Rating: 
Summary: amazing
Review: all i can say is amazing, where i live i have only just got the first volume and i am looking for the new ones, cannot wait
Rating: 
Summary: up there with Dune Foundaition Lord of the Rings
Review: THE GOOD: Okay i have been a Krvin J. Anderson fan for a long time. With his Star Wars books and Dune preuquils, (which for the record are definatly worth your time, not Frank Herbert but what would you expect), about three quarters of this first book is meticulas explaining and suttle plotting for book two and presumably the rest of the siries. However if you stick with it you will be dazzeled. It has all the political and social intregue of Dune, and all the wierd aliens and space battles of Star wars. THE BAD:As i said before this perticular installment tries too get all the intracate explaining of charectors/cultures/plot/races/technollagy, (which there are QUITE a few of them), in about the first half of the book which can beacome quite dry, a few times i almost put it down, but in the end through second book the payoff is huge. THE UGLY: Don't trust me with a mere seven dollars, Go to Kevin's websit(www.wordfire.com) send him an envelopeand he'll GIVE YOU A FREE SIGHNED HARCOVER. To good to be true, i thought so to until mine came in the mail!
Rating: 
Summary: The purpose of this book was to sell sequels.
Review: While the story of the book wasn't all that bad, it ended in a way that made me feel cheated. While one expects the first book in a series not to tie up all loose ends, it is expected that there will be some kind of conclusion. Cutting off the story in the middle of an action sequence is a pitiful attempt to ensure that the reader will buy the sequel. While the "to be continued" bit may play with soap opera audiences, science fiction readers are a bit more discerning.
Rating:
Summary: No need for a sequel
Review: I usually don't like to type bad reviews, but this book just plain didn't do it for me. The plot itself, how a futuristic galactic society must deal with an overwhelming and incomprehensible threat, was a good one and caused me to buy the book in the first place. I generally like Alien Invasion stories and from reading the cover, it seemed like this one had the makings of a great read. Boy, was I ever wrong. To sum it up, the book starts slow and goes nowhere fast. The author seems to be writing a sci-fi version of Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series, but instead of introducing us to a few detailed characters at a time, he throws a whole slew of them at you, each one telling their story in 3-5 pages at a time. Just as you start getting the feel for the character, the chapter ends and a new character comes into play. Usually on a whole different planet and at a different time, so there's no consistency with the plot development. Now, combine that with terrible writing, and an ever increasingly illogical plot and it just makes for a very mediocre read. I have no intention of buying the sequel (IT'S IN HARDBACK!!!!! Like anyone would buy this in hardback??!!), so don't look for any further reviews on this series. As soon as I forced myself to finish it, in the vain hope it would get better, I read Walter Jon Williams Dread Empire Fall: The Praxis, which is also the first book in a series and I breathed this HUGE sigh of relief. It is such a pleasure to read a good book after finishing a bad one. Sorry Mr. Anderson, I guess you should stick to copying Star Wars novels or whatever it was you were doing before writing Hidden Empire.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book
Review: Through most of this novel I was sure I'd end up giving it 4 stars. It seemed that like with the Dune prequels, Mr. Anderson had continued to stand on the shoulders of giants without losing his balance, but was afraid to stand up so he could see a bit more than the giants (the giants being Frank Herbert, and George Lucas). But then at the end the long known revelation came. And it wasn't what it was (that was evident early on), but the way everyone reached made me feel like I was there. The sheer emotion got Mr. Anderson the last star, and a perfect review from me.
Rating: 
Summary: idiot plot
Review: I've just browsed through a few of the online reviews of this book, and although most of the things I liked and (mostly) disliked about it have got a mention, nobody seems to have mentioned the most astonishingly blatant idiot plot I've ever encountered. The powers that be decide to turn a gas giant planet into a sun. For no particular reason, just because they can. I bet that even NASA would wonder whether that was entirely ecologically sound, though they'd probably go ahead and do it anyway, but in this book nobody gives it a thought. Just as it explodes 3 gigantic, tremendously fast spaceship-like objects are observed to depart the planet in some haste, and hare off into outer space. Nobody gives that a thought either. Very shortly later human vehicles and factories orbiting other gas giants come under attack and are destroyed. this all happens near the front of the book. At page 550 (that's five hundred and fifty) everybody is still wandering around bewilderdly going "Why are they attacking us? What can we have done to offend them?" Duh.
