orizon Storms is the third book in the series known as The Saga of the Seven Suns, following Hidden Empire (2002) and A Forest of Stars (2003). A fourth and possibly final installment is due a year from now. As expected with such a monumental series, the synopsis of past action that opens volume three occupies over a dozen pages. New readers will be brought up to speed fairly easily. Nonetheless, Anderson has created a large assortment of cultures and histories and venues, and set innumerable plot threads going, all of which are impossible to recap in this short space.
In a nutshell: A couple of hundred years from now, a war rages among several star-faring groups. Humans—divided into two factions, the Hansa and the Roamers—are lightly allied with the humanoid aliens known as Ildirans. Together they face the wrath of the hydrogues, powerful and bellicose entities that inhabit gas giant planets. Sun-dwelling aliens—the faeros—hate the hydrogues, but do not communicate why. Ancient robots, the Klikiss, are out to exterminate both mankind and the Ildirans. A communal-minded liquid intelligence known as the wentals seems friendly to humans. And finally, a sentient species of tree, the Worldforest, is a final player on humanity's side.
Coming into this volume, here are the main developments:
On Theroc, home to the Worldforest, the "green priest" humans are picking themselves up after devastating destruction rained down by hydrogues. But Chairman Basil Wenceslas, power behind the throne of the Hansa, has plans to install his mistress as ruler of Theroc, extending his domination. Meanwhile, a young green priestess named Celli finds a dead comrade portentously resurrected in a startling new form.
The Roamers, space-living clans who provide the fuel known as ekti that allows interstellar travel, have decided to cut off the Hansa from further supplies. This precipitates a civil war among the two human factions, a feud that the Roamers seemed doomed to lose. One Roamer, Jess Tamblyn, has become more than human by merging himself with the wentals, and embarks on a Johnny-Appleseed-style mission to sow wental life across the galaxy.
The leader of the Ildirans, Mage-Imperator Jora'h, has reluctantly ascended to the throne after the death of his father. Struggling to rule in these difficult times, he believes his human lover, Nira Khali, has died as a result of participating in a covert human-Ildiran breeding program—but in reality, she still lives. Their child, the half-breed Osira'h, is showing vast mental powers that might be useful in pacifying the hydrogues. But all of Jora'h's plans might dissipate when one of his brothers stages his own palace coup.
Simultaneously, the evil Klikiss robots have ended their charade of friendliness by attacking a human colony and wiping out all citizens except for a lone teenage girl, Orli Covitz. And finally, a scientist experimenting with the half-understood system of Klickiss stargates stumbles upon an ancient secret that threatens all.
Treading water as
tensions mount
It's famously said that the middle book of any trilogy is the one that stands the best chance of exhibiting slackness or a sense of merely marking time. Perhaps that maxim should apply to the third book of a quartet, at least in the example to hand. Because while Anderson is relentless in his plotting and incidental inventiveness, this third volume of his saga seems to me at times to be merely treading water. Its very title hints at this: Storms are gathering in the distance, but they're not here yet.
What I'm trying to indicate is that this book is mostly taken up with the predictable unfolding of events whose genesis we've already witnessed. We saw the Worldforest destroyed earlier: Now we witness the cleanup. We knew the Klikiss robots were evil: Now we watch them actually assembling an army. We know Chairman Wenceslas and his stooge, King Peter, were at odds: Now we watch Peter edge a little closer to the brink of outright insubordination. We knew the Roamers were chafing under the Hansa dominance: Now they launch their embargo. We knew Osira'h was a strange child with potential: Now she exhibits a tiny fraction of same. And so forth. In other words, although this book is chock-full of incidents, it's only the massing of stormclouds, not the actual downpour.
This is not to say that Anderson does not make interesting his scores of smallish chapters, each told from a recurring set of diverse viewpoints. His many speculations on alien psyches are neat. For instance, who would have suspected that one reason the Worldforest loves its green priests is that through the humans the trees can experience the odd sensations of mobility? Anderson's exploration of the Ildiran psyche, with its reliance on contact with the shared spiritual current of "thism," is equally fascinating. But these are small filigrees on the large embroidery, which does not really get stitched out much further.
Perhaps the most interesting threads are those connected with Jess Tamblyn, now more than human, and the young girl Orli Covitz, who seems destined for a larger role. The newness of their situations offers refreshment from the extended Machiavellian maneuverings of the more familiar characters and factions.
