that appeared to fit this characterization. In the Hugo Awards debate it became a guilt-by-association problem. Many nominees voluntarily withdrew their candidacy from consideration as a finalist when they found that they'd gotten there with the support of the Puppies. Novels were deemed off-limits or insupportable because the fringe right also happened to like them. I don't approve of this guilt by association approach and wanted to see for myself what The Dark Between the Stars offered.

What I should have seen if this Puppy nominee was a regressive as the Social Justice Warriors claimed, was some defense of white Europeans or of some mythical golden years of white America. Instead, I found this science fiction-fantasy to positively portray cultural progressives. The story focuses largely on two space-faring races, both of which have their own nationalistic and xenophobic tendencies. The characters we are supposed to cheer are those that defy tradition and reject ethnocentrism. If this work were as traditional-minded as critics of the Puppies suggested, we ought to at least see some argument for racial purity or superiority. Instead the most affecting love stories are those that feature bi-racial or bi-species marriages, couples that withstand social stigma for the sake of love. Some of the best human characters are people of color or various non-Caucasian ethnicities. If the Puppies nominees were all “right-wing to Neo-Nazi”, then eugenics or some sort of minority population control measures should have been slipped in approvingly. The message here, however, is quite to the contrary. It is a historical villain who forcefully experimented on and manipulated the genetics and lives of unwilling research subjects. Surely then this book must have been replete with homophobia or transphobia and exclusively supportive of rigid gender roles. The Dark Between the Stars doesn’t fit the stereotype there either, though. There are strong women who have no need of men, men who stay home and take care of the child while the mother leads the business, tomboys and shy lads. There’s even some plutonic or not-so-plutonic relationships between human and robot and across couples of wide age ranges. There were no homosexual or transsexual characters in the book; but I refuse to deem something regressive simply because it isn’t actively promoting someone else’s pet cause. There’s bound to have been some stereotype or implicit bias at work in Anderson’s novel, but it was no more egregious than any writer’s obliviousness to his or her own underlying assumptions. It could very well be that other works nominated by the Puppies for some of the other categories were as regressive and incendiary as portrayed. The Dark Between the Stars was not some right-wing manifesto though. And it is unfortunate that voters in the Hugo Awards chose to vote “No Award” over this. There were reports of voters acknowledging that they hadn’t read Kevin J. Anderson’s book and that they were simply voting against anything that was affiliated with the Puppies. That strikes me as being both narrow-minded and manipulative. So my determination on the social issues element is that just because it appeared on one or both of the Puppies' slates doesn't mean it is right wing. I'm not interested enough in the Sad Puppies' pulp preferences to support or follow their slate, and I'm opposed the values expressed by Rabid Puppies' Vox Day, but I did not find this to be either mindless pulp or base bigotry.

