User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Characters unleashing their full potential and sci-fi capabilities, while the plot is accelerating towards a bombastic showdown in many different constellations, is one of Hamilton´s favorite style vehicles.
The optimistic outlook on human society can´t just be seen in the civilizations and fractions, but even in the tycoons of the future. While they, in other sci-fi and reality, are mostly the purest manifestations of evil, immediately killing billions of humans, animals, or aliens for a permille of extra revenue, Hamiltons´ mighty people use their wealth for useful and post scarcity applications, struggle with the search of the sense of life, seem sympathetic, cool, and badass with their hobbies and eccentric special activities.
These lead to important plot points, research results, ideas, etc. and are a prime model, how punny, example of how Hamilton fuses characters´ motivations, actions, hobbies, preferences, etc. and plot together. While other authors have far too sharp separation lines between worldbuilding, fractions with their ideologies, and characters themselves, everything in Hamilton´s work is organic and just feels right.
That´s why, in contrast to other works, where even a scifiholic like me sometimes gets exhausted, it´s always pure pleasure to read. And the well known tropes are always executed in a fresh, new light, sometimes certainly even first times of such uses of plot vehicles in the special contexts, and open the options, especially for nerds with absolutely no interest in a real life like me again, to compare how other sci-fi behemoths used it, which version and interpretation is the best, and just live in these amazing places. Sigh, how I hate being born centuries or millennia too early, but I should be thankful too, according to what I hear from the philosophizing moral guardian back there, heck.
This wise, just joking, advice is added to all reviews of Hamiltons´series.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Hamilton´s future vision is to see the technology and society developing in very detail over long periods of time, making a return to his universe something always stunning and inspiring. It also makes me wonder why he is the only author I know of who did this. One, who is new, lucky you, by the way, ought consider reading it in chronological order, although the series set closest to now, Salvation lost, is still unfinished, so better read before in the following order:
Salvation year 2200
Commonwealth year 2400
The Night´s Dawn trilogy year 2700
The Chronicle of the Fallers year 3400
Void trilogy year 3600
You can of course do as you wish, it´s just how I arrange my rereading to get the most out of it and slowly move further and further away from the boring present.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
Rating: really liked it
I have a confession to make: the Grumpy Cat is my spiritual animal.
The confession was necessary because seemingly everybody and their brother loved the book. Everybody except for grumpy me that is.
Let me remind you that in the previous book the humans of the future opened a Pandora Box and let some aliens with Highlander motto ("There can be only one")
out in the wild. The latter happily proceed to exterminate our future race. End of book 1. This one picked right where the previous one left. Humans have two problems: external total extermination threat coming from the guys I just described and internal sabotage from undercover baddies. They - the humanity - tried to solve both problems in parallel never failing to fail (sorry for a bad pun; I could not resist) at both at any given moment.
The biggest problem was the pacing. It was so bad by the middle of the book I felt like my enjoyment of reading disappeared replaced by boredom similar to that coming from doing a routine bland job. Even when I was reading action scenes I always had an impression I was watching a movie about a snail racing in slow motion.
Really frustrating was the fact that Hamilton can write good action scenes (please refer to last 200 pages of his Reality Dysfunction book). If anybody would ever call for nomination of currently living scifi authors with the greatest imagination I would nominate Peter F. Hamilton without a second thought. He could describe different location on different planets in such details that you can almost feel being there. Now consider that each scene switch starts with 2-3 page description of the surroundings and that the action takes place on multitudes of worlds and places and you already have 400 pages worth of descriptions creating the pacing problem.
On the related note all of Ozzie's scenes can be removed from the book without disrupting the tale at all. This would be like 200 pages extra. Mellanie's as well, but I will talk about her later.
Let me talk about the plot. We all love to read about an occasional failing of the police to apprehend an especially smart criminal - as long as it does not affect us; if it does we become very loud about it. The keyword here is "occasional". In the book the police and related secret services
failed every single assignment. After about third time it all became very predictable (example: the assignment - apprehend a bad guy. Result: a couple of dead policemen and the bad guy still enjoys his freedom) and thus boring; I was never a fan of Pink Panther.
Do not make any mistakes: modern police can be
very efficient. What changed in the future? Please note again: Hamilton can write about efficient police work; refer to Great North Road.
So the humanity is about to be totally wiped out but they are still reluctant to do any decisive action for the fear of hurting the aliens' feelings. The latter killed billions of people on different planets and humans, having the weapons capable of dealing with the menace once and for all, are too busy singling Kimbalaya. If you think I am joking this is exactly what they did the second half of the book: tried to come up with the solution to avoid genocide while being killed planet by planet. I mean what does it say when the politicians whose job is to protect you care more about the murderous aliens than their own people? Combine it with 100% inefficiency I mentioned about and you will realize why I got bored. Some time later I realized that if I switch teams and start rooting for aliens the book became fun again. At least aliens did not sing Kimbalaya.
Last but not least: depiction of women. Please do not get me wrong: I am not asking for strong women to be present having been fed up with pathetic attempts of some authors to depict such (please refer to books with a woman blacksmith who works as an assassin part-time; I am too lazy to search for titles, but will do it if there is a demand).
