Written like a Mills & Boon in space.
Good story/plot lines but gooey & over-written when it comes to the characters & their relationships.
Journeys across the galaxy are like a trip to the corner store. Fuel must be cheaper then rain water in the Amazon & noone seems to age whether they have been travelling at light-speed or sitting at home.
So, forget the science label if you can & enjoy the fantasy. To avoid disapointment....borrow it!

From the backcover the book sounded fascinating; exactly the awe-inspiring literary space opera I like so much in the Ian Banks tradition. However, although there are certain interesting aspects to the novel like the Klikiss torch the characterisation seemed superficial and vaguely irritating. There is no depth to the novel and frankly I didn't enjoy the novel much and I am certainly not buying any of the sequels.

If you like a quasi-Hollywood casual read in the Star Wars space opera tradition by all means go out and buy Hidden Empire, if you want a novel witch is deep, poetic and addictable, I would recommend buying something else.

I saw this book mentioned in the back of Peter F Hamilton's "Fallen Dragon." I'm generally a fan of epic series like Dune, Hamilton's "Night's Dawn Trilogy," Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, Star Wars, etc. I enjoyed the Dune prequels and some other work Kevin has done, so I figured I'd give this book a try.

While I'd generally say I enjoyed this book, I'm not sure if I'd tell other folks that it's good. Especially as a person who has read a number of series within the epic s/f, space opera genre, it's hard not to point at a number of elements and say "hey, that's just like xxx from book yyy!" I saw the Roamers as non-genetically modified Ousters (from Hyperion), the Klikiss research a lot like the Laymil stuff in "Night's Dawn," etc. While a lot of these ideas weren't new in the books I first read them in, sometimes it seemed a bit much.

I stopped caring quite so much about this as the book read on and I found myself enjoying it. It sure won't be winning any literary awards, but it was fun and for those looking for a book in this sub-genre, I'd say check it out. I plan on reading the rest of the series.