Socio-political expectations and Puppy Gate aside, how did The Dark Between the Stars do. It was fine. I enjoyed the first half more than the second. This was much more of a fantasy tale than a science fiction one, and I enjoyed the introduction to the world and found it vibrant and descriptive. The highlight of the book was the plot-building through perspectives. I’m usually not found of the multiple-unrelated-viewpoints approach where the characters finally intersect later in the novel. In The Dark Between the Stars we have approximately 30 unique first-person perspectives spread across one hundred and thirty-nine chapters, and I was surprised by how well Anderson made it work. The characters were related in various ways, sometimes a family member or part of the same business, at times they were both witnesses to the same event or on good terms with a common party. The chapters were short and the transitions between them were rarely repeated. It was a great way to build up a vast world and explore it. I thought the short chapters would be too choppy, but I found that even the shortest of them – sometimes just a couple of pages – held just enough information to pique my interest and keep me engaged with one of the many subplots. There was a real artistry here in worldbuilding that I hadn’t experienced before, and Anderson’s work was worth considering as a potential Hugo winner for that alone. In other areas the writing and worldbuilding was much weaker. Anderson had a tendency to doubt whether he had conveyed something adequately. Thus he might describe an individual as he made meticulous preparations and, unsure whether we had picked up on this character attribute, he would then drop to a third person omniscient view and clearly state that this was the kind of person who took preparations seriously. Then, he’d do it all again a hundred pages further on. There were these odd reminders, almost verbatim, cluing us in on the attribute or feature the author didn’t want us to miss. They were the kind of reminders you would expect to pop up in a sequel that was following years after the first. I’m not sure if Anderson doubted his readers’ ability to keep track of details over 672 pages or if it was bad editing or just bad writing, but it recurred frequently enough to be distracting. Despite the immense worldbuilding I found it easy to keep track of the characters and places, not needing the glossary and never feeling overwhelmed with exotic names and locations. That worldbuilding stagnated about halfway through, and it became very much a breadth-rather-than-depth kind of fantasy. The science fiction elements were more disappointing. Though a space opera featuring lasers and space ships and gargantuan factories and technology, it was all embellishment for the fantasy. The science and mechanics simply didn’t matter. The space battle scenes were awful, in fact. There was little to distinguish these monumental battles in space from bi-plane dogfights in the air. Gravity, speed, distance – nothing of physics – had any implications in the battles. Thus the space environment and the technological options didn’t have any importance in understanding what was going on. This was about as far from hard science fiction as one could get, and it was embarrassing at times. Some of the battles had little more to them than the commanding officer aboard a ship yelling out, “Light ‘em up!” and the tactical officer responding, “With pleasure!” It was as if all the two sides of the battle had to do was push a button and their part in the battle was over. There was little planning or strategy or tactical improvisation. This wanting-to-do-something-neat-but-unable-to-fill-in-the-details flaw was present with the primary antagonist as well. Anderson wanted to escalate the conflict, up the scales. So he created this awesome opponent with overwhelming abilities. He was unable, though, to give its powers adequate description. He couldn’t get make it comprehensible, and abstracted out into vague description and generalization. This made the villain distant and incomprehensible and kept the reader from fully enjoying the stakes of the conflict.

It was an acceptable but not a great book. I enjoyed it but was also disappointed with a number of elements. One might conclude then, that if the best the Puppies had to offer was only mediocre, then they don’t have much to contribute to science fiction. That might be true if the other Hugo finalists in the years surrounding the 2015 awards had been much better. To date I’ve read 57% of all the finalist nominated for the Hugo; that’s 179 works from 1939 onward. Looking at the finalists I’ve read in the three years before or after the 2015 awards, I consider The Dark Between the Stars, to be better than Jo Walton’s Among Others, Mira Grant’s Deadline and Blackout, John Scalzi’s Redshirts, and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy. It was on par with James S. A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes, Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, and Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor. It wasn’t as good as George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, China Mieville’s Embassytown, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, or N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate. In my estimation that means that it was worthy of consideration and of comparable quality to many novels that were also Hugo finalists. If anything it is an indictment of the Hugo Awards and its claim to present the best of science fiction.

One final note. I did not realize this was a spin-off series when I started it. I knew that Anderson was a prolific writer with some expansive series, but I did not notice that this was a follow-up to his signature Saga of the Seven Suns heptalogy. I wish series installments like this (or Jim Butcher’s 15th-in-the-series, Skin Game) would be excluded from the novel category and placed into a sequels only category. The recent changes to the Hugo system have made a series award, but it doesn’t remove books like this from the novel award category. To his credit, Anderson wrote this in such a way to introduce the new reader to his universe. I never felt lost or that there were critically missing pieces. There were times where there were hints that two characters had met before or had some backstory. I felt a little left out not knowing that backstory, but the narrative proceeded just fine without it, and really, those intersections are there for the benefit of the longtime fans. It was an accident then, that I read this without reading the Saga of the Seven Suns, but it worked out fine. I liked this enough to read on and finish the trilogy, but I don’t see myself reading the original saga.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first volume of The Saga of Shadows trilogy. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for May 2024 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group. This is my first book by Kevin J. Anderson. I knew that he has co-authored several books set in the Dune universe, but I always assumed such sidequels by not an initial author nothing more than milking a franchise, so I haven’t read any. This book was nominated for Hugo in 2015, when the Puppy debacle was in full swing and this book most likely was in their slate (pre-set nomination ballot). I’ve checked which other novels were among the top-17, and below the nominee threshold, there were several much worthier novels, including Lock In, The Martian, My Real Children among them.