All I ask is for woman to be not as useless as main heroines here.
Paula Myo. She is with the police and is supposed to be very competent. Well she could not catch a group of smugglers for
130 years!!!. Yes, I said years. All of her missions failed, and in addition she got too sick at exactly the moment she could do something for a change. Add to this the fact that she is completely emotionless and her development was exactly zero: she did not change a bit from the beginning to the end and I have no idea why people consider her to be a good example of a "strong woman". Sexism much?
Mellanie Rescorai. She was so gorgeous every single guy within 1 kilometer of her fell in love. She, being of a soft heart, could not resist anybody. To put it blindly, she fucked every male who came in contact with her. This is how she got to the top and remain there. While I have nothing against reading sex scenes the moment I get to her POV I had only one question: who was she going to have sex with this time?
Justine Burnelli. A boring spoiled rich brad became a boring politician. She had exactly one excitement happening around her and she spent the whole scene being scared and in shock.
I could go on, but it is a good place to stop. I always thought the last book of Night Dawn trilogy with its mother of all Deux Ex Machinas was bad, but I am more disappointed in this. Failure after failure, fear of making any decisions, uselessness of some characters and pacing killed not only the duology, but my desire to read anything else from Peter F. Hamilton. It looks like I have already read the best he can offer.
Rating: really liked it
“Finally, this book is over!” That was my final thought. After an exhausting total of over 2,000 pages in this saga, I was ready for it to wrap up. I enjoyed the story overall but have a few gripes with Peter F. Hamilton.
Hamilton did an excellent job creating the Commonwealth universe. I really enjoyed the technological advancements yet it was familiar and fun. There are more toys to play with and the concept of rejuvenation is really interesting. The progression from modern day to the 24th century feels very natural and organic.
The characters Hamilton created were pretty hit and miss for me. There were a few I really connected with and others that I didn't like. I particularly liked the alien Tochee and wish we got more time with him. Which brings me to my major issue with this saga...
The female characters. I've seen mentioned in other places and I have to agree: Hamilton is not good at writing women. His women are either boring (Paula Myo) or overtly sexual (Mellanie, who couldn't do anything useful without basically whoring herself out). Every female character had to have her looks and sexuality mentioned whereas the men did not. The women seemed to exist for Hamilton to project his juvenile fantasies onto them. It made me groan and roll my eyes repeatedly. I was pretty annoyed and upset particularly about Mellanie and Justine. Justine played a large role in Pandora's Star but, without spoiling anything, after a certain development, Hamilton almost forgot she existed in Judas Unchained. She was barely in the book past the halfway mark.
The main storyline with the Starflyer and war with the Primes was quite fascinating. I enjoyed learning who the Starflyer agents were and the efforts to find them and viewing the war from the Prime point-of-view. The whole thing evolved at a natural timescale and pace until the end.
There are a few things I would have liked to learn more about. Hamilton inroduces a few alien species but never really explores them or their cultures. I would have liked more detail about the SI, Barsoomians, High Angel, and raeil species.
My last issue with this book (both actually) is the length and the pacing at the end. A lot of detail felt superfluous (hang gliding scene, Morton's murder trial in Pandora's Star) and could have been edited out. I understand that it's meant to immerse the reader into the universe and familiarize them but in a 1,000+ page book, that has to be pared down. Because of all of that padding and detail, the end of Unchained felt really rushed and didn't feel like a conclusion. It wrapped up so quickly that there was no room to breath. I would have liked a little more catharsis.
C
Rating: really liked it
6.0 stars. On my list of "All Time Favorite" Novels. As has been mentioned before, this book is really the second half of a much larger book began in Pandora's Star. When counting the first book, this story comes in at almost 2000 pages. As daunting as that may seem, I was amazed by how easy it was to stay focused on the story. All of the different plot lines were so interesting and well done that I was never waiting for the pace to quicken. No doubt, Hamilton spends considerable time on details and minor plot points, but he does it so well and adds so many interesting bits about the universe that it never seems to drag.
In addition to Hamilton's superb writing, the two greatest attributes on the novel are (1) the incredibly detailed, complex plot, the gradual but steady advancement of which is the common thread throughout the story and (2) the universe of the "Commonwealth" that is as good as any I have ever seen in science fiction (yes including giants like Dune and The Foundation Trilogy).
This series raises the bar considerably on what grand scale space opera should be. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!
Rating: really liked it
I have a love/hate relationship with Peter Hamilton's books. He's very adept at introducing interesting technology and making a faster-than-light society plausible but, as with a lot of these hard-science, libertarian SF authors, he badly needs an editor. I was skipping over multiple pages of irrelevance in both this book and its prequel, Pandora's Star. He also has far too many "main characters" who (despite 800+ pages) never seem to come alive. They all speak with essentially the same voice. And when he tries to individualize someone they come off as badly stereotyped '60s era hippies -- come on, does anyone seriously say "dude" in the real world much less the imagined future of the 24th century?
And why is Hamilton so obsessed with sex with young (or rejuvenated) women?
