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Hidden Empire was written by Kevin J Anderson and is part of a reasonably lengthy set of seven novels. This book and the saga as a whole have received mixed reviews on Amazon, with complaints ranging from the criticality of the science through to the length of the chapters. So, what did I make of book one?
The chapter length suited me. The book does have short chapters (typically around 8 pages each), which leads to a lot of chapters in a book of this length, but I found that that suited me, because sometimes I cannot make time for a long reading session, so this was actually very flexible. (And meant that I didn’t have to force a break like I have in other books recently). The chapters move between the characters in the novel, so if you’re not a fan of switching perspective this may not be for you.
The science? Well, the finer detail is, for sure, a bit lacking. You might want to look elsewhere if you’re a sci-fi reader who enjoys the technical specifics. We don’t really (at least in this book) have any detailed exploration of the technologies that come up. Hydrogen mining and the associated use for a high-speed space fuel is fairly key to the story, but it’s not really explained, it’s just “there”.
Character development is average. Some characters are focused on more than others. Some characters are made up only to blip out of existance, which is interesting, but a bit frustrating.
So reading all of that you might think that I hated the book. Well, no. I actually quite enjoyed it in the end. I found that the character development improved in the latter stages of the book, and as the threads pulled together the meandering storyline achieved a certain cohesion. It takes a certain effort to get to the last half of the book, but on the whole it’s worth it.
The grand reveal of the powerful enemy race in this space opera also comes fairly near to the end of the novel. I would have liked to have seen them introduced properly a bit earlier, so that we could see more development, but I think it was done this way to lead in to book two.
I think I would give this book a 6 out of 10. There are definite areas where things could have been better, but on balance it is a good yarn, with some humour thrown in to keep you going.