My ten-year-old came home with a thick book our local librarian had recommended for his reading level: The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson. I flipped through the tiny lettering and looked at him, concerned, and asked, “You sure you want to read this?” I was hoping he’d say no and give me first dibs. Oh well.
Later that night, I was scrolling through Facebook when a post popped up. Guess whose? Yep. The BackerKit campaign for The Complete Saga of Seven Suns.
I rarely thank the algorithm. That thing creeps me, yet this time, I made an exception.
Like millions of others, I’m a Game of Thrones fanboy. But what really draws me in are the stories: vast worlds, high stakes, intricate plots, and complex storytelling.
Over the years, that fascination has led me deeper into manga, where I’ve found the same thrill consuming series like Attack on Titan, Berserk, Vagabond, Vinland Saga, and Kingdom, just to name a few. Different genres, different mediums, but that same pull toward epic storytelling.
So when I stumbled upon The Complete Saga of Seven Suns promising that kind of grand vision, you bet I was intrigued.
A few Reddit rabbit holes and several of Kevin J. Anderson’s recent interviews later, here’s what I found.
Where the Universe Began
In the nineties, Kevin J. Anderson was one of the first authors trusted to expand George Lucas’s galaxy beyond the films, and his first novel there, Jedi Search, made him a New York Times bestseller.
Somewhere in those Star Wars years, he had an idea too big to fit into someone else’s franchise. He pictured a gigantic alien ship rising out of the clouds of Cloud City, because humans had angered something they didn’t even know existed.
“I instantly thought, I’m not going to tell Lucasfilm about that,” he said in one interview. “I’m going to do my own story about it.”
That idea became The Saga of Seven Suns. As Anderson puts it: “It’s like The Expanse and Star Wars and Dune all had a baby.”
The first book of the saga, Hidden Empire, is set centuries in the future, when humanity is busy colonizing the galaxy. We’ve even found a way to turn a gas giant into a sun, warming frozen moons into habitable worlds. What nobody realizes is that a powerful alien race, the Hydrogues, lives inside those gas giants, and humanity has just, in Anderson’s words, “sort of nuked their capital.”
That premise alone had me hooked, but then you add robots, rival empires, ancient ruins, fire beings living inside stars. By the sequel trilogy, the one my son started with, the threats have become even more existential. Creatures called the Shana Rei want to “unmake the entire universe from the Big Bang.”
A Masterclass in Plotting
After years of following epic stories across various mediums, I know a story of this magnitude cannot be written by just anyone. You definitely don’t pull this off by accident.
For Anderson, the secret is rigorous planning. He recalls in one interview that Brandon Sanderson, another legendary author, chosen to finish The Wheel of Time, once called him “the best plotter in the business.” Anderson plans every chapter in detail and color-codes his characters to make sure nobody disappears from the page for too long.
That level of planning matters because a sprawling saga can easily lose its momentum, or leave readers struggling to keep track of its many characters.
Readers definitely notice this meticulous pacing. “I never feel like I’m getting bored,” Jonathan Koan told him on the day the campaign launched. In his review of Hidden Empire, Koan even suggested it deserves a John Williams background score. Another interviewer praised the “excellent world building... excellent characters.”
A Chance to Read It All
Which brings me back to that Facebook post. Personally, I don’t mind waiting years for a story worth telling. But imagine the whole saga already finished, every book ready to read, no waiting for the next installment. That’s exactly what the post promises this collection will deliver.
And what a collection it is. Twenty-five years in the making, it brings together 13 books: the original seven novels, the sequel trilogy, the prequel Veiled Alliances, the connecting book Whistling Past the Graveyard, and the new Roamer’s Wrath, a never-before-published story set between books three and four.
Bringing all the 13 books together wasn’t simply a matter of putting them in a box. The original seven and the sequel trilogy had ended up with different publishers, the covers didn’t match, and some had gone out of print.
Anderson fixed all of that. He spent two and a half years reclaiming the rights, followed by another year and a half preparing the BackerKit campaign. He commissioned award-winning artist, Stephen Youll, who painted the covers for the first five original novels and the sequel trilogy, to illustrate the remaining books. He also worked with other artists and designers to give the whole collection a cohesive look.
For Anderson, the project wasn’t just about bringing the books back into print. It was also about making them look like they belonged together. In one interview, he said that some fans “are kind of OCD and they want the whole set to match. I’m one of those.”
I can understand that. Who wouldn’t want a collector’s item like this? More importantly, without this campaign, I’m sure I’d be scouring the internet months from now, hunting for used copies of the missing books.
Choose Your Way In
Anderson has provided plenty of ways to get on board, with pledge tiers for different budgets and levels of commitment:
Just curious? Start with Hidden Empire, the first novel, for $5 as an ebook, $25 in trade paperback, or $35 in hardcover. The rest of the series reaches regular bookstores in 2027.
The core story. The seven novels of the original Saga of Seven Suns are $35 in ebook, $150 in trade paperback, or $225 in hardcover.
The whole saga. All 13 volumes, meaning the original seven, the Saga of Shadows sequel trilogy, and three bonus books, are $50 in ebook, $250 in trade paperback, or $400 in hardcover. At $50 for the entire ebook collection, that’s less than $4 per book.
