Scattered Suns

The war between the hydrogues and the faeros is burning out stars, and one of the seven suns of the Ildiran Empire is now a blackened shell. The Ildirans have not closed ranks. They are fighting a civil war of their own, and humanity's many factions are just as split.

Mage-Imperator Jora'h has only just taken the Ildiran throne. He has to crush a rebellion led by his mad brother before the hydrogues finish off what remains of the empire. With enemies on every side, he sends his half-human daughter on a desperate mission to negotiate peace with the hydrogues.

Elsewhere, Jess Tamblyn keeps seeding worlds with wentals, the water-based beings that are sworn enemies of the hydrogues, and humanity's hope rests on him. On Theroc, a ruined planet that is home to a telepathic worldforest, a dead man is brought back to prepare for the arrival of mysterious new allies.

In the Hansa, Chairman Basil Wenceslas is consumed by his vendetta against the Roamers, a free-spirited people, and misses the danger nearer to home. King Peter has long distrusted the compies, the soldier machines at the core of Hansa forces, which were built with help from the ancient Klikiss robots. The Klikiss now begin their long-planned extermination of all flesh and blood.

This is a later volume in the Saga of Seven Suns, a space opera of interstellar politics and war. It moves between many viewpoints and worlds, and its tone is grim, with hard choices for both humans and Ildirans.