Kiranis: Secrets of the Universe, by Ronald A. Geobey

Temple Dark Books, 2023

ISBN: 9781739749248

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Amazon.com

The saga continues…

The third volume in the Kiranis series, Secrets of the Universe continues the far-reaching galactic odyssey.

As in the previous two books, it is staggering in scope, and takes place in an entirely new era, with a new slate of characters.  However, while the series is still a very good read, it’s starting to feel like the foundation may be trembling a bit. Adding more detailed explanations to certain parts would certainly help shore the story up.

The basic idea still revolves around the hidden planet Kiranis and the fate of Earth, although the Garran race and their planet, Sieltor, play a part also.  A couple of the characters from previous books do play a part, Cassandra Messina being one, and as always, the prophet Naveen flits in and out of the story.  Having a new cast of characters is good and bad in this case: lt allows for a whole new dynamic group of characters, unfortunately just as we got used to the last batch (it’s a shame Sam Vawter didn’t make it back in, he was one of the best characters). At face value, the story is excellent, and as always, adds new items that play a crucial part of the story.  In this case, this includes the Barrier as one of the big ones, and the new spaceship drive that appears to be powered by the sun.  There’s a lot of dialogue in the book, but also a number of large space battles: the author certainly has a flair for creating them with a lot of ships, and a lot of destruction.

As good as the story is, it might be getting to be too much for some readers, I’ve never read a series with a scope as large as this one.  It would help to explain a few things a bit more: the author tends to insert new things from his imagination (and they are well-imagined), but they just appear without narrative paragraphs to really clear them up.  While things start to make sense as the story progresses, it would help to offer more details up front.  The Fate Lines are a prime example, I’m still not really sure how those work, and how the characters use them.  The Barrier is another example: it was not in the other two books, and some background would have helped, as it is such a big part of the story.  There is a lot of mental, psy-type material in the book, it’s tougher to grasp than tangible things.  Clearing these areas up would help propel the story to the next level.

Bottom line?  It’s still very good and worth the read for fans of the series, but could use a few tweaks at this point for clarification, so readers don’t get totally blown out of the water.  Recommended.

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson