Horizon Storms is the third book in the Saga of the Seven Suns, an epic space opera set amid a huge war between conflicting races. The series tells the tale of an titanic battle between powerful rival factors spanning hundreds of star systems, and focuses on trials and tribulations of the humans and the huuman-like Ildirans. In this particular book, the focus is on the rocky relationships between human factions, and the recovery of the worldforest on Theroc after a devastating attack. Meanwhile, the Roamers discover new allies, trouble brews for the new leader of the Ildirans, and a seemingly neutral party begins to show their true colours.
While this is a mid-series book, there is a good summary of the previous books. However, I wouldn't recommend reading this book if you've not read the first book in the series, which sets the stage, but if you've not read the second you'd probably be able to pick up the plot, and if it's been a while (like for me!) since you've read the previous books the recap is very useful.
This is one of those books that is enormous in scale. There are many plot lines going through this book, most of which do not come to an end. This scale is, to my mind, by far the book's best feature. The story is truly epic, and while it can be sometimes quite hard to remember everything that has happened, the plots are simplistic enough that it's not too difficult to get back on track. The writing style is quite well suited to the scale of the book too, with short chapters that keep the pace flowing well, but also make it easy to put down and pick up again.
The book, however, should not be over analysed, otherwise it just wouldn't be much fun. There's plot lines that are very random, everyone in any sort of position of power is to be irrational to the point of insanity, the actions of the large powerful groups make no sense (if you can extinguish a sun, you can blow up a planet). The characters are naive and simple, the tenchnology ridiculous, the history inconsistent and unrealistic, etc etc. I laughed out loud once with reference to the programming of the robots, and it amused me that the humans can't program robots to pilot a spacecraft, but can make one that can make moral judgements. Quite simply this book doesn't stand up to this sort of analysis.
And so, this book is really easy to review. If you take this book seriously, it's complete junk, and if you read it expecting deep and meaningful insight, you'll get fustrated. Perhaps this is a bit of a shame, since I suspect the author does believe it to be quite serious, but this book is, pure and simple, a bit of fun. If you gloss over all the cracks in the details, it tells an engaging and interesting story, and once I'd got that idea I did enjoy reading this book, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
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