Hamilton's treatment of virtual immortality is hit and miss at best. On the one hand, the innate conservatism of an immortal civilization is well developed, represented and believable. On the other hand, the dynamics of the relationship between "old timers" and "first lifers" is unsatisfactory. In four centuries, for example, NO ONE has even attempted to unseat Nigel Sheldon from his position as head of the Sheldon dynasty? Perhaps the Commonwealth's continual expansion is the safety valve but even here, the government (controlled by the eternal heads of these dynasties) controls it. Another point that is brought up briefly is why would anyone want to live forever if their life didn't change -- I mean the characters of a novel (almost by definition) are dynamic, go-get-'em types but most people just plod through their lives and then die. Why would anyone want to do that for lifetime after lifetime?
The aliens are OK. The problem with them (and this is true of nearly every SF story) is that they tend to be one dimensional -- they're all of a singular type and all too often they really do just act like human beings with weird make up. (This is a problem in fantasy stories, too.) On the plus side, I do tip my hat to Hamilton for not allowing the humans to save themselves with an alien "deus ex machina." Ozzie's adventures in "Wonderland" (i.e., the silfen paths) do bring him to the adult silfen and he does find out the origins of the Dyson barriers but the knowledge doesn't really help anyone defeat the Primes.
Overall, if you started with Pandora's Star, you probably should finish the journey with Judas Unchained. If you haven't started down this "silfen path," I recommend Alistair Reynolds, Tony Daniel or Iain Banks. They write similarly grand space opera but are better at it than Hamilton has proven himself to be to date.
Rating: really liked it
After reading the first book, Pandora's Star, I was slightly miffed at just how scattered and sometimes ... dull... it seemed. I only felt that way because the alien bits and the big spaceship stuff and the weird alien stuff simply SHONE for me. I didn't really cotton to all the human-only investigation stuff or the politics until it kinda snuck up on me and grabbed me by the neck because IT WAS IMPORTANT.
Well. It became important eventually. But I should mention that each of these books is roughly the equivalent of four normal novels EACH. That's 8 standard-length novels. A slight digression is more of a novel-length wander. :)
What I am most impressed with is the wide range of genre-writing going on here. There's full-flung mil-SF, political intrigue SF, murder-mystery and spy SF, revolutionary thriller SF, media-scoop SF, as well as hardcore alien Hard-SF with Big Dumb Objects galore, miniature wormhole attacks, rejuvenation, memory cores so you can get a new body, as well as a LOT of nova'd stars. Big-ass scale.
But for me, it's just a matter of having to TRUST the author to get me there. All the other books I'd read by him had the same kind of style. Like a Dickens-like wander getting us the feel of so many levels of the society, or Hugo in the way he did Les Miserables. It's BIG. It requires a LOT of trust from the reader.
Fortunately, my trust was not misplaced. I'm going to rate-up the previous novel and wholeheartedly recommend BOTH books with this caveat. Stick with it. It's VERY rewarding and everything comes together eventually and necessarily.
The first book has a great blow-out at the end, but it is FAR from being wrapped up. This book did a GREAT job with that. :)
Rating: really liked it
If you have read Pandora's Star previously starting on Judas Unchained should feel like coming home, as there would be no need to familiarize yourself with the settings or characters. On the other hand, if you attempt to read this book without having read Pandora's Star first it would be like wandering into somebody else's home by mistake, wondering who changed your furniture, realizing your mistake and make a quick exit before the cops arrive.
Judas Unchained continues the epic story started in Pandora's Star without pausing for breath (because breathing is overrated), I suppose there are people who read "Pandora's" and decided not to bother with the next volume, I further suppose that such people are in the minority. Peter F. must be a very confident author to have the gall to write series that consist of such massive books and expect people to read them. Fat books series are prevalent in modern fantasy epics but rarely found in science fiction. Fortunately for sf readers Hamilton is more than capable to carry it off.
This book is basically about alien invasion and how humanity fend them off whereas the previous volume is more concerned with "WTF is going on?" Like most epic fiction the story features a large cast of characters and several protagonists, the plot is moved forward by switching the narrative between them. Hamilton does this very well for the most part, however the disadvantage of this format is that some characters are more compelling than others and when the reader's perspective is switched to one of the less interesting character it can drag down the pace a little. Still, this is not a major problem because such characters are in the minority and their chapters do not linger on for long. Hamilton's masterful action scenes also compensate for the few instances of drag. My favorite chapter is a deliciously gung-ho scene where a cybernetically enhanced human character faces off an alien modified character. A Marvel/DC style superheroic kickassery ensues with "disrupter pulses" and personal force fields being employed to maximum effect. I do love edifying books but the "F*ck Yeah!" moments are hugely entertaining and make me grin like an idiot ("like" being the operative word). There are also thoughtful passages about existence, humanity, responsibility, redemption etc., with a book this size it is a prerequisite that there is a wide range of elements and moods, nobody likes one single long note that goes on forever, the author does not disappoint here. The whole thing eventually wraps up beautifully and I went to bed in an excellent mood.
A whale of a book, a whale of a time!
_____________________________________
Edit March 30, 2015: After reading this I went on to read Hamilton's famed Night's Dawn Trilogy which is indeed very good (and each book very long), but I find the two Commonwealth Saga books to be more polished. At the moment I am reading The Dreaming Void, first of the Void Trilogy which is a direct sequel to the Commonwealth Saga, so far it is wildly entertaining.
