he immense cast of characters and recomplicated plotting of Hidden Empire: The Saga of Seven Suns, Book 1 (2002) is recounted in seven synoptic pages at the start of the new book, and it would require fully as much text now to minimally capture everything Anderson has going on in Forest of Stars.
The year 2427 finds the galaxy divided into three parts. Humans, who have been in space only a couple of centuries, own 69 planets under the banner of the Hanseatic League. The Hansa are nominally led by a king, but in reality Chairman Basil Wenceslas pulls the strings. A second human grouping, known as the Roamers, occupy space habitats, not planets, and serve as hydrogen harvesters on many gas giants, refining the invaluable interstellar-drive fuel known as "ekti." Additionally, one independent human world, known as Theroc, is home to the "green priests" and their "world forest." In telepathic communion with their sentient trees, the green priests serve as living faster-than-light communicators for the Hansa and Roamers.
The one alien empire, the Ildirans, are fading and stagnant but still powerful. They feature numerous somatically distinct castes, the leading one of which is basically humanoid and can interbreed with Earthlings. The Ildirans are led by their ailing mage-imperator, who is grooming imperator-designate Jora'h for the succession. Additionally, the ruins of a long-vanished race, the Klikiss, have yielded thousands of Klikiss robots, artificial intelligences with goals of their own.
In Book 1, humans inadvertently triggered a war by angering a race of beings—the hydrogues—who had heretofore lived unseen in the depths of Jupiter-like worlds. When Forest opens, the war has been going on for five years, and the hydrogues are proving invincible. Desperate alliances are being arranged through various marriages, as the Roamer leader, Cesca Peroni, becomes engaged to Father Reynald, of the green priests, and Estarra of Theroc marries King Peter of the Hansa. Meanwhile, the Ildirans are secretly breeding with captive humans to enrich their own gene pool. As star travel is pinched by the lack of ekti (the hydrogues have forbidden anyone from harvesting hydrogen on their worlds), ancient Klikiss ruins reveals a secret: the Klikiss had a teleportation system that can substitute for spaceships, thus upsetting all balances.
Will humans manage to utilize the Klikiss gates to survive before the hydrogues wipe them out? Will a secondary war break out between the Ildirans and the Hansa, or the Roamers and the Hansa? What of the traitorous Klikiss robots and their plans to subvert human "compies?" And who is piloting the mysterious fire globes that emerge from the interior of various suns to battle the hydrogues? Some hints are given, but the ultimate answers await the publication next year of the third book in the Saga of Seven Suns.
Space opera on a grand scale
Kevin Anderson has created a fully independent and richly conceived venue for his personal brand of space opera, a venue that nonetheless raises fruitful resonances with Frank Herbert's classic Dune series. This association is only logical, since Anderson's latest project was a set of Dune prequels written with Frank Herbert's son, Brian. In the role of the much-coveted Arrakis spice is ekti. The green priests act as a kind of non-manipulative Bene Gesserit. The Roamers, with their independence and harsh living circumstances, bring to mind the Fremen. Paul Atreides' precocious sister Alia is recalled by Osira'h, the hybrid telepathic daughter of Nira of Theroc and Prime-Designate Jora'h. And so on.
Having said this, it must be affirmed that such echoes are mostly subliminal. This series offers much more than a simple recasting of Herbert's work. For instance, the Ildirans are a great unduplicated creation, with their medusa-like hair, quasi-telepathic bonding and devotion to their seminal work of racial literature, "The Saga of Seven Suns." Unlike the millennia-old polity in Dune, the human Hansa are a young empire, with all the raw energy and ambition of youth, still undecadent. The Roamers are much more lively and unserious than the Fremen. And the culture of the green priests is intriguingly developed along its own lines as well.
Anderson's technique for painting in the huge canvas he's selected is to utilize scores of very short chapters, each devoted to the point of view of a different character. In essence, these books follow dozens of co-equal plot strands in chopped-up fashion, with strands occasionally fusing. This technique captures the reader's interest, offering an unending series of cliffhangers, but also has the side effect of never allowing for really sustained scenes. No sooner are you embroiled in, say, King Peter's attempt to wrest power from Wenceslas than you are yanked across the galaxy to watch a battle with the hydrogues or witness Roamers in danger on a Mercury-like world.
But ultimately Anderson's tale rides on the backs of his well-rounded, believable, varied characters. It's interesting to note the multiple parallels among the cast. Human general Lanyan is matched by Ildiran general Kori'nh. The cynical machinations of the mage-imperator are seconded by those of Wenceslas. The various love affairs also run in tandem. This deep structure offers a lot of pleasure.
The one demerit against these books is the relative flatness of affect. Anderson's prose (which he tells us is the result of oral recitation and later transcription) is eminently clear and serviceable, but the moments of high drama are rendered in the same style and rhetoric as the lesser segments. Better than bathos, I suppose, but any real catharsis, such as found in M. John Harrison's Light, is absent.
