A Great Saga - Rated 
It's one of the best original Sci-fi Sagas I've read. At some points it moves a bit slowly, but over all it's enjoyable, and really inspires. But imagination is required! I've read 5 of the 6 available books and i'm ordering book 6, To see the "big picture" in Kevin J. Anderson detailed Universe you have to read most of the available books, thing's begin to make sense in a Sci-fi way as you read on. Things recommended roughly along those lines would be X3 (pc game), SGA (TV series. google them).
Very good start to the series - Rated 
I felt that the story was absorbing and interesting and I especially liked the chapter layout, in that it flits between the stories of certain characters throughout the tale, I feel that it helped keep a continuity to what is an epansive and wide reaching book with many different parties and I feel it helps to keep interest up in what some may consider to be 'slower' chapters.
I belived that it was all in all very good, and i cant wait to read the others in the series
Can I give it no stars? - Rated 
I'm a big fan of space operas but I like a certain level of sophistication in the writing, the characterisation and the science. Unfortunately, this book is lacking in all three.
There is endless repetition in the description of the characters and their environments and no real insight into why anyone does what they do in the book. And the plot holes are glaring. Why anyone in the book can't work out why they are being attacked by gas giant dwellers when they've just blown up a gas giant is beyond me. And that's just one of them. Listing them here would be too much like reading the book again.
And the science is woeful. Humans breathing the atmosphere of gas giants? Not likely. And the description of how the star drives work was simply baffling as it contained no science just some contradictory babble about relativity.
I've never written a review before but I really feel you must be warned. Stay well away.
Nice easy read - Rated
I like my Sci-fi fairly simple and this was a nice easy read. Agree that flitting between a few 'plots' across so many chapters was a little tedious. Overall though, despite the fact it has been stretched to cover more pages than necessary, I'm still interested in finding out where the story leads and hope the sequels give more insite into the non-humanoid creatures; that's what will really determine the authors imagination.
Very Disappointing - Rated
After some of the reviews that I read, I expected a lot more.
660 pages, but very little happens - I thought there would be more resolution in the last 50 pages, but the book stopped abruptly - the last 50 pages turned out to be appendices and adverts.
115 chapters, but you lose an average of one page at the beginning and end of each chapter, so the average chapter length is less than 5 pages -not a lot of room for any real development of either the plot or the characters.
The chapters flit from one character to another, and many of them seem to have very little to do with the main story.
The first real action takes place on page 193 (by which time most good authors would have told a complete story!). So then there is the mystery of who is attacking and why. Sadly it is all very obvious, so when, finally, one of the characters states the answer on page 556 it is a tremendous anti-climax.
I'll stick with Peter F. Hamilton for my space epics! Life is too short to read any more volumes of this series.
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