Book Reviews

On this page, I'll basically put up reviews of books as I read them. This will include the fun books I read outside of school (mostly fiction), and the books I am required to read for school. I'm a very opinionated person and I can think of lots to say for or against any book; so I might as well contribute my thoughts and keep track of what I've read at the same time. Okay, here we go ...

A Second Chance At Eden
Peter F. Hamilton

This book is sort of a prequel to The Night's Dawn Trilogy. It contains seven short stories set in the same universe in the years leading up to the main trilogy, including two stories set in the time around 2070 when affinity is just discovered by Wing-tsit Chong, and the first bitek habitat, Eden, is germinated in orbit around Jupiter. The stories are a great introduction to the universe, and I wish I had read them first before I started on the main trilogy. Here's a story-by-story breakdown of this collection:

• "Sonnie's Edge" (25 pgs): In the year 2070, a sport called Baiting has developed, which is much like cockfighting, except with gigantic geneered (genetically engineered) monstrosities that are controlled directly through the trainers' minds. Yet one woman, Sonnie, has a special advantage that permits her to perform better than all the rest. This story is thought-provoking and has a very surprising ending. A great read.
• "A Second Chance At Eden" (176 pgs): In the year 2090, Edenism is in its infancy; it controls just one habitat, appropriately named Eden, that isn't even independent of Govcentral. This story chronicles the development of Edenism with the ascendence of Wing-tsit Chong into Eden's neural strata. This is quite long, but gives a great backstory on the original split between Edenists and Adamists. It's also a sort of murder mystery, with a murder carried out in the habitat, although the habitat personality is supposed to see all and know all. There are some interesting philosophical discussions as well: mainly, the clash between genetic engineering and religion, which is occuring this very day!
• "New Days Old Times" (26 pgs): In the year 2245, on the multi-ethnic colony planet Nyvan, trouble is brewing. Different groups are all being shipped off to the same colony because Earth is so over-crowded. Fighting and killing occurs often, as is currently the case between Israel and Palestine. Eventually, all of the new colony worlds are "EuroChristian" or "IndiMuslim", etc., because the groups supposedly don't get along. What pisses me off is that Peter F. Hamilton believes that in 250 years from now, we'll still have all the current hostilities and religions, to the point where they can't even live on the same planet as those they are biased against. Although I could just be too hopeful; this is certainly possible, judging the way the world is going today. The story is okay, but nothing stupenduous.
• "Candy Buds" (43 pgs): In the year 2393 on a water world named Tropicana, the only Adamist colony with relaxed bitek laws, there is conflict as major leaders fight to control the emerging technologies that will make them incredibly wealthy. Quite frankly, I didn't really like this story; the "candy buds" are geneered bitek seedpods that, once eaten, implant memories into their targets. The plot is confusing and unimpelling. If you were to not read one story out of this collection, this would be it.
• "Deathday" (21 pgs): This is a chillingly haunted story told in the year 2405 of a bereaved male widow (is there such a term?) on a startup colony world that is evacuating because the solar conditions have been scientifically found to be very dangerous. But on the planet Jubarra, this former-husband comes up against an aboriginal shapeshifter species, which the man goes into a crazed frenzy in order to kill. But the ending is so chilling and so depressing that the story truly had a lasting effort. Peter F. Hamilton simply has this power with his words. This may make you unhappy, but it is a true must-read. Very profound and deep.
• "The Lives And Loves Of Tiarella Rosa" (64 pgs): I thought the title was pretty bad; it makes it sound like some bad romance story, which it isn't, really. In the year 2447, on the aforementioned planet Tropicana, a space wandering man is desperately seeking to hide from an organization he regretted joining, and then mutinied from. He settles upon a simple island in a archipelago, but things turn out to be much more they seem, including "time travelling," in effect, accomplished by putting a person into zero tau, or stasis, where time comes to a standstill. This story is truly thought-provoking and has some very nice twists in it. I'm glad I read it. It even manages to introduce us to Ashly Hanson, the timehopping engineer who serves aboard Joshua Calvert's ship, the Lady Macbeth, as well as antimatter bombs, which play an important role in the main trilogy.
• "Escape Route" (69 pgs): In the year 2586, we are regaled with the adventures of Marcus Calvert, father of Joshua Calvert, and his adventures aboard the Lady Macbeth (One small nitpick: in the time span of a whole generation, a previously cutting-edge ship should be just regular, but the ship remains fantastic throughout its whole life: sort of like the Millenium Falcon, of Star Wars fame). This story is excellent because it adds a lot of backstory about Marcus Calvert and the Lady Macbeth that really help when reading the whole trilogy. The adventure itself is very good, starting with deceiving revolutionaries charting the Lady Mac to find gold in a disc solar system. Then an alien artifact is discovered, although "space wreck" seems more appropriate, since it is many kilometers across. I won't destroy the ending by telling you what is so fantastic that is discovered at the core of this starship, protected at all costs, but trust me when I say it's good. You need to read this story.

Overall A Second Chance At Eden is a very good collection of short fiction and novellas by Peter F. Hamilton. It has one or two stories that are not very good, but there are some polished, vibrant gems in there. I really do recommend it. It simply has that awe and wonder, that thought-provoking aspect to it, that too much science fiction these days simply lack: they may relate intricate tales of space combat and such, but that all pales in comparison to what Peter F. Hamilton accomplishes with his words.