For collectors. The deluxe 13-volume set has already sold out. The deluxe Galaxy Set is still available: the core seven novels in bespoke editions with sprayed edges, astronomical endpapers and color chapter headers, signed and hand-numbered by Anderson, for $400.
Something new. Roamer’s Wrath is a never-before-published Seven Suns novella, plus two short stories. It’s sold on its own ($5 ebook, $16 trade paperback, $28 hardcover, or $15 audiobook read by Anderson) and is already part of the complete set.
Add-ons include the new Spiral Arm companion book (which features a never-seen TV pilot script), a digital art gallery of nearly 100 images, author-narrated audiobooks of the three bonus books, and a flash drive loaded with 25 of Anderson’s ebooks. Every physical order also gets an exclusive bookmark, because the campaign hit its $246K stretch goal.
A word to the wise: The 13-volume deluxe set sold out within a day of launch(!), and only a handful of Galaxy Sets remain. This isn’t one of those things you’ll mull over and come back to later. If this collection is on your wish list, don’t nuke this chance. Act before the opportunity slips away.
The BackerKit campaign ends November 5, 2026 at 2 p.m. EST.
Straight from the Source
I’ve asked Anderson a few questions of my own, and he was kind enough to answer them.
1. Of all the characters in Seven Suns, who would you get along with best in real life?
Jess and Cesca were the two that I felt closest to, the most friendly and normal…but it would always be handy to have a green priest around.
2. Is there one scene or chapter in Seven Suns you’re proudest of, one where you felt you wrote beyond your ability at the time?
Don’t want any spoilers, but when the hydrogues first rise up out of the clouds by Ross Tamblyn’s skymine is a favorite, and the very ending scene in Hidden Empire still gives me chills.
3. You teach a master’s in publishing. What did publishing this complete edition yourself, and seeing it achieve such an incredible success, teach you that you want to pass on to your students?
Actually, my students are part of the team while building this campaign and they are in the back office to watch all the inner workings, the ad responses, and they helped do layout proofing on the books. For my Publishing MA degree, we really try to teach hands on knowledge, project-based learning so they watch and DO the real stuff. It’s a one-year low residency program (meaning almost entirely online except for one week in Colorado in the summer). More details at wordfire.com/publishing-masters-degree.
4. Which book in the series was the easiest or the hardest to write?
Probably The Dark Between the Stars, because it had been several years since I worked in the Seven Suns universe (I took a break to write my Terra Incognita epic fantasy trilogy), and so I had to reload all of the million stories and characters and world building details in my head. It was quite a challenge, but that book did end up nominated for the Hugo Award, so I guess I pulled it off.
5. Are any of your main characters inspired by people in your own life? Maybe someone readers might recognise?
Characters are always an amalgam of people I know, parts of this personality, some of those traits. Never any direct one-to-one inspiration.
6. What can readers look forward to after this campaign?
Right now I’m trying to get my head around the logistics of just printing and fulfilling all this! But I just have a brand new Lovecraftian SF novel released from Blackstone, Nether Vortex, and my graphic novel adaptation of Dune Messiah is coming out from Abrams in the next two weeks. And I’m working on some novels with the rock band Coheed and Cambria, and always plenty of irons in the fire.
About the Author
Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books, fifty-eight of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars universe including the Jedi Academy trilogy and the Young Jedi Knights series. With Frank Herbert’s son Brian, he wrote many internationally bestselling novels in the Dune universe, including Dune: House Atreides, The Butlerian Jihad, and Sisterhood of Dune, which is the basis for the HBO series Dune: Prophecy (Anderson is co-producer on the show). He worked on all three of the recent Dune films from Legendary Entertainment and is Executive Producer on Dune: Part Three. Anderson also wrote the unique Clockwork Angels steampunk trilogy with legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart, based on the last studio album from Rush.
His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Wake the Dragon and Terra Incognita fantasy trilogies, and the humorous Dragon Business series. His Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. novels are currently being developed as a TV show, with Anderson serving as Executive Producer.
He has written comics and graphic novels for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, BOOM!, IDW, and others—including Dr. Strange, Batman, Superman, Justice Society of America, Star Wars, Predator, X-Files, and Dune. His adaptation of Dune: The Graphic Novel was a New York Times bestseller and named one of the 100 greatest graphic novels of all time by Comic Book Authority.
He has edited numerous anthologies, including Star Wars: Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, Tales from Jabba’s Palace, and Tales of the Bounty Hunters, which are the three best-selling science fiction anthologies of all time.
Anderson is the director of the graduate program in Publishing at Western Colorado University, and he and his wife Rebecca Moesta are the publishers of WordFire Press. He is a long-time resident of Colorado and is an avid hiker and mountain climber.
Bio courtesy of the campaign’s BackerKit page.
@Roy
Game Engineer & Founder of ThreeD Mockups. Not a writer or a literary critic.
The Q&A answers come directly from Anderson. The story background, quotes and publishing details come from Anderson’s interviews with Jonathan Koan, Collectors’ Confessions, John, and Andrew Liptak at Transfer Orbit, alongside Koan’s review of Hidden Empire. Current campaign details were checked against the BackerKit page on October 24, 2026.