The book starts with infodumps on the previous series 7-volume The Saga of Seven Suns, for there are quite a few characters from it. It also sets the main plot lines and characters, such as Garrison Reeves, an engineer from the mining operation on one of the tidally tied dual planets, where magma flows bring valuable materials. As can be expected, it is a dangerous operation and moreover, Garrison’s calculations show a coming calamity, but the company owner Lee Iswander, doesn’t listen to the warnings, so the engineer takes his 10-year-old son and runs on a company ship. His wife, Elisa, who’s Iswander’s deputy doesn’t heed the warnings but is sure that her husband kidnapped their son, so she follows him. At the same time, two species, humans and Ildirans have a join military spaceship training; human scholar Anton Colicos studies hidden texts of an ultra-massive Ildiran epic Saga of Seven Suns; several royal offsprings, as well as ordinary teens are studying…

The book reads as a formally well-crafted story but without a true spark. While the setting suggests a SF, but it is even more fantasy space opera than Star Wars. There are even such brain-braking phrases as “Rlinda rose to her feet and opened her arms in a hug so wide that even a black hole could not have escaped from it.” Ships travel faster-than-light (no mention of a hyperspace or the like) but are able to almost immediately stop to answer a distress signal, which seems to be ordinary radio. There are a lot of homages from Asimov’s three laws to Le Guin’s sentient forests, as well as Christian overtones from an arch-enemy who hates creation to space baptisms.

I don’t think that the novel is award-worthy.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh dear...

I enjoyed the original Saga of the Seven Suns for what it was. I enjoyed it in the same way that I enjoy a cheesy, big budget action movie. Don't look too closely, disengage brain, sit back and enjoy the fast paced plot and explosions. Sometimes you just want to be entertained.

I approached this first part of the follow up series with that firmly in mind & was looking forward to more of the same but its so bad that even with a disengaged brain I couldn't overlook the gaping plot holes & the ridiculous characters and their equally ridiculous behaviour. A big budget action movie is one thing but this has crossed over into Sharknado territory.

Don't let the 2 stars fool you either. The extra star is purely sentimental as catching up with the characters from the original series and seeing what they were up to 20 years later was the only good thing about it.

[Megan Baxter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will, some day, read all of the Hugo nominees for Best Novel. I'm slightly over 50% done, and now that I'm voting each year, that means that I'm not losing ground to new nominees. I pick from here and there in the history of the award, and eventually I'll get there. So of course, that meant I came to one of the years where the nominations were gamed by certain groups that shall go unnamed. And this was one of the books that definitely made it on to the nomination lists because of that.

Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a mess in so many ways. The main problem is that there are way too many main characters, which cascades down into many other issues, for one thing it really throws off the pacing, making for a tortuously slow 700 page monstrosity. There is about 400 pages of backstory before anything really starts happening, and it seems like the first 40 or so chapters were all just introducing one character after another and giving a dry and straightforward account of how their backstory has shaped them. If he had cut the number of main characters down to say, 4 or 5, then there would be time to show us their personalities rather than just state them.

The other big problem is that I found Anderson's writing to be borderline juvenile. The character and scene descriptions always bring to mind some amateur dungeon master describing the scene before the players. Not a whole lot of depth, realism or elegance there.

Having said all this, there's a major caveat I should add - I didn't even know about the existence of Ma href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/4119... Saga of the Seven Suns before I started reading this book. About halfway through I was thinking, "Man, he's really going on about these elemental wars - he probably should have written a book about those instead." It makes a lot more sense now that I know that this is a sequel trilogy set in the same universe. I'm considering going back and reading them just because I feel like the universe - while not the most elegant of creations - did seem like it might support some decent stories. Frankly, the story Anderson was trying to tell in this book could have been excellent if he had focused enough to actually tell it.

[Nicole]

The Dark Between the Stars is listed as the first book in The Saga of Shadows, which is the sequel series to The Saga of the Seven Suns, a 7 book long series. I have not read The Saga of the Seven Suns, and while the publisher claims readers can jump into Kevin J Anderson's universe and start with The Dark Between the Stars, I have to disagree. I read the first 4 chapters and was extremely confused. It was obvious right from the get go that I was missing a massive amount of context and backstory, which the author frequently alludes to without much added clarification. So, I did what I normally do in these situations, and looked up the information on wikipedia and fan sites. This helped me to understand basic things like who some of the characters are and what certain keywords like "Roamers" and "hydrogues" meant, so I read another couple of chapters. I was still really confused.