Rating: really liked it
Close to three months have passed since I started reading this book. Three months of trying desperately to find something captivating enough to go on.
Peter Hamilton's
Commonwealth Saga is not a bad little (heh) duology; it has its interesting concepts, its solid characters, its wonderfully described worlds. It is also filled to the brim with page after page, chapter after chapter, of unnecessary filler material that could easily have been removed for the reader's benefit. In
Pandora's Star, the novelty of everything makes it forgivable. In
Judas Unchained, these flaws are too apparent.
With proper editing and a cut of at least half the length of both books, this would have been a great story. As it stands, one has to struggle to even pay attention to said story.
Rating: really liked it
Book Review of
Judas Unchained (Ass End of
The Commonwealth Saga, by Peter F. Hamilton)
In a spirit of full disclosure, I think of myself as a rather lazy person. So it should come as a bit of a surprise to me (and you, if you know me) that I am inspired, nay, compelled to submit a review of
Judas Unchained (and the Commonwealth Saga of which it is the ass-end). But it does not surprise me. In fact, I’ve been saying for weeks how much I looked forward to finishing this series just so I could get some things off my chest. But even then, saying the words, I didn’t really believe I’d take the time. So, I give Peter F. Hamilton kudos for one thing (well in fairness, other things too, but I haven’t written those yet) - his jostling me from my torpor was a groundbreaking achievement. Unlike
Judas Unchained.
But first, let me set the mood. It was about 3 years ago that I picked up the first volume of Night’s Dawn, in my quest to find truly entertaining space opera. Anyone who has read the series knows of the commitment required to complete it. But I was blown away by the first three chapters – truly excellent sci-fi. Definitely a cut above the typical tripe. Had I finally found space opera worthy of the effort? It seemed possible. So I consumed the first book with some relish. Not that relish; the other relish. Anyway, Hamilton volumes come in at well over 1,000 pages each, and while I knew I had two more to go, I already had some metaphorical intestinal rumblings of, how you say, trepidation, regarding the trajectory Hamilton had set. But I figured, “what the hell, maybe it’s not him, it’s me.” Plus, I had already purchased the other two volumes. And since I am far cheaper than I am discerning, I continued on.
I will spare the details, but as you may have inferred from my tone, I was less than pleased. The reasons were many, but I’ll just list my top three: (1) ghosts; (2) famous syphilitic gangster ghosts; and the coup-de-grace, (3) a deus ex machina. It was a stupid plot full of stupid characters in a universe I would have much preferred see swallowed whole by a different universe wherein books, stupid or otherwise, did not exist. At least I was too old to start cutting myself, thank God (or in this case, thank the mysterious alien race with profoundly superior, utterly inexplicable technology, foresight and timing)! Now there are an infinite number of sins more off-putting than a deus ex machina in general, but few as bad as a deus ex machina after three-fucking-thousand-plus pages. And given the poignant promise of the first three chapters, so many pages prior, it felt less like bad writing and more like a literary exercise in assault by disparity.
Anyhoo, I decided to burn the books. We like to camp, so I thought I would just put the books in the car on the next drive up the mountain and burn them. Preferably while cooking bacon over them. But I never did. My car is small, and space is a precious commodity when going camping. Unlike a Hamilton tome, some people actually have to make choices to leave some things behind. So they remained home unburned. But I resolved to never, EVER, read anything by Hamilton again.
As some say, “that which does not kill us has the capacity to horribly disfigure.” Time passed, and there really is a dearth of good space opera. A friend with typically excellent taste in sci-fi happened to mention
Pandora’s Star and
Judas Unchained. Amid prolific spittle, wild gesticulation, and much gnashing of teeth, I recounted my Night’s Dawn experience, up to and including the planned yet aborted conflagration. He encouraged me to give it a shot. I took his word for it. He’s currently rolled up in a carpet in the trunk of my car.
I finished
Judas Unchained in the wee hours of the morning. My experience with the Commonwealth Saga, as with Night’s Dawn, is the epitome of unequivocal and insurmountable ambivalence. It’s not so much that I have a love/hate relationship with Peter (may I call you Peter, Peter?). It’s that I am as intrigued as I am repulsed by the chasm between how good are some aspects and how lame are others. Examples of the good: intricate plot (an improvement on Night’s Dawn), frenetic pace of most action sequences, brilliant description and deployment of technology. Examples of meh: paucity of character development, infuriating and homogenous dialogue, puerile intrapersonal relationships and dynamics. Regarding the good stuff, the plot was particularly entertaining and I really appreciated the lack of a deus ex machina (although, for the record, he did include an aloof, vastly superior alien race with technological prowess defying comprehension, but at least he introduced them early, so whatever). The action sequences were well crafted and vivid. The tech was cool, if not at times merely convenient to further the storyline.
But there simply wasn’t enough of the good to overshadow the bad. And I’d feel differently if Hamilton stood alone on the “good,” but he doesn’t. Iain M. Banks comes to mind. Vernor Vinge is another.
