I’m currently staggering through the closing stages of A Forest of Stars, the second part of the Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson. I’ll leave it to your own curiosity to chase up the plot if you want to (gotta admire the service here, huh?) but suffice to say I’m finding it hard going. To be honest, I’m now only reading through the remaining 100 or so pages because to put it down now would be to admit that the whole book has been a waste of time. At least this way I get to know how this part of the story ends. It might be unsatisfying, but it’s closure.
Starting with the first book, Hidden Empire, Anderson has tried to write a truly old fashioned space opera: a galaxy spanning tale with a multitude of characters and interweaving plot strands. I understand his aims and I even applaud them. Sci-fi is the perfect genre for such a story (indeed, the only genre in which it can truly take to the broadest canvas there is – the whole universe) and if it is told properly, as is the case with Peter F. Hamilton‘s excellent Night’s Dawn trilogy (to pull a recent example from memory) then it’s got the ingredients of a story without equal for depth and entertainment. However, it puts tremendous demands upon the writer. He or she isn’t keeping one, two or three main characters in play at any one time: it’s ten, fifteen or twenty. All with individual situations, the need to be characterised fully and to be developed as the reader’s understanding of the story develops. For an idea of what I mean, here is the cast list for the Night’s Dawn trilogy. Not exactly Waiting for Godot, is it?
And this is where Anderson falls down. His characters aren’t interesting: indeed, they’re rendered down into such simple, one-dimensional stereotypes that there is no interest there, no duality. It’s a reference that won’t mean a lot to most of my readership, but there was more characterisation of Megatron in Beast Machines than there is of all of the central characters in the Saga of Seven Suns. When a cartoon show outpaces you on characterisation, it’s surely time to hang up the writing pen. The characters, however, might have been forgiven if the premise of the story was a little more interesting….but it just isn’t. It falls flat. Hard.
My main problem is with the pacing. Things are built up, cloaked in mystery, big noises are made and then…nothing. Some revelations are revealed in situations that are so convenient it knocks the reader out of any suspension of disbelief, and some have the drama gutted right out of them by characters revealing the surprises almost as an afterthought. Anyone who is halfway savvy (and if I managed to work it out, others certainly will have because I’m not the brightest lightbulb in the box folks) will have worked out the central plot twist pretty early on, and from that point on the books become an exercise in waiting for all of the characters to get where you are already. An exercise which isn’t, as you can probably imagine, the most interesting way to pass the time.
And the worst of it? There are two more books in the damn series out now. Right now I’m quite happy to pass on them, but I know in my bones that at one point in the future four things will happen:
1) The books will appear in some sale somewhere. Probably a “3 for the price of 2” bundle at Borders.
2) I will have just finished a book and be on the lookout for something else, or will just be looking to buy a new book to have something to read at one point.
3) Some time will have dulled my memory of how poor this story really is.
4) Cha-ching.
So I know I’m going to get drawn into this morass of mundanity once again. And again. And again, until the whole torrid business is done with. Of course I am quite prepared to have egg all over my face if the story suddenly kicks off in book 3 into high gear, but I just don’t see that coming.
So, one rather disappointing book over and done with. Now a couple of days of reading snippets here and there, and then at midnight on Saturday I can settle down with a glass of something cold and get into a guilty pleasure of mine. After that, the biggest book on the horizon for me is Judas Unchained. Along the way I am considering picking up Freakonomics, The Insider and maybe even following up on an author mentioned in my Blog Party.
That is, of course, unless Kevin J. Anderson finds me and beats me up. That might change my plans a bit.