By deploying the Klikiss Torch to ignite a gas giant, the humans of the Hansa earned the enmity of the alien hydrogues. Taking swift revenge, the hydrogues attacked not only the Hansa, but the other humans, the independent Roamers and Therons, as well. Even the Ildirans, mankind's alien allies, were helpless to resist. Then another alien race appeared: the star-dwelling faeros who ferociously fought the hydrogues. Now caught in the middle of a titanic struggle between the two alien superpowers, the three factions of humanity and the Ildirans are desperate to survive. Can they band together to fight a common threat? Or will their differences lead to civil wars?
For Cesca Peroni, leader of the Roamers, survival means extending a helping hand to others, beginning with the Therons, whose planet of telepathic worldtrees is a smoldering ruin. For Basil Wenceslas, ruthless chairman of the Hansa, survival means using technology supplied by the mysterious Klikiss robots to subject the Roamers and Therons to Hansa authority - whether they like it or not. For Jora'h, the new Ildiran Mage-Imperator, survival means throwing off the traditions that have crippled the Empire. And for Jora'h's mad brother, it means restoring those traditions - even at the cost of a deadly internecine war.
As long-hidden intrigues and dark secrets come to light, a man who is believed to be long dead returns. Transformed beyond imagining, he introduces an ally who may save humanity: the wentals, ancient enemies of the hydrogues. But this new fragile hope will be threatened by a fresh betrayal - the most bitter and brutal of them all.
A Forest of Stars is book two of Kevin J Anderson's widescreen space opera "The Saga of Seven Suns", which began with
Hidden Empire. The story so far is given in some detail for new readers. Briefly, unwise human tampering has roused the wrath of the near-invincible alien "hydrogues" who live within gas-giant planets, to the delight of the more humanlike Ildiran Empire who would love to see those bumptious Terrans taken down a peg. But soon the hydrogue clampdown on mining starship fuel from those gas giants threatens to bring ruin to the whole galactic economy, not just to humanity's corporate "Hanseatic League" and its breakaway factions.
Now it emerges that the hydrogue problem is a very old one, and that humans and Ildirans are minor players--"like field mice on a giant battleground"--in an ancient war of elementals. The awakened hydrogues (Air) are determined to finish the job of wiping out the helpless-seeming forest group-mind (Earth) already introduced in book one, and in this volume the representatives of Fire and Water begin to stir...
The slam-bang action follows many characters in many story strands. Independent human Roamers, mining fuel at frightful risk, come into conflict with the desperate League, which also feels forced into brutal oppression of its own colonies. A cruel, illicit Ildiran/human breeding experiment continues in secret. Sinister robots created by a vanished race plot their own enormities, while a matter-transmitter network built by that same race could be the answer to the fuel shortage. Dirty politics and unwilling marriages of convenience abound. Space fleets face impossible odds, whole planets are wrecked, and even suns are now at risk of oblivion.
It's all rip-roaring interstellar adventure with megadeaths aplenty, lashings of pyrotechnics, the occasional touch of romance and doom-laden forebodings of worse to come. Stay tuned for more of "The Saga of Seven Suns". --David Langford