And by “bad,” I mean, “wait, what?” bad. Singularly, no one flaw rises to the level of “the primary antagonist is the ghost of Al Capone” bad. But collectively...it’s more like death by a thousand cuts.
About the characters. Given the staggering number of characters introduced, they were fundamentally the same character. Correction: the men were all the same – two-dimensionally inflexible and unmemorable. Some did have Scottish accents, purportedly. The women were varied, if by “variety” one means they each embodied different stereotypes: the ambitious ball-buster politician with a weakness for hot young terrorists; the slut straight out of pre-pubescent wet dream central casting (you know, for the boy who dreams of one day becoming a sci-fi author so he can meet, and touch, women); the bawdy, military badass whose communication options are limited to “snark”, “skank,” and “snarky skank.” The women who weren’t stereotyped were less interesting and memorable, if not less annoying. None of the characters came across as believable, which is remarkable given the number of characters and the number of pages with which Hamilton had to work. I certainly didn’t care about any of them, individually or collectively, and I like to think of myself as a fairly nice guy. Seriously, for an extinction-level threat to humanity to work for the reader, it might be helpful to create a society, culture and characters one would actually mind seeing wiped out for the rest of the galaxy’s sake. I would have actually routed for the aliens, except I make of point of never throwing my hat in the ring with giant, insectoid, telepathic butternut squash.
About the “Project Runway” Effect. I must say that Hamilton does have an eye for detail and description. This is both good and bad. At times he draws a vivid tableau onto which the action unfolds in a compelling way. At other times, he becomes a bit preoccupied with women’s fashion, which comes off as rather creepy and uncomfortable, as if we have a perspective into a blind spot we were not meant to see.
About the dialogue. First, an author without a sense of humor is incapable of writing funny dialogue. I think that’s a law of physics. Banter can become freakish. Not that every author needs a sense of humor. It’s just that, if you want to write a character with a sense of humor, your own is indispensable. Second, if every character says the same things in the same ways, it’s an act of courtesy to begin or end each line of dialogue with, “Joe said,” “Jane exclaimed,” or some variant thereof. It became so difficult at times to follow who was saying what, especially in the midst of the ubiquitous “witty” repartee, until I remembered that the dialogue didn’t matter anyway and I scanned ahead to the next volley of micro-missiles.
And finally,
about the sex. Stop. Just stop. I understand that some teenage boys may read these books. I’d prefer if they didn’t read like a teenage boy wrote them. This becomes particularly abrasive in the context of humans with the ability to live for hundreds of years. I mean, I like a romp in the sack as much as the next guy, but I’m thinking that my expectations might be just a bit different in 300 years, “rejuvenation” or no. Think it through a bit more. Or just stop. We have the internet,
we don’t actually need to read porn.
So there you have it. If you are into space opera, have exhausted all other options, don’t mind reading books that are too long full of characters who suck but who have cool toys and blow things up this might be worth your while. But might I suggest a quick scan of Wikipedia, or perhaps take another stab at Iain M. Banks?
There, I said it. I feel better. And as every voracious reader knows, "it's all about me."
As a sage elder statesman once said,
“fool me once, shame on….err….me. Fool me twice….you can’t get fooled again!” I’ve been fooled twice...for a net close to 6,000 pages worth. I guess I just can’t get fooled again.
I think I’ll lick my wounds in some non-fiction for a while.
Rating: really liked it
After I finished
Pandora's Star , I ordered this sequel online and began it soon after it arrived at my doorstep. This is significant, because while I do not adhere religiously to the general order of my to-read list, I try to follow it in good faith. I couldn't wait over a year to read
Judas Unchained, so despite my general moratorium on buying books, I made an exception. And I'm glad I did.
Judas Unchained is off the frelling chain!
As with my review for
Pandora's Star, I'll try to keep this one essentially spoiler free. Both books are quite long, so I hope my reviews will help you decide whether they are worth the considerable investment of time. And that's all I'm going to say about the length.
Judas Unchained picks up where
Pandora's Star left off, but the stakes are higher and the story much more intense. In the last book, MorningLightMountain successfully forced the evacuation of twenty-three Commonwealth worlds, now known as the Lost23. Now it's bootstrapping further into the Commonwealth and attacks forty-eight more planets. Though the Commonwealth just barely fends off a full defeat by the Prime forces, all but one of the worlds have to be evacuated as a result (so they're nicknamed the Second47). Ozzie's still searching along the Silfen paths for their "adult form," which he hopes will have Answers. And Paula Myo, who has spent 130 years pursuing the Guardians of Self-hood, is confronting the fact that their sworn enemy, the Starflyer, seems to be a real threat to the Commonwealth.
As I said in my review, I loved the revelation that the Starflyer is a real entity and not just a wacko conspiracy theory. Now the problem has become one of establishing a web of trust, since there is no way to know who works for the Starflyer. I was totally convinced one person (not saying who) would turn out to be a Starflyer agent, but I was wrong. That's what I like about these books. There are plenty of predictable elements (such as the identity of the Starflyer agent within Paula's old team), but just when you think you have
everything figured out, Hamilton works in a little twist.
