The Solar War, the first novel in the Siege of Terra series details the titular conflict, as the traitor legions make their way through the Solar system to Earth to begin the siege propped. This book is rather plain, I cant particularly say that I enjoyed it that much, but it wasn’t bad to read. One of the flaws of the book is probably the number of characters present, many of whom are new, and are also dead by the end. The afterword explains that French’s intention was to show that in war not every death really means anything, some people just die. I do like this idea, but when these are all new characters with less than a single book worth of characterisation I just didn’t really get attatched. This meant when seeing the characters doing things it just felt somewhat flat. This also hampers the action, which has some cool concepts, I really like what was done with the battle for Pluto and its moons, but the lack of developed characters involved somewhat reduced my investment. I understand why they couldn’t just kill a bunch of previously named characters from other books, that might just be a letdown for some fans, but the point still stands. On the whole though, the book is fine. Not an ideal beginning to the end of the heresy but it does its job in detailing part of the conflict.