Imagine if after finishing the first 7 books in A Song of Ice and Fire, George RR Martin wrote a sequel series, and you decided to start with the sequel series first. That's basically what's going on here. It sounds like people who have read The Saga of the Seven Suns really enjoy this book, so if that's you have fun, but it's not me. I'm out. DNFed at 8%.

[Vulch · Rating 1 out of 5]

Forced myself to finish this as it was the only one of this years Hugo Best Novel nominees I hadn't read.
Terrible.
Cardboard characters. I couldn't tell the difference between humans and aliens apart from some names containing apostrophes, the robots though could be spotted as the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation seemed to have had a large hand in their design. The author also appears to lack any clue about basic physics, hint: If the Moon gets blown up you'll still be getting Solar tides, and what exactly is supposed to be creating the L4 and L5 points where the Lunar debris is collecting?
Luckily this was a borrowed copy...

[Ted Cross · Rating 1 out of 5]

My goodness, I've rarely had to give up so quickly on any book before! The writing is so amateurish and even flat out terrible that I simply can't go on. I can't believe this got anywhere close to any list of decent books, let alone a nomination for a Best Novel Hugo. There is exposition everywhere, even clear dialogue tells that make no sense, such as a conversation between two early characters where one uses dialogue to explain Green Priests when it is plainly obvious that both of them already know all about them. Almost all indie writers I know write much better than this. I dislike being harsh with reviews, but this one is screaming out that it deserves one.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

May I never read another book by this guy. It just left me cold and I only finished it out of sheer determination. Can't decide whether it's fantasy or science fiction.

[Byron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent opening book for a new saga. Very good character and world building. It will be a joy to see where the author takes this series.

[Ian Mond · Rating 1 out of 5]

What’s It About

I only read a third of the novel, but apparently it’s set twenty years after the 7-novels that form The Saga of the Seven Suns. So it’s both a Book One and a Book Eight.

Representative Paragraph

Because I don’t want to be criticised for cherry-picking the worst example of Anderson’s leaden prose, here’s a choice of three…

As the two closely orbiting halves of the binary planet adjusted their dance of celestial mechanics, Garrison had analyzed the orbital pirouette, uncovering fourth-order resonances that he suspected would make the fragments dip fractionally closer to each other, increasing stresses. He studied the melting points, annealing strengths, and ceramic-lattice structure of the habitat and factory towers.

… and…

Nira stiffened. Despite making peace with her past, there were still nights she wrestled with nightmares of how the Dobro Designate had forced himself upon her in the breeding chambers . . . and he had only been one of the many breeders from various kiths assigned to impregnate her. From that succession of experiments to see what sort of halfbreed child a human green priest might produce, five of the children had lived, but eight others had been such misshapen horrors that they were stillborn—merciful miscarriages.

… and…

Tom Rom had a lean and muscular body that she admired without the least bit of arousal. Though she loved him more than any other human being, he was not her lover. No one had ever been her lover. The thought of physical intimacy disgusted her. The sharing of bodily fluids—not just semen but saliva, perspiration, sloughed-off skin cells, pubic hairs, even exhaled breath—not only repelled her, it sent her into a panic. She abhorred the thought of kissing someone, holding hands, touching in the most intimate of fashions.

Should I Read it? / Commentary

Thumper’s Law tells us that, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all,” and it’s for this reason I’ve joined together the “Should I Read it?” and “Commentary” sections of this review. I’m not going to do the author or myself the disservice of spending 1,000 words ranting about a book I didn’t finish.

Having said that, I want to make it abundantly clear that I didn’t set out to “hate-read” The Dark Between The Stars.* As I did last year with Vox Day’s Hugo nominated novelette, the dull but competently written Opera Vita Aeterna, I began reading Anderson’s novel with an open mind. It would have been pleasure to report to you all how much I loved this book, how I was entertained by all the space opera shenanigans and galaxy spanning ideas, how the novel reminded me fondly of my early teenage years when I swallowed down the Lensman series.

But it wasn’t to be.

As I said on this episode of the Coode Street podcast with Jonathan Strahan and James Bradley, the prose is leaden, there’s far too much exposition and just when you think the novel doesn’t have room for another character introduction, a new character is introduced. And the biggest sin of all, very little happens in the opening third. Even the destruction of a refinery, which should have been a spectacular set piece, is weighed down by ponderous prose.