The Starflyer subplot, which actually kind of becomes the main plot in the second part of the book, is the most interesting part of the story, for me. We know MorningLightMountain is thinking nothing but bad thoughts about humanity, and we know it has to be stopped. Until much later in the book, we don't know anything about the Starflyer's motives, except that they are malicious, or its origins and nature. So I am disappointed with how Paula and Justine are so totally sidelined in this book. The former remains involved for the entire story, but we don't spend much time hovering over her shoulder, as it were, and for the last part of the book she is literally incapacitated by her sense of justice. Justine, on the other hand, while the target of an assassination attempt, seems to drop out of the book entirely by the time the climax comes round. That's a shame, because I loved Justine.
Of the remaining characters whose viewpoints the narrator follows, Mellanie would have to be my favourite. I love how Hamilton manages to portray these conflicting sides to her personality. All at once she's both a spoiled first-lifer brat who craves attention and notoriety, a keen reporter who wants to climb to the top (and isn't afraid of using her body to do it), a scared young woman who feels out of her depth, and a compassionate person trying to do the right thing. Her actions aren't always consistent, because sometimes one or another side seems to win out, and she'll be trying to save herself or do something heroic. For the most part, however, I think we see a solid trajectory from her role as insecure eye-candy in the beginning of
Pandora's Star to the self-assured way she handles herself as she helps Ozzie commandeer the
Charybdis. The romance between her and Orion is rather predictable, and honestly, it didn't do anything for me. But I guess it is a sensible way for Hamilton to tie up two loose ends at once.
Ozzie was also an interesting character, but he gets very self-righteous, especially toward the end. Hamilton touches on a moral dilemma that's actually more complicated than it seems: whether humanity should wipe out the Primes altogether. Everyone seems to agree that this is a last resort, but because they don't have the capability to re-establish the barrier around Dyson Alpha, Nigel eventually persuades the Commonwealth's War Cabinet to authorize genocide. Ozzie disagrees and, coincidentally, develops a cockamamie scheme to re-establish the barrier! So he steals a starship, initiating what might be the most boring hyperspace chase sequence in all of science fiction.
Before I explain that, let me first talk about the moral dilemma of committing genocide. Unfortunately, the villains in this book are entirely one-dimensional. I don't see how it could be otherwise with the way Hamilton has created the conflict between humanity and aliens who are just so
alien that they don't regard any other life as having the right to exist. Nevertheless, it means that there is no room for negotiation or compromise, and there's really no way to sympathize with or pity MorningLightMountain. So on one level, genocide makes sense. Indeed, another reviewer makes a convincing case that containment is just a longer, slower death. I happen to disagree, for I do not share his pessimistic outlook on the Bose motile's mission to change MorningLightMountain from within. And ultimately, there may not be a practical difference between killing MorningLightMountain outright and imprisoning it for the next millions of years, but there
is a moral difference. It's about demonstrating a respect for the diversity of life and maintaining that diversity, even if it means keeping that diversity contained. Besides, every species has an expiration date, even if it's measured in the billions of years. The only possible escape from corporeal stagnation that Hamilton offers is the vague notion of "transcendence," and who knows—maybe MorningLightMountain can achieve
that inside the barrier!
And now back to my boredom. When I said that
Judas Unchained is more intense than
Pandora's Star, I meant it in two sense: the stakes are higher, and the action is more condensed. The previous book spent a lot of time developing side plots, and it was not clear until closer to the end how the Primes and the Starflyer would manifest as antagonists. In contrast, we know from the beginning of
Judas Unchained that the Primes are going to kick humanity's ass, and the Starflyer is both real and incredibly difficult to fight. As a result, the narrative is a lot more focused on these two plots—though I did enjoy the occasional shout-out to minor events from the previous book, such as the inclusion of Lionwalker Eyre.
Unfortunately, both of the plots seem to slow down and drag during the climax. It's
odd. There's an interstellar wormhole train pursuit, with an intense race to get to Far Away and prevent the Starflyer from escaping. But it seems to last
forever. This is not a consequence of the book's length but of the way Hamilton structures the action sequences—I'm not sure if I would go as far as calling them
padded, because the sequences themselves are short and sweet. However, the events that elapse between the Guardians and Sheldon's group deciding to work together and the climactic moment on Far Away are … convoluted.
Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoyed
Judas Unchained—albeit not as much as I enjoyed
Pandora's Star. There were several moments throughout the book where I giggled or otherwise reflected upon how awesome it felt to be reading something like this. Hamilton has the ability to make me excited about reading a story in the way that few books or authors do. And she does what good science-fiction authors
should do, which is use science fiction to tell an interesting story (sometimes the authors tend to get hung-up on the "science fiction" thing and forget they're telling stories). With Hamilton, there's no world
building, just his
world, which we learn about as we experience it. So I'm looking forward to returning to the Commonwealth with his
Void series, and to reading more of his books in general.
