Hidden Empire and Seven Suns

There are two books on my list titled Hidden Empire, oddly enough.  Orson Scott Card's Empire books are his thought experiment about an American conflict between red state values and a liberal cadre with future weapons.

Kevin J. Anderson's Hidden Empire is the first in a series of seven books, The Saga of Seven Suns, the story of mankind's expansion into the galaxy.  Various factions of Humans and their alien neighbors, the Ildirans, become embroiled in an ancient, desperate conflict after Humans make some poor assumptions about a bomb they find laying around in the ruins of an abandoned planet.

That is a colorful over-simplification of the story and yet I'm comfortable with it.  

I liked the book, although seeing that I will read the next six at some point in the coming months, I wish I had loved it.  

The plot drives, much more than the characters and often at their expense.  Given the scope of the universe these people inhabit, the story jumps between viewpoints spread across the whole of known space.  It's understandable but happens so frequently it prevents Anderson's characters from rising above the pseudo-stock sketches they truly are.  Balancing plot and character development is always a wrestling match but when his most compelling characters are ignominious, mute, seldom-seen, diamond-hulled warships, there is room for improvement.

The hope I carry now, as he's already introduced the characters and set the stage, is that the remaining six books will not struggle as to how to present themselves.  At the end of the book the plot has complicated itself to a point of promise for the future, if the characters can get out of the way.

One final thought:  there is too much retreading happening.  The reader is left holding the thread of one character's view of events between many chapters because of the overall development.  Refreshing the who/what/when aspects is helpful but the constant reiteration of key character information only serves to make them seem thinner in my mind and draws the story out unnecessarily.  Repeating that your generic shopkeeper has a brown apron doesn't really make him less generic and I'd appreciate you just getting on with things.  

I would recommend this book: be streamlined a bit.

I got this book: last year coming home from Mexico, where it would be called El Imperio Oculto, el primer libro de La Saga de Los Siete Soles.

This book is now: refusing to open again on my Kindle.  Guess I'm done.