Without wandering into the politics of ballots and log rolling and evil right and left wing conspiracies, I do genuinely wonder how a book this poorly written and dull was considered to be an excellent example of fast moving and exciting SF.

So, no, you shouldn’t read this novel. But if you are going to vote on the best novel ballot I do suggest you read the first chapter. I’m not a supporter of just using NO AWARD on categories I’ve not actually read**, which is why I’ll be skipping the short fiction categories in their entirety.
—————————
*The same can’t be said for “hate-watching”. I only watch Under The Dome so I can moan and groan about it on Facebook and then read Grady Hendrix’s heeeelarious reviews of the show on tor.com.

** I appreciate why people whom I respect are doing this. I understand the political message they are sending. But it just doesn’t sit right with me. If I’m going to give a critical opinion – which is what voting NO AWARD is – I need to have at least tasted what’s on offer, even if it’s only a single paragraph.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a space opera. Mostly fun space opera with really cheesy, obvious, heavy-handed story telling, kind of the equivalent of one of the pretty good shows on SyFy (not anywhere near as good as their great shows like Haven or too many to mention that have been canceled too soon). I remember really liking the Saga of the Seven Suns. I loved the scope of it and how he wove all of the stories together. I don't remember if it was this cheesy. I suspect that Anderson has gotten a bit lazier (sorry fans) recently because some of the things that bothered me in this book also bothered me in the most recent Dune book (Mentats of Dune). For example, really heavy foreshadowing. Like just naming the planetary system Shoel - gee, I wonder if something might go wrong there. Or when at one point a character says, "That feeling of euphoric satisfaction should have made her suspicious right away." Especially when that was the last sentence of a chapter, turn the page. Now that's heavy-handed, cheesy space opera.

The other thing that bothered me a lot in this book that also bothered me in [i]Mentats[/i] was the repetitiveness. It wasn't nearly as bad here, but with the short chapters and the switching points of view the characters repeat themselves a lot, as though somehow I don't remember the last few times they said it. It really wasn't nearly as bad here as in the other book, but it got a bit irritating.

And there are a lot of holes in the logic that that just bugged me. All of Iswander's people were mad at him for placing them in danger for the sake of profits, for not providing comprehensive escape plans. Sure, they should be. But didn't any of them ask about that when they took their jobs on that horrible and obviously dangerous place? The book keeps pointing out all of the disasters Roamers have had to deal with, you'd think that escape plans would be one of the first questions any Roamer would ask about. Or how about the thing with Zoe and Tom. With all of the intense amount of tests that Zoe has done on Tom Rom because of her paranoia, how did he have any private analysis done to discover something as detailed as the fact that he was the disease carrier that infected her father? It said that it was much, much later when they were in her sophisticated Pergamus facilities, had unlimited funding, the best researchers, etc., so it can't be argued that she didn't have the technology to be checking up on his health yet. He had the technology to purge all traces of the disease from his body, but how did he do it secretly?

It also really bothered me that Anderson played it so coy about Terry and Xander's relationship. I totally couldn't tell if they were just friends or lovers for a huge portion of the book. He even told this adorable story about how they met and I still couldn't tell that they were anything more than pals. They thought they were still just friends, but it seemed pretty odd that they were so sentimental about visiting the place that they first met as often as possible, and Xander talked about treating Terry to a vacation. Friends don't usually pay for friend's vacations. Why wouldn't Anderson just say that they were lovers? Finally after more than 400 pages and numerous chapters about the men it said about Terry that he's in a happy relationship. I admit it, it did say that they were partners early on, but it seemed like they were business partners, why not make it clear that they were involved? Saying stuff like, "Xander indulged his friend." wasn't making it clear. When you've been romantically involved with a person for many years, he isn't your friend, he's your boyfriend or your lover, or your partner as he called him a couple of times. This was just really weird and uncomfortable.

The thing is, there isn't really anything wrong with cheesy space opera. It's fun. I prefer less cheese maybe, a few less holes in the logic or laying off with the foreshadowing a bit. I can't remember if I thought the original Saga was well written. I'm pretty sure it was better than this. I don't know if anyone who hasn't read the original Saga would get into it. But fans will likely enjoy it.

[Kevin Whitaker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I haven't read The Saga of Seven Suns, the first series in this universe.