I'll be honest (or shall we say, realistic?) and admit that these books aren't going to enchant every reader of science-fiction. Without falling into the trap of the fallacies of "hard" and "soft" science fiction,
Pandora's Star and
Judas Unchained definitely embrace the "technobabble" aspects and tropes of the genre, and not everyone enjoys that. More importantly, there are a lot of characters, and even for an author as skilled as Hamilton, it's difficult to round them out sufficiently. Despite my focus of them in the reviews, I'd definitely characterize these books as more plot-driven than character-driven. So
Pandora's Star and
Judas Unchained aren't for everyone, but if you do like action-packed science-fiction stories about interstellar conflicts, weird alien mentalities, and wormhole-hopping, then you've got a winner here.
Rating: really liked it
This is the second "half" of the 2,200 page Commonwealth Saga, started in book one "Pandora's Star". This is superb, hard sci-fi, space-faring, wormholes, technology galore and perhaps 100 characters. This saga has one of the most interesting alien species I have ever seen - truly creative imagination and design.
I give these books Top Marks, and will continue to read Mr Hamilton's works.
Rating: really liked it
Executive Summary: An enjoyable conclusion to the Commonwealth Duology. I plan to check out the Void trilogy at some point in the future.
Audio book: John Lee once again does a great job. He doesn't do voices, but he's got a great reading voice that I could listen to for hours and seems well suited to Space Opera. I'm excited to see he reads the Void series for Tantor as well as a few other books I plan to check out.
Full Review This is a long one, but overall I enjoyed it. I think this works best in audio because Mr. Hamilton can sometimes go overboard on the details and I found it easy to miss a little here and there and still not seem to miss any plot points. If I were reading it, I might start skimming or something.
This book picks up right where Pandora's Star leaves off, so you'll want to read that first before jumping into this one.
We're introduced to a few new POV characters in this one, to go along with some old favorites (of mine anyways) like Ozzy and Paula Myo.
I think Mr. Hamilton does a good job in not only tying up all the loose ends but merging the various story lines together into a cohesive finale.
There were some parts of Pandora's Star that felt superfluous (I'm looking at you Hang Gliding scene!) or just more background and depth that felt necessary (like the whole murder/disappearing bodies subplot) that suddenly clicked in with this book.
The real enjoyment for me wasn't necessarily the space battles, the politics or the aliens, but just the Commonwealth itself and the people we meet. Don't get me wrong all that stuff was cool (not to mention I had a hankering for some Starcraft after the scenes with the soldiers in badass armor suits going to toe to toe with aliens that remind me a lot of the Zerg).
The Commonwealth feels very much like our world today, only with a lot more fun toys to play with and near-immortality to allow one to experience them. That is if you're lucky enough to be part of the right family/born on the right planet.
I think Mark really became one of my favorite characters because he uses his intelligence and hard work to get ahead, albeit thanks to taking advantage of some timely opportunities.
I'm excited to check out other stories the Commonwealth, even if they are with a whole other cast of characters. I happened to snag The Dreaming Void as part of an end of year BOGO sale too. I'm hoping some of the characters from this are still alive and kicking and make a cameo or two at least.
Rating: really liked it
“The fact that it was he who in the end had underestimated the Starflyer gave his situation its wretched poignancy.” Good endings are are hard, great endings are Peter Hamilton. Oh, I had my doubts, my disagreements, a character I could have done without (Orion), but this blockbuster came through! Dreaming heavens,
The Planets Revenge lived up to its name.
I would read a whole book on Paula Myo and dearly hope she appears in subsequent books. Perhaps the Cat too?
*audible note: The narrator is generally good but forgot about the accents he had given characters in book one. That was annoying.
Rating: really liked it
Longer review appearing much later than I anticipated... ah well.
This book picks up immediately after the end of Pandora's Star, and it distinctly benefits from not having to establish as much worldbuilding as its predecessor. Here, instead of introducing the reader to the numerous worlds and characters of the Commonwealth, Hamilton can simply jump right into their stories. With one major exception, the plot feels a lot tighter and less of it seems extraneous to the point. That said, the pacing is still uneven and too slow for the seriousness of what's at stake, and all of the problems with the (lack of) soft SF worldbuilding are still present.
Starting with the soft SF stuff, because I covered that more in depth in my review of the first book: women remain absent from most positions of power or chances to act with authority, though whether this is an oversight is unclear, as Hamilton at one point
highlights the fact that there's only one female Dynasty Head; Mellanie Rescorai briefly moves away from being a character centered around sex, with some serious reflection on what it means for her career, and then goes
right back; we see more of Nigel Sheldon's harem and it's exactly as shallow as I expected (and his sexual stamina clearly wish-fulfillment for someone); WE CONTINUE TO NOT TALK ABOUT THE EXPLOITATIVE NATURE OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN 20-SOMETHINGS AND PEOPLE OVER A HUNDRED YEARS OLD; there are no queer characters really to speak of, etc, etc. At this point I find Commonwealth society actively repulsive, to be honest. The constant modern brand namedrops (especially of cars) don't help with that, as it's just a reminder that in Hamilton's 'ideal' future the rich have continued to get rich and successful, and the poor underclass lives and dies a dozen times in the lifespan of one oligarch.
