Scattered Suns by Kevin J. Anderson

 

This is part of the Saga Of The Seven Suns series.

 

As a holiday gift, I was given a one-month subscription to try out simplyaudiobooks.com's mail rental service.  Their website has an SF&F section.  Perhaps I'm too isolated in which types of SF I read, or perhaps the section was just over-run by bestseller-wannabe genre writers using fantasy themes [an area I'm sure I'm ignorant about].  In any case, a large percentage of the authors' names meant nothing to me.  There was only token representation for classic writers like Asimov and Clarke.  Hard SF writers like Benford, Egan and Sheffield were entirely absent.

 

In order to try out the service, I selected Scattered Suns.  I'd heard the series mentioned, but had never read any of Kevin Anderson's books.  I had enjoyed a couple of his short stories.

 

What I found in Scattered Suns was a space fantasy / military SF / complicated multi-faction intrigue tale.  It's well written, but space fantasy and military SF are not my favored subgenres.

 

There's the Terran space military and space gypsies they want to get control of.  There's bureaucracy and different perspectives within the Terran forces.  There's figure-head royalty, the power behind the throne and palace intrigue.  There are the enemy aliens who live in stars and there are water beings who are also opposed to the star aliens.  There's the empire of the seven suns.  And there are various family, romantic and other personal relationships adding more layers of complexity...

 

In addition to any other personal preferences in reading that influenced my reaction to the book, I tend to be less inclined to books when the government has royalty or when there is telepathy (or such) presented in a way that leaves a less scientific feel.  Scattered Suns has both.

 

On top of simplysudiobook.com's limited [for my taste] selection, I found it took a week for the book to arrive in the mail and what arrived was only the first half of the book.  At that rate, it was not going to be possible to finish both halves of the book in one month.  Adding an additional month of the service would cost more than I thought it was worth to me.  As a result, I did not complete the book.  That said, this can hardly be a complete review of the book.  However, hopefully, it will give you a better idea of whether it would agree with your reading priorities.

 

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