The Dark Between the Stars is a fun romp of a space opera that never quite hits the heights it reaches for. While it has a few interesting characters and concepts, most of what Kevin J. Anderson delivers is the same tired tropes and cliches we're all used to from light sci-fi these days, albeit with more character development. That last concession isn't necessarily a good thing, either.

I enjoy a fun, easy story, even a predictable one; and the Dark Between the Stars is certainly predictable. Anderson seems to have gone down a checklist of "must-haves" when writing this book. Ominous, Lovecraftian alien presence? Check. Evil alien insect race? Check. Evil alien AI? Check. Unscrupulous industrialist? Check. Nomadic humans? Check. There are a few curveballs, namely in the form of the elemental alien races, but they feel shallow, ill-defined and poorly used.

Unfortunately, the characters themselves don't fare much better, even if there are a George R. R. Martin bushel-full of them. Most of them are written in broad strokes, and come off more as caricatures than actual characters. It's a shame, too, because there are some interesting stories to be explored here. Much could have been done, for instance, with the conflict between a mother and father, as they decide what is best for their son; or the budding romance between two heirs. Unfortunately, there's too much time spent on preamble, and not enough meat.

That last point might ultimately what keeps this book from being as enjoyable as it could be; cliche-ridden as it is, it's mostly just set up. If there's one thing audiences have learned in the age of a Song of Ice and Fire, it is that an author can create deep, meaningful characters without dedicating two-thirds of a book to what is, essentially, an extended prologue. Anderson provides vignettes starring each of his characters, but much of it feels like padding; like he's shooting for another heptalogy, and wants to ensure he has a page count. Perhaps these long introductions would be more tolerable if they were more interesting, instead of feeling like the characters spend most of the book wandering aimlessly.

In the end, there's some fun stuff in this book, but nothing that's compelling me to come back for the eventual sequel. Potentially good for a summer popcorn read, but if you're looking for sophistication or novelty, look elsewhere.

[Stuart Kenny]

I bought the first book 'hidden empire' with a waterstones voucher I got give for Christmas '08. As I was a quarter of the way into another book (gateway) and with not much else to read on the horizon I finally got round to starting it about the 10th jan. I have to admit I loved it from the start. Overblown space opera is me. However, on the 16th (you will realise why I'm so certain of the dates shortly. Hell! I could even give you times of the day!) I went for what I thought was a routine internal checkup. That was the day my life changed. When I'd come round from the happy gas I was told it was a very large colon tumour. It took a few days to slowly slide down off the ceiling but my shit eventually started coming back together ('shit' ha!). After all the drs appointments and Chemo/radiotherapy sessions were sorted I started reading again to pass some of the time because initially time is what you have a lot of with all this mullarky. I went back to book one, then book two and eventually the whole way through. I found reading these whilst on morphine put me right there and is something I still do as im on this stuff for however long I have left. Bloody ages I hope!!
These seven books just sit there on a bookshelf and nobody would give them a second look amongst all my others apart from the fact they all look good together. But I know. I know where these books have been. They have been on the ward with me for the first four of my sixteen ops. They have travelled to chem/radio sessions. And they were with me through countless appointments with whoever.
You see I don't read my scifi books to finish them and wonder how the author did or didn't get the characterisation wrong or right. I don't think that a book could've been better if it had been cut down. I just want to entertained. Books are one of the few things I have left to take me somewhere fantastic. Benefits aren't going to let me complete my bucket list but my genre of books give me another one. These seven books did that alright and morphine gave me the widescreen experience. Now there's three more coming!!
I hope all you moaning dingbats on here keep letting the minutiae of my travels in paperback carry on cos it makes me smile.
The seven books are sitting on my bookshelf still and there's only me who knows where we've been.
Anyway to get round to what I really wanted to say on here is 'I love these books'.
Stuart.

[Lis Carey · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, this is book one of a series--a good place to start, right?

Except that this series is a successor to a previous series, The Saga of the Seven Suns. Of the many characters in this long book, most seem to have an extensive history from the prior series. This is probably a fine thing for those who read the previous series. For those of us who didn't, we don't get the benefit of that character development.

