Interesting start on first book of a series, looking forward to reading the next book in the series Of this War between such different species ( )

World building as a replacement for character development.

Good novels are composed of three elements, plot, character and setting. The more these three elements are used to build on each other, the better the novel. Some novels with really great settings can overcome a pedestrian plot - Feed for example. Occasionally, a novel will find a way to dispense with one of these elements altogether by making one of the others overwhelmingly strong. You might say it's not really important why the cannibal is eating the leg of that guy in a world where everyone is dying and there is no food; that character is at the end of The Road you might say.

And that brings you to this book which takes exactly this tact, using world building in place of character development. World building because it feels wrong to somehow describe the complexity of what is introduced with a term as pedestrian as setting. And in place of character development since each of the Hamiltonianesque cast of characters comes fully realized with a impenetrable shell that no plot development will dent or change. They all are sort of forced to act the way they do precisely because the setting is so restrictive that they are not allowed to do anything else. This is the crux of matter as to why such a creative outing is so underwhelming in the end. No one is allowed the freedom to have insight or to solve a problem, develop a quirk or do anything remotely human. So the characters are remote and unappealing.

This was one of the deal of the day books I got from Audible and I love that I'm getting introduced to some novels I would never spend the money on at full price. But I certainly wouldn't buy any of the many followup volumes in this series even at the discounted price as a quick scan of the plots on Wikipedia show that the character problem is almost certainly not solved. Or if they do its over a geological timescale that my gnat-like attention span simply cannot grasp. ( )

2-3 stars for me. This is … space fantasy? A space epic? I wouldn't call it scifi, and it reminds me of Star Wars (although more thought was put into it). The writing had some seriously weak moments, large plot elements were predictable, and, the worst, all characters were clearly good or evil. It was never phrased like that, but c'mon. Seriously, that's no fun.

I liked the backstory, the different types of human and alien settlements (and of course the Roamers, which are clearly the coolest. But again, they're meant to be the coolest, meh). The story was, well, ok. ( )

I enjoyed this story. It stands out as a good example of "space opera": an epic tale in the future, with an interplanetary setting, wide in scope as told by a web of personal relationships. Anytime I put the book down for a while and picked it back up, I found the opera part a bit of a drag and often asked the question, "Now wait, who's that?" But the world building is primo. Yes, it is soft sci-fi because of Theroc's "green priests" who are able to commune with the trees and communicate telepathically across space when touching a treeling. Yes this solves the FTL (faster than light) communication problem, but via tree hugging, really? Points for originality on that but minus points for credibility. Give me an ansible. :) ( )

Humans have reached the stars and are quite determined to take control of every system they can find. They discover some tech that had been developed by an extinct alien race, and use it to light up a gas giant and turn it into a star. When lights rise from the planet no one takes any particular heed. Until factories in orbit around other gas giants are suddenly attacked by a previously unknown race. Or, perhaps the knowledge of this alien species has been hidden?

Anderson can spin a yarn and populate a galaxy with complex civilizations of many species. The action, a bit slow to start, heats up into a galactic war that threatens to destroy humans outright.

And, semi-sentient trees!

Cliff hangers, alas, but not personal ones. Just an ongoing story far too big to fit into one book. ( )