Author Klemens Bujak has broken new ground in the world of fiction. Rather than copying The Far Reaches or its many offshoots, Bujaski has created a new world.

Or rather, a new series of worlds because this is the first peldak-written piece of fiction set in the new scenario of ‘interstellar’. Unbound to a single planet, Bujaski imagined an alternate scenario where God never cast the ancient elves out due to our rampant warmongering, and after the elves conquered our home planet we took to the stars and began conquering foreign worlds. For so many eons that nobody knows exactly how long it’s been, the Elven Interstellar Empire has expanded across a never-ending sea of stars.

It’s The Far Reaches but in space.

Beneath The Distant Sun is the standard affair you’d expect for the first novel of a ‘new’ setting. It’s a long, overly winded anthology following a dozen different plots as they explore what makes this setting unique compared to others.

Except Sir Bujak doesn’t really accomplish this because the one unique thing about his setting, the starships, are practically a non-factor. They’re just a method of transportation.

Some 2,000 years ago, Tomalaski introduced the controversial, and brilliant, War Gates to The Far Reaches. This network of gates teleported the traveler in an instant. Each was built to coincide with the then-current frontier, and after millennia it became a labyrinth nearly impossible to navigate.

There is functionally no difference between Bujak’s starships and Tomalaski’s War Gates. Like if Tomalaski wrote a fight scene using a spear, and then Bujak wrote a fight scene using a halberd – but his character only used the halberd’s spearpoint.

That being said, Bujak depicted the aliens excellently. Unlike other works I’ve reviewed I wouldn’t be embarrassed to recommend this book to a cirathan.