And there are a great many characters, nor do we spend much time with any of them. We're constantly jumping between characters and plotlines that don't necessarily have much apparent connection. Characterization is limited and rather cardboard, and common sense doesn't seem to play a large role in anyone's decision-making process. For instance, a character goes to great lengths to collect "royal jelly" from the decades-dead corpses of an insect species, for medical research. There's no apparent concern, or even apparent awareness, about the effects of biological decay on the usefulness of the jelly for research.

Between the constant jumping around, and the flimsy characterization, it's difficult to develop any empathy for any of the characters. I nearly succeeded with the father and son fleeing a planet that the father, with excellent grounds, believes is about to experience a major disaster. But, alas, we zip away from them, to multiple other characters and plotlines, and don't come back for quite a while. When we do, we zip away again fairly quickly.

The prose is pedestrian, and just to be absolutely clear: "Pedestrian" prose is not "transparent" prose. Transparent prose requires real skill and craft. The prose here is no more than adequate. It's certainly no compensation for diffuse and distracting plotting and barely-present character development.

I read this only because it's one of the Hugo Best Novel nominees for 2015. "Not nearly as bad as puppy nominees in other categories" is not adequate reason for being on the Hugo ballot.

I bought this book.

[NullusAnxietus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of the Saga of the Seven suns, so much so I was reading them as they were published with each book pre-ordered the moment it was listed, generally about 6-8 months out from release.
So when I heard that KJA was writing more in the Saga universe, I did the happy nerd dance around the living room.

Dark between the Stars is the first in the Saga of Shadows, a new series that takes place 20 years after the Saga of the Seven Suns. The inhabitants of the Spiral Arm are getting back to normality after the events of the Elemental War.

There's new characters to meet as well as characters from the previous books to catch up with. It was great to see how life had moved on and what the characters from the previous books had been doing for the past 20 years.

The book seems to starts slowly, taking the time to get us up to speed with current events, before plunging into an intriguing and action packed story that had me reading long after i was supposed to be asleep.

I woke my wife when I swore out loud when I'd come to the end. Reading it on Kindle, you don't see the remaining pages getting thinner and the end kind of crept up on me.... sigh

Really looking forward to the next installment....

[Sandi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the worst written book I have read in a very long time. Either Anderson has short-term memory deficit disorder or he has no respect for his readers. Every one of his 139 chapters contains multiple redundant statements, many of which occur in consecutive paragraphs. This book could easily been 100 pages shorter simply by changing the formatting of the chapter headers and removing just one repetitive statement. That's fifty pieces of paper! The characterizations were ridiculous. The info-dumping was painfully ludicrous. I am incensed that I wasted three agonizing, infuriating days reading this shitty excuse for a book (and I do not ordinarily cuss). Many places read like a bad translation into English with inaccurate selection of vocabulary. I am even more annoyed that after all the hullabaloo, very little actually happened and all those viewpoints were unnecessary since all they did was stand around wringing their hands. Each of the chapter viewpoints started feeling like a bad History channel bloat-video with only 1 minute's worth of new material for every 10 repetitious minutes. (added) A good thing, if you can call it that, is that I learned a new word, maniple, even though the writer suborned it into something unrecognizably different and still unilluminating.

[Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

As someone who was completely new to this series, I can't say that this book drew me in very much.

My main problem with this book was that it had a lot, a LOT, of different perspectives, which made it hard for me to keep track of things and to keep all the names apart. Another problem is that, because of all those perspectives, it's hard for the writer too to focus on one of them, and therefore really make me empathize. The characters feel a bit flat, because of the same reason.
On top of that, at some points, the characters feel a bit stupid. I'm trying not to use spoilers, but at one point, a character gets ill in a way that was so stupid that it made me wonder if she had any IQ at all.

The whole travelling between planets, and all the spaceships and science-fiction in this story, is very exciting and speaks to the imagination, and the worldbuilding is truly excellent, but don't expect too much of the characters or the plot.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have not read the Saga of the Seven Suns. Perhaps doing so would positively influence my review. As it were, I have heard of that saga, and saw in the jacket that this book is a 'stand-alone.'

In my own reading, I find that I cannot grasp and do not get as attached to books and characters when so many are introduced. In the first 15 chapters of the book, 13 characters are introduced with 13 different view points. I just found it a bit overwhelming and then just didn't end up caring what happened to anyone.

I can honestly say I have no idea what is happening in the book.

[Janet Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was obsessed with the first series - The Saga of the Seven Suns. This is a fun return to that world.