The Ashes of Worlds

The Saga of Seven Suns, Book 7

By: Kevin J. Anderson

Narrated by: David Colacci

Length: 19 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

The culminating volume in The Saga of Seven Suns weaves together the myriad story lines in a spectacular grand finale. Galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and the factions of humanity are pitted against one another. Heroes rise and enemies make their last stands in the climax of an epic tale eight years in the making.

The Saga of Seven Suns is one of the most colorful and spectacular science-fiction epics of the past decade.

Listen to more of Kevin J. Anderson's Seven Suns series.

©2008 Word Fire, Inc. (P)2008 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Orbit/Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group USA.

WE ARE UNDER ATTACK, BUT

BY WHOM
I liked this a little less then the other books in the series. Mostly it got to the point of ridiculous. Trees that uproot and become spaceships, a water spaceship, etc. I can take the two dimensional characters, I have read plenty of KJA to expect that, but the fantasy just became too much. I would love Anderson to write more in depth about the Ildirans or Klikiss or the Roamers and forget all the silly stuff.

If you are new to the series you of course must start at the beginning. The ratings for this series are similar to the ratings for a short story collection. Anderson has so many elements, that some appeal to some and some do not. Each book is like about five different books.
Here is how I rated the series.
Prequel---Veiled Alliances B
1. Hidden Empire= B+
2. A Forrest of Stars= A-
3. Horizon Storms=C+
4.Scatter Suns= B-
5. Of Fire and Night= B
6. Metal Swarm= B
7. The Ashes of Worlds= B-

My favorite character was Patrick Fitzpatrick the 3rd. In the first two or three books, I hated him, but he grew as a character and by the end, I liked him. The Roamers were pretty cool, they were the McGuyvers of space. They could take anything and make a working space ship out of it. They mined the gas giants for ekti star drive fuel. The Ildirans were a human like race that breed different breeds of people for different jobs. They were also all connected telepathically. The Klikiss was a race of giant insects and the Klikiss Robots rebelled against them and formed their own group. The green priest were telepathic with the world forest. If they could touch a World Forest Tree on one planet they could communicate with other priest on other planets who were connected to a World Forest Tree. So, there was plenty that I liked about the series.

The Hydrogues were an alien race that lived in the cores of gas giants. They were okay.

What was stupid were Wentals and Faeros. Wentals were sentient water based creatures and Faerous were sentient fire entitites living in stars. Bento becoming part of a tree was stupid, Jess Tamblyn becoming a Wental super being was stupid and there was an Ildiran that became a Faeros.

So, each book had something to hate and something to like. I did listen to all seven books and it is very rare for me to have the patience to go that far in any series. I suggest you start with Hidden Empire and go from there.

I've reached that point...

Ya know... there is a point where you just sit back and say this or that character is getting ridiculous and it is making the whole story ridiculous. I've reached the point where the Chairman of the Hansa is so one-dimensional and such a pivot point for the enitre story that everything is getting predictable.

Awsome Finish

Overall i thought the story was fairly predictable. how ever the story telling was great, well worth the listen i would recommend it to anyone.

Never change narrators in the middle of a series

It took the last books in the series to get used to the new narrator. Bad form to change in the middle of the series.

Enjoyable stories. Great series.

WOAH

Did NOT see that coming. I thought I knew what was gonna happen. Nope. I had no idea. so sad it's the end.

Saga Of 7 Suns

This was an excellent series, multiple sub-stories that all interconnected well. I highly recommend this series, very well written and well narrated.

Satisfying Conclusion to a Great Series

There are several aspects about this book and series that I don't love. For instance, the Basil Wenceslas character (Chairman of the Terran Hanseatic League) behaves too much like a spoiled 12-year old brat rather than the cruel-yet-sophisticated man that the author describes him as. But, points of complaint such as that ought to be set aside with consideration to the series as a whole. And as a whole the Saga of Seven Suns is wonderful and Ashes of Worlds is its fitting end.

