Quite a few years ago, while confined to my bed with a serious back problem, and bored to the point that you would even read the instruction manual for a VCR, I was handed a nice thick book to read, 700 pages of story called ‘Hidden Empire, THE SAGA OF SEVEN SUNS’, I was captivated by it, couldn’t put it down, ended up reading the whole thing over the next two days, only to discover at the last page, that it was book 1 of a multi-volume series, and now I just had to have the other books, the Earth Defence Forces and the Ildaran Empire just couldn’t sit around in space and wait, I needed the other books now!

One by one relatives sourced me the other books in the series, and I started reading, book, 2, 3, 4 5 arghhh! book 6 and 7 where not even written yet.. I was leaving the hero stranded, treading water in the one sea on a water world, and the next book wasn’t even written…

A year later, the eagerly awaited book 6 was released, and I was first in line to get a copy, having pre-ordered many months before with Amazon. Knowing the publication date, and expecting the delivery, I speed read through the first 5 books, to get myself back upto warp speed, and on delivery morning eagerly awaited the postman.

The book arrived, and I immediately started reading.

Everything worked out for the heroes, and the whole story moved on loads, then I ran out of pages, and looked at the publication date for book 7 … sh*t, I have to wait another 12 MONTHS!

The time passed, and again i placed a preorder with Amazon, and again, knowing the arrival date of the book, i speed read through the previous 6 books, and then the morning of the delivery arrived, and I started reading.

12 days later, i finished the book, i just couldn’t get into it, Book 7: The Ashes of Worlds, it just doesn’t flow like the other books did, it was almost boring, to be honest, if this had been book one, I wouldn’t have even bothered to finish it, the whole book to me at least read like it was written by a man who was totally fed up with the whole story, who was looking for a way to just get it ended, it was like a film that was going great, but someone realised it had reached the 1hr 28min time point, and they had to get it finished by the 1hr 30min mark.

I feel the last book, a total disappointment, not written with the enthusiasm of the previous ones, and having the feel of a film that ends oddly, or the hurried script rewrite of a weekly TV episode that one of the stars gets sacked, and the story-lines get re-wrote to kill them off in some off-screen event, because the actor was sacked and the final departure couldn’t be filmed.

All the story threads of the Saga of the Seven Suns all get finished, nothing gets left unanswered, but some of the concluding events seem almost laughable considering the effort that obviously went in to planning the complex story-lines of the previous 6 books, it may have been better to close the saga over two books, but this would have meant an 8th book, and the authors contract was most likely only for the seven.

Having taken the time to read them all, and then laid out the cash to buy the series, which isn’t a small amount to buy all seven books, I am regrettably unimpressed by the concluding volume.