Peter F. Hamilton, The Night's
Dawn TrilogyThe Reality Dysfunction
The Neutronium Alchemist
The Naked God
Bjorn and I agree to disagree on
this one. In fact, I have to put "etc." in the title
line because I was only able to read half of the second volume,
The Neutronium Alchemist before I could not take it anymore.
I have a variety of gripes about this book, but I will share
only two. The first is structural: Peter Hamilton is not a good
enough writer to pull off 4,000 pages of sprawling space epic.
To do this sort of thing you either need to keep the action moving
forward in a tight plot (a la Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy)
or be a great writer of characters. Hamilton is neither. I was
skimming by page 600 and gave up the ghost around page 1600.
The second gripe is that Hamilton writes crappy characters. To
illustrate, consider Joshua Calvert. This character is in his
early 20's, intuitively in tune with the universe, the best human
pilot in the universe, a self-made millionaire, and so sexy every
woman he meets wants to have sex with him (which he cheerfully
and publicly accommodates). This isn't a character, this is Hamilton's
wet dream of himself. (For another example of this phenomenon
among bad writers, see the movie "Good Will Hunting"
and contemplate Matt Damon's writing of his own character.) Just
to be sure I was right about Hamilton I skipped to the end of
The Naked God (Warning: SPOILER) and confirmed it: 4,000
pages of amateur-ish sci-fi ends with Joshua Calvert using god-like
powers derived from an alien artifact to solve all of humanity's
problems.
Actually, you may wonder why I don't rate this sucker lower than 5. Basically, there are two reasons. First, Bjorn liked it, and 5 is supposed to mean that whether you like it is a matter of personal taste, so out of respect for Bjorn I am relunctant to go lower than a 5. Second, Hamilton is good at writing aliens and sci-fi technology and such. He just can't write humans. SO if you want to veg out to some sci-fi, then maybe this is not the worst series on Earth.
This series certainly looked daunting enough when
I first encountered it - three books, each one around 1200 pages...
that's enough to make even a fairly fast reader balk. However,
after several 'have you read the Peter F. Hamilton books yet?'
questions while visiting Galaxy Books down here in Australia I
figured I would give them a go. I am extremely glad I did.
The books turned out to be an absolutely brilliant sci-fi series wrapped around interesting speculation about the human condition with a bit of Space Opera style high adventure thrown in to keep you interested. In some ways, the books reminded me of Ian Banks' culture books and Vernor Vinge's brilliant A Fire Upon the Deep, although their particular little twist definitely makes them into very unique books.
As I read through the first half of The Reality Dysfunction, I was definitely caught up in the interesting vision of the future that Hamilton paints, but it felt basically similar to the books I mentioned above. However, when you hit the halfway mark, you run smack into a serious 'Fwuh!??' moment and I, at least, had to take a moment to try to recover from the sheer mental whiplash. Once that fades, though, the books get rolling in a most serious fashion, blending the technological and the metaphysical in ways I haven't really seen before, mixed with interesting characters and really cool technology (for those of you who have read Donaldson's excellent Gap Series - think coolness on the scale of Singularity Grenades...) . By the time you hit The Neutronium Alchemist, the story is really humming, and that book is the tightest and most exciting of the three, with quite the explosive ending.
Oddly enough for a book of such size, I felt at times like The Naked God was a bit rushed, and while in some ways the ending was spectacular, there were a few bits of it that didn't quite sit right with me, for some reason. And be ready to try to keep track of an absolutely overwhelming number of concurrent storylines throughout the books - I found myself on several occasions flipping through earlier parts of the story trying to remember some event or character that reared its head all of a sudden.
But I will admit that these are relatively nitpicky points - on the whole the series is spectacular. Clear a good chunk of space on your calendar, and pick them up. They're well worth the time.