Overall Rating: *****/*****

The Night's Dawn Trilogy: The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, The Naked God
Peter F. Hamilton

This is a great series, but it's not without a few disclaimers. First, it's very long. Each of the books I named are really two separate books, Parts 1 and 2. Each of these parts is about 600 pages long for the first two; for the last one, that number rises to 800. So the whole series is about 4000 pages, and the text is also quite small. So you're in for a LOT of reading in a very expansive universe. Another note: Peter Hamilton is British, and the book isn't translated over to "normal" English, so you'll see spellings such as "tyre," "manouevre," "centre," etc. It's not significant or anything, but I see it worth noting.

Another thing: this series is not for the light-hearted. There's some serious graphic violence in here; people being tortured, their organs cut out and replaced with animal parts in sadistic experiments, etc. And there's a lot of dying as well. Not only that, but there's a lot of coarse language, almost to the point where it's gratuitous. And naturally, there's a lot of explicit sexual scenes too. These books are in every sense of the word "adult books." I almost felt guilty reading them :-)

So, if you're okay with the above disclaimers, then this is an excellent series. In 4000 pages you can add a lot of depth, and Peter Hamilton certainly does. The basic plot, without spoiling anything, is that people have souls - of a sort. But there is no Heaven or Hell; souls simply go the Beyond after death, which is a sensation-less place like purgatory. Time travels at the same rate in the Beyond, so someone who died in, say, 2100, will have been bored out of their mind for 500 years in the Beyond by the year 2600, around when this book takes place. And then something terrible happens, and a rift is created between this universe and the Beyond, and the souls start coming through to Possess the living. The returned souls must live in a body, you see; a human body. And so the legions of the Possessed spread like an exponential virus, with each Possessed person torturing more people until they let a vanquished soul come in and take control. And the Possessed bring special abilities with them from the Beyond: super strength, fast regeneration, telepathy, and an ability to use white fire energy emissions as weapons.

So, the main unifying plot of the book is the emergence, and then the spread, of the Possessed. And then, there are the non-Possessed characters of the book who try to stave off the inter-dimensional invasion. There are three main human alliances in The Night's Dawn: the affinity-augmented Edenists humans genetically engineered to use a kind of telepathy known as affinity. They make extensive use of bitek, biological technology that is sentient or subsentient. They fly around in bitek voidhawks and hellhawks, and inhabit vast 70-km bitek Habitats with a governing personality. Edenism operates under a true form of Democracy: when a Consensus is called, all the Edenists join minds through affinity and determine a solution in one gigantic discussion. Edenists do not even die; when their body expires, their thoughts are transmitted via affinity to the neural strata of the Habitats, to live in the multiplicity with the habitat personality and the millions of other minds. Edenism is the high-technology ultimate race.

Then there are the Adamists; more regular people who use normal technology rather than bitek and affinity. They employ "traditional" fusion starships and live on planets and in asteroid colonies. Rather than using affinity, they use neural nanonics, which are implanted computers directly in the brain that add much more functionality and a "datavise" capability - sort of like mind-to-mind email. The Kulu Kingdom is a subset, sort of, of the Adamist culture. They use a monarchial system and have strict bans against bitek and such. Naturally, there are conflicts between the Edenists and Adamists and Kulu; but humanity finds it must band together to stave off the invasion of the Possessed.

There are very many interesting people in The Night's Dawn, so I'll just go over some of the main ones. There's Joshua Calvert, the quintessential science fiction superhero: he's good-looking, has great luck, bangs all the girls, clever, and perfect in almost all ways; he's the Han Solo of this universe, if you will. Joshua Calvert is sort of unrealistic - an ideal that Peter Hamilton probably envisions for himself as an ultimate life; unfortunately, Joshua just isn't believable. Then there's Ione, ruler of one of a few bitek Habitats not under Edenism, Tranquility. She is a more believable character, though like everyone else, is perfect. I guess there's just no ugly or stupid people in the future. And, of course, Ione is one of Joshua's *many* conquests, if you know what I mean.

Syrinx is the Edenist pilot of the voidhawk Oenone. She's beautiful and smart, like everyone else. She is sort of in contention with Joshua at first, but you'll see what happens if you read the books (I'll give you one guess). There's a whole lot of other sub-plots going on: there's several alien races, such as the Laymil, Tyrathca, and Kiint, who play roles in the series. And there's a crazed lady scientist who's trying to get revenge for her planet which was destroyed thirty years ago by using an ultimate doomsday device against their star: the Alchemist Device, which turns a star into a black hole. And of course there's everything involving the Possessors, but there's so much in there, I'm not even going to get started with it. Suffice it to say in 4000 pages, A LOT happens. The first 10 pages of each book is a summary of characters, for Chrissakes!

Overall, The Night's Dawn is one of the most complete universes I've ever had the pleasure of reading about. Sure, I've read some better stuff, such as novels by Isaac Asimov or others, but they're only about 400 pages long. This series has ten times the depth. And it never becomes boring or trivial; there is so much intriguing stuff going on that the books are page-turners, for all 4000 pages. To me, this series is almost perfect epic space opera sci-fi. You simply just don't find this kind of involved experience in any other novels. I definitely recommend reading it.

Manifold: Time, Manifold: Space, and Manifold: Origin
Stephen Baxter