Rating:
Summary: Just terrible
Review: I just had the unpleasant experience of finishing this book last night. It is without a doubt one of the worse sci-fi books I have read in a long time (of course I've been reading a lot of Greg Egan, so that is a fairly high bar to go against). I've never read Anderson before, but you can see that writing all of the star wars books have really killed his creativity. The book is long for the sake of being long, he introduces far too many characters to make the book seem more epic, and he gives the characters over the top personalities to differentiate them. None of these ideas are new (a half dozen other sci-fi books talk about gas giant dwellers), and frankly the softness of the science is simply too much (inter-species breeding, come on!). Plus the revelations at the end of the book are obvious after about page 50. Read Peter F. Hamilton's epic (the reality dysfunction) if you want see the same thing done much better with a more creative enemy and much better characters. Those books make you hunger to finish them so you can get to the next book, this book make you hunger to finish it so you don't ever have to think about it again.
Rating: 
Summary: OK, but not great
Review: This book is an OK sci-fi space opera, but it lacks a tremendous amount of character development. If you're looking for Sci-Fi Channel, "star wars" style sci-fi then this book is for you. The first and last 50 or so pages are quite good, it's just plodding through the convoluted middle that makes the book difficult to read.
Rating:
Summary: not what I expected
Review: I didn't like this book because science is not explained properly yes there's some very interesting ideas but I would have liked more explanation which is my main reason for reading SF. I found many of the characters boring and simplistic, characters I found interesting like Raymond "King Peter" didn't have enough space in this book, I didn't like the politics it's just too predictable and everyday like, im more of a "serious" SF reader and this read is starwars like -same author I was informed- I picked it up without that knowledge and honestly because I liked the cover, I give it a 1.5 out of 5
Rating:
Summary: Good but not great.
Review: This is a good science fiction saga, as the cover says. Nowhere near the complexity or shear beauty of Frank Herbert's Dune but nonetheless quite good. The story concerns several races within the milky way galaxy, mostly the outer spiral arm. The humans originating from Earth after havings sent out large population ships to colonise other habitable planets encounter the Ildirans who possess a faster than light star drive which they benevolently give to humans and form a loose alliance with them. It is now 200 years after these events and humans have colonised 69 planets throughout their part of the spiral arm whereas the Ildiran Empire being much larger would perhaps have several thousand. Unbeknownst to all except the Ildiran Emperor and possibly the Klikiss robots left over from a dead civilisation 10000 years ago there exists a third race called Hydrogues a very powerful race who live at extremely high pressures within gas giant planets and possess diamond hulled spheres and travel from place to place via wormholes. The killing of millions of Hydrogues by humans in an experiment to ignite a gas giant lead to a terrible war which the Hydrogues are winning easily given their superior technology. No longer are humans or Ildirans able to mine hydrogen from the gas giants needed for their faster than light drives. This is the basic story along with the so-called Roamers who are an outlying group of humans living outside the Hanseatic League making up the main group of humans in the galaxy. Many characters play a part in this drama as the hydrogue war gathers pace and the schemes of the Ildiran Emperor and the Hanseatic League Chairman evolve. The story is well told although possesses many weaknesses, for example throughout the Ildirans are portrayed as a stagnant civilisation without drive, the Hanseatic League as only obsessed with politics and worshipping a puppet king, whereas the real powers are the enigmatic Klikiss robots which, throughout, appear dangerous and the Roamers who form the creative drive within humanity, sort of a romantic notion with little reality. Nonetheless its worth reading and nowadays really good science fiction is hard to come by, with Ender's Game being an exception. Nothing seems to compare with the scope of Dune or the intrigue and scale of the Foundation Series. Good but not great. Hope it gets better as the story proceeds.
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