Colacci's narration is, on the whole, excellent. Is he always consistent in his character voices? Not really, but even so, his voice makes for great listening.

I've already listened to the whole saga twice in the last six months! Is it long? Well, sure. But, I hate when good books come to an end - and this great series takes a good long time to end! This is my kind of series and my favorite genre (space opera): Enthusiastic 5 stars for Ashes of Worlds and the whole Saga of Seven Suns!

Like the story, but not the narration

Good story for my daily commute. I am hooked on the series, though its a little long and tedious at times. After getting hooked on the narrator in books 1 to 3, I still cannot get used to the accents the current narrator uses. Would it be too much for him to at least use the same pronunciations (e.g., Taah-c-a vs. Tay-sha)? Change is hard.

The conclusion to a unique saga

3.5 of 5 stars.

Overall series: 3.75 of 5 stars.

In previous reviews from this series I’ve noted Anderson’s imagination and the vast universe his characters inhabit. This holds true in this final volume of the Saga of Seven Suns series. If nothing else, The Ashes of Worlds is as unpredictable as the earlier installments which established the structure and civilizations of the Spiral Arm.

On the downside, there are too many holes and unexplained aspects of the power structures and motivations of the series protagonists.

The devolution of Chairman Basil Wenceslas to an irrational autocrat is interesting and gradual but his ability maintain power after making poor command decisions throughout the series is never explained. Perhaps this is what “space opera” means: high level details and grand struggles without substantiation? This is only a single example but it captures the overall lack of logical mechanics within the Seven Suns universe.

As the series progresses, plot twists become more metaphysical as elemental beings clash and ally with one another as well as the Human and Ildiran civilizations. Other races with their own motivations (usually the destruction of other races) add a bit of unnecessary complexity and length to what could have been nicely wrapped up in a coherent 5 volume series.

David Colacci is an excellent narrator who kept my interest until the end, though I was glad when it was over.

Hollywood ending

I recently listened to The Ashes of Worlds written by Kevin J. Anderson and narrated by David Colacci. 

This is the seventh and final book in the Saga of Seven Suns. It's impossible to review books in a series without offering some spoilers to what came before. If this is an issue for you, I suggest you stop reading now. 

This last book starts prepped for the final battle between multiple factions. The Klikiss hive breedex's have been conquering each other and the process is almost finished. The hive that assimilated Davlin Lotze is conquering most others, but what will be left of his imprinting on the breedex remains to be seen.

Basil Wenceslas continues to hold the Mage-Imperatur Jor'ah hostage on earth's moon, however, the Ildiran Solar Navy is en route to perform a daring rescue to free Jor'ah. 

The Faeros continue their burning of Ildirans on their home planet, as well as their attacks on Theroc and the world forest, however, their ire is turned against Jor'ah and they seek to hunt him down wherever he hides. 

The Wentils and the World forest seek to join in new ways in order to combat the aggression of the Faeros. If they don't succeed the galaxy could burn.

David Colacci continued to do a great job with the narration. Considering the amount of characters he had to voice it was a stellar effort. 

Conclusion: I think, since this is the last book in the series, it's time to not only review this book, but the series as a whole. This book was a welcome conclusion to the series. It, in an ending reminiscent of Hollywood, wraps up everything with a bow. I was quite happy with the overall conclusion. 

The series as a whole runs a bit long in the tooth. I honestly felt it could have ended after about the fifth book and been just fine. To be fair, I do understand why the author continued. There was, legitimately, more story to be told and he wanted to tell it.

This series is not a 'hard' scifi series but it's rather reminiscent of the early days of scifi. In early sci-fi books you could meet strange alien races with mind warping abilities and it was viewed as good sci-fi, even if no explanation was forthcoming for these abilities. 

I suspect, because it hews towards this earlier view of the scifi genre, there will be many who won't enjoy the Saga of the Seven Suns. I, being a strange bloke that doesn't think the universe comes with handy explanations appended to everything, quite enjoyed it. While the series did go a bit long, it left me appreciating the Saga as a whole. T'was a long journey, but a worthwhile one.