I want to talk about Mellanie a bit more, because this bothers me on a deep level. Spoilers follow. (view spoiler)
[So, just as she starts to move out of navigating the world entirely through sex - something which read, in the first book, a lot like a coping mechanism after abuse/exploitation, which Morton's relationship with her pretty clearly was - she gets dragged into another scheme and pimped out, quite literally, to Ozzie's teenaged compannion, Orion. Orion is a quintessential horny teenage boy, has no idea how to interact with girls, and idealizes her a frankly disturbing amount when they first meet, describing her as an 'angel'. This is not the first time we've seen this description; it also showed up in Kazimir's first encounter with Justine, which went so well and in no way ended up sidelining her because ~emotions. (that was sarcasm. It absolutely did.) Then other shit goes down - Mellanie sleeps with Nigel Sheldon, who proposes marriage to her and who really needs to shut the hell up, and then gets ripped in half by his security staff. Boom. No more Mellanie in the resolution of the book. (worth noting that she already missed her own personal objective - seeing her former boss arrested - to be pimped out to Orion. Mellanie is not allowed to achieve goals, apparently.) She shows up again to get married to pimply teenage horndog, and we get a lot of information on how much they're fucking. Lovely. Bonus, because she insists she's not good enough for him! HE HAS DONE NOTHING TO DESERVE THIS! It's got more to do with her own low self-esteem than it does with anything about Orion, which casts their entire relationship's health in doubt. Anyway, they ride off into the sunset together and there's no way this will collapse later or be ultimately terrible for either of them, nope. (hide spoiler)]There was, however, one thing related to the female cast that I quite liked. (view spoiler)
[Anna Kime being a Starflyer agent was something I'd hoped for basically from her introduction in the first book. It was nice to be proven right, even if that did result in her ignominious death and a lot of Wilson angsting about it. (hide spoiler)]The biggest weakness of this book, though, was definitely the pacing. The sense of imminent threat is minimal for most of it, and this was dramatically exacerbated by Ozzie's arc, which is lightyears away from everyone else's and doesn't connect to the rest of the interplay until near the end. When things were happening in the Commonwealth, the Ozzie chapters (mostly just him, Tochee, and Orion wandering around the floating forest and losing track of time) were nigh on useless. Moreover, when he got to the point of actually making it back, it became clear that the
most important part of his travels was something that happened
halfway through the last book. The interval in between lessens the emotional impact significantly, and makes his motivations at the end seem to come nearly out of nowhere. The rest of his journey, too, seems irrelevant in hindsight, as the answers to his actual questions have no bearing on the resolution of the book. By the time he leaves Commonwealth space for the second time, there's no tension in his story - for everything before to have been worth the page time, he has to succeed in his goal (which is also much, much less dramatic than the events on Far Away, happening concurrently in the narrative).
This is a story that I feel could have been much more engaging had it either a) been presented in a visual medium (where much of the description would be handled by set design/background art/etc) or b) been tightened into one book, perhaps with a compressed timeline that would make the imminent destruction by aliens feel like more of an encroaching threat. As it is, the plot seems to meander solely to make all of the extraneous characters relevant, when they probably could have been cut in the first place, especially as they offer very little in the way of emotional content.
Rating: really liked it
A creative, innovative and imaginative sci fi setting make for a worthwhile saga albeit it with poor portrayal of women and overall unnecessarily steeped in sex.This is the conclusion to the duology starting with Pandora's Star. Hamilton does many things well, more than he does wrong. The short of it is that I've never read a sci fi series like this. The Commonwealth is totally immersive.
There is an ecology of wormholes, star systems, and inscrutable alien life forms mixed with imminent interstellar threat that make for an engaging read. The world building is absolute, dynamic and unforgettable. Dozens and dozens of worlds are described in detail. The culture is well fleshed out to the reader. Hamilton plays with so many sci fi concepts its hard to keep track.
This is a veritable cornucopia of cosmology, space travel, AI and alien life that any sic fi fan boy/girl is going to eat with a spoon.I don't quite know what these books were.
Was I reading a space opera, a crime mystery, a tabloid, political brinkmanship, a spy novel, a telenovela or a war of the worlds? This book had all of that and more. Does it work? Yeah. It does. Hamilton weaves together a crazy amount of subplots that contribute to the overall thrust. It works and it's satisfying.
Now to the bad.
Hamilton is terrible at writing women. I spent 2000 pages reading this series and it's undeniable. Women are either sterile and calculating or an object of desire. The character of Mellanie was, quite honesty, pretty deplorable. She's supposed to be a heroine but only gains power and influence by using sex. It's not an exaggeration that almost every man she comes in contact with, there is an inevitable sexual encounter. I was constantly rolling my eyes. This was clearly written by a man.
This book was also sexist against men: every man depicted sees all woman as a sexual object. As a man, I was bothered by this. Also, uh, the normalization of polygamy? No thanks.
The pacing ran out of steam. Halfway through this, I wanted to be done.
There were too many subplots of one dimensional characters. In fact, I can't think of a single character that really leapt off the page for me. If I could wave a wand, I would've taken out about half the characters and spent more time developing a main cast. The upside of this is that the story and plot are absolutely sweeping and broad, something that probably appeals to a lot of readers.
In the end this is a space epic that is far from being a masterpiece but well worth your time. I give it four stars because the sci fi elements are simply awesome.
