The Dark Between The Stars: Kevin J. Anderson

Book I of The Saga Of Shadows. The human race has expanded out among the stars, establishing colonies on numerous planets while independent gypsy clans, the Roamers, operate giant floating skymines in the clouds. On the planet Theroc, the capital of the human Confederation, humans live in a gigantic forest whose towering trees are all interconnected into a single mind. The Ildrians, a grand and ancient race of aliens, former rulers of the Spiral Arm, are connected by their own mental network called thism, but are unprepared for human ambitions. As part of increasing collaboration between the Ildrian Empire and the human Confederation, a large ship leaves to explore what lies beyond the Spiral Arm. There it encounters a mysterious and ominous nebula, one so opaque that even starlight cannot penetrate - one that, to the explorers' horror, begins to expand and terrorise the races of the Spiral Arm, an evil so ancient that it has been forgotten - an entity so powerful that the existence of all living things is threatened...Cover art by Stephen Youll.