Note. This review contains several spoilers about the various novels in the series.

The planet Ildira knows no night because it’s part of a multiple system with seven stars that create an everlasting day. This planet is home to an ancient civilization whose history is told in a poem, “The Saga of Seven Suns”.

Thousands of years ago the Ildiran empire was involved in a terrible war fought primarily by the “elemental” species:

• Hydrogues, a very aggressive species that lives in the nucleus of Jovian giant planets
• Faeros, creatures mad of plasma living in the stars
• Verdani, intelligent plants combined in one telepathic network
• Wentals, creatures made mostly of water telepathically connected in a way similar to the Verdani

The Verdani and the Wentals are species who seek order while the Faeros and the Hydrogues are bringers of chaos, so much that they started fighting each other. At the end of the war the Verdani were almost extinct, all traces of the Wentals were lost while the Faeros and the Hydrogues stopped fighting because of the losses they suffered, though the recordings from that time are unclear.

After the war the Ildiran empire could prosper and the only other alien species it had a relationship with were the Klikiss, insectoids whose nests were fighting among themselves for supremacy. Their technological advances had brought Klikiss to build robots in their own image to make their nests the most powerful but the robots had become so much like their creators that they become a sort of nest on their own that had begun destroying the Klikiss, which at one point were believed extinct. The robots, thinking they were the winners, simply turned themselves off.

For many centuries Ildirans remained the only active intelligent species in their galaxy branch and with the passing of time they became conservative, more interested in remembering the stories of their past than to progress further. However, the Mage-Imperator and a few other trustworthy people also kept the memory of the war left out of the saga of seven suns and they knew they had to prepare for a new war that would break out sooner or later. An important moment in those preparations was marked by the discovery of another intelligent species, human beings.

At the beginning of the XXII century humanity had begun launching generational spaceships in the universe in search for new habitable planets, but those were ships that traveled at lower than light speeds taking many decades to reach their destination.

The situation for mankind changed when a generational spaceship met the Ildirans, who reached the Earth and started friendly relations with humans. Thanks to the interstellar propulsion technology provided by the Ildirans, humans became capable of traveling at speeds greater than light.

The first human generational spaceship encountered by the Ildirans was led to the planet Theroc, where humans discovered the presence of the Verdani. Over time humans learned to live in a relationship with the intelligent plants that became tighter and tighter and some of them were able to form a true symbiosis that enabled humans to form a physical bond with the Verdani and access their telepathic connection.

In the XXV century most of humanity is ruled by the Terran Hanseatic League: formally the leader is the King but for a long time he’s been a puppet in the hands of the Chairman, the real holder of power behind a veneer of democracy. In the Terran Hanseatic League there is a unified religion but priests are at the service of the Chairman and the religious leader in charge is an actor whose job it is to keep masses quiet.

During their explorations humans found the relics of the Klikiss civilization: slowly they succeded in making some of their technology work and in 2427 they performed the first experiment to turn a Jovian giant planet into a star using Klikiss technology.

The experiment is a success but the planet is used was home to a Hydrogue colony so that species wakes up and declare war on humanity.

It’s only the beginning of a new war that will see the progressive involvement of all the elemental species that will reappear on the scene one after another. Humans try to use the robots Klikiss technology however when they discover that humans are already using android robots they consider them just like their former masters and rebel against them too.

A terrible new war involves the entire galaxy arm bringing devastation to entire planets. Over the years new alliances are formed and also new kinds of symbiosis between different species. At the same time divisions will be created among human beings but also among Ildirans causing civil wars that will divide their peoples. During the war the Klikiss will return as well shifting the balance of power again.

“The Saga of Seven Suns” by Kevin J. Anderson is composed of seven novels:

• Hidden Empire
• A Forest of Stars
• Horizon Storms
• Scattered Suns
• Of Fire And Night
• Metal Swarm
• The Ashes of Worlds

There’s also the prequel “Veiled Alliances” which is a graphic novel that tells the encounter between humans and Ildirans.

This saga is actually one very long story: the first six books end with a cliffhanger and the story continues in the next novel so if you decided to start reading it you should know that the stories that are told will be completed at the end of the seventh novel. It may make sense to read the first novel to see if this saga matches at least partly your taste but at that point your either give it up or you go on until the end.

“The Saga of Seven Suns” is in many ways an old-fashioned space opera where huge fleets face each other in space battles, whole planet can be destroyed and during the story new weapons are invented. However in classic space opera the plot is linear with a limited number of characters, instead under this point of view this this saga is a modern space opera that includes several parallel sub-plots that tell the stories of many characters.

Kevin J. Anderson seems to spend most of his energy building the fictional universe of the saga of seven suns with the various species and planets they live on.

Unfortunately the author’s energies seem to run out when it’s time to sketch the plot: in order to fill seven 600+ pages novels he needs to tell many parallel stories that unfold in a very long time.

Originality isn’t the best part of this saga: for example, while reading it I thought more than once that a certain plot element reminded me of “Babylon 5”, unfortunately the depth of that TV show is totally lacking.

Characters aren’t exactly memorable either: the saga takes place over several years but very few of the characters have any sort of evolution and the division between good and bad is clear with little room for shades of gray and complex personalities. Even the dialogues aren’t particularly bright but tend to be as dull as the characters.

The saga also includes some love stories but again their development is very superficial and eventually they just make it unnecessarily long.

Overall this is a saga good to be read by people who want to spend some leisure time such as in summer at the beach. For people looking for original and deep stories with complex characters it’s to be avoided.