User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This is one of the best Sci-Fi series ever written, comparable with the old classics and The Expanse, Reynolds, Banks, Scalzi, Stephenson, Simmons,… and I can´t say how much I love this novel. I was still really young when I read it the first time and Hamilton was the one who opened my mind for the immense possibilities of Sci-Fi. And the endless love story began,... I should consider rereading all he wrote again.
He is the Stephen King of Sci-Fi, other genre authors might write less stereotypical, more believable, less controversial, more tech-focused,… but he ultimately checked that the fusion of persons, plots, sense of wonder, and worldbuilding is the key to readers' ultimate dreams. No passage, nothing that let´s one get out of the flow for a moment and that although there are flaws such as logic holes and other points people criticize in his work. But just as the mentioned King, he is so good at what he does that one doesn´t care because I must say that I have hardly ever read any Sci-Fi novels (it were hundreds) that were of a similar intensity.
Hamilton fuses protagonists, plot, and world together, there is hardly ever any interaction, dialogue, that has no relevance and this differentiates him from many other Sci-Fi authors and genres. Hard-Sci-Fi has too much technobabble and too little identification with the characters and parts with them, social Sci-Fi hasn´t enough action, each subgenre has elements some group of readers could dislike. But Hamilton avoids them all, he has the epic, understandable, not too specific Hard-Sci-Fi infodump, the not too detailed characters that have chronic McGuffinitis and Chekhovitis and can´t move without pushing the story forward with their tech, biotech, psitech, lovetech, are entertainingly superficial social Sci-Fi and there are no lengths, although the novels are massive.
That´s the most amazing thing, I´ve reread some passages I, in retrospect, couldn´t imagine having taken so many pages and described just a short passage, an extremely detailed, but still stunning mini chapter inside a chapter.
One of the reasons why his writing is so great is that he has no background in natural sciences such as many authors and that brought him in a position of focusing on writing entertaining and avoiding too specific descriptions, instead getting better and better in plotting. You see, other Sci-Fi authors tend to over integrate elements of their professions and that can, if one isn´t into that kind of thing, get lengthy to boring for many readers. Too much astrophysics, tech, informatics, physics,… and, on the other hand, philosophy, sociology, social criticism, economics, politics,… make broad fields of Sci-Fi indigestible for readers with not so special interests.
His genius can also be shown by comparing him with other popular Sci-Fi authors, who have different prioritization in their works. The Expanse is the only comparable universe that is so accessible, trope forming, and both character and plot driven.
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...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
Rating: really liked it
I'm on page 450 and I don't know if I can finish this one. So far we've had:
Awesome:
- Humans biologically bonded to technology: Because I can't wait for my own neural link into the internets.
- Space colonisation programme, settlers, frontiers, etc. = I always enjoy this sort of thing.
Not so awesome:
The protagonist is a tremendous Gary Stu: not only do his adventures all turn out all right, he also ALWAYS gets the girl. He's handsome! In a roguish way! And as soon as he smiles at any female in the vicinity, sexy times are guaranteed!
Terrible:
We've already had rape, torture, general exploitation, and mysogyny. And I'm not even half-way through.
Ridiculous
The plots so far: Joshua has found an artifact that may hold the key to the self-destruction of an entire alien civilisation! What might it be? The most wanted man in the universe (and a bunch of satanists) are possessed by strange energy things from
the dungeon another dimension! What might they be? Dr Mzu is trying to get away from Tranquility, probably to go looking for the Alchemist! Where might it be? Currently, Styrinx is somewhere buying seafood. (Includes whale watching! And sexy times!) Joshua is on Lalonde buying wood! (No sexy times yet but it can only be a matter of time!)
Abandon suspension of disbelief: Humans have colonised space, have bitek, and whatever, but can only get through the jungle on Lalonde on HORSES, and they can't travel upriver faster than by STEAMBOAT because not only aren't they allowed proper tech on the settlement planet, no, they also don't have transports that can take their soldiers WITH their horses upriver. Everyone knows something really BAD is happening in the Quallheim and yet the army takes a BOAT to get there, which takes a week, minimum. No. Just no.
I really want to find out how it all comes together in the end. But so far I'm not invested in any of the characters and I can never read more than a couple of chapters before the book flies. Think I'll give this a miss.
Rating: really liked it
A bit of investment required to finish this.
The Reality Dysfunction is a monster of a book, boasting more than 1200 pages. It is also a somewhat distressing read. By the time the book hits one third there has been a multitude of uneasy things for the reader to digest. Rape; exploitation; satanic rituals; torture; murder and mutilation (where, in some cases, the victims are children); genocide; injuries inflicted to protagonists that will make the squeamish light-headed; demonic possession… to name but a few. It’s also clear by this time that Hamilton is only getting started. Yes, it’s that kind of book.
It’s riveting stuff though. Hamilton spins a
very good yarn and he seems to be one of the few authors who
can actually write a story of this magnitude. Looking for a sense-of-wonder fix? Look no further. This is one
big story, with a staggering plethora of characters and events surrounding the bigger picture. Yet, it really works. I read Hamilton’s
Commonwealth Saga before this, even though it was published later, and it’s clear that Hamilton thrives on this kind of thing.
The second half of the book is really where it’s at, with themes like redemption and sacrifice juxtaposed with the despair of the earlier portions. Pity it takes some effort to identify them through all the mayhem.
In conclusion, don’t let the difficult first half put you off, things pick up considerably (and then some) in the second half.
Nightmare on Elm Street on a galactic scale – that’s what this is. Now, on to the similarly massive sequel (The Neutronium Alchemist) (or at least, once I gather my wits again).
updateFinishing the trilogy has given me a more holistic perspective.
It’s good stuff all round, and I have rated the books consistently highly, but know this: if you start this you are in it for the long run. These books can
not be read as standalone novels. In the end I found the trilogy worthwhile but exhausting. Don't let too much time pass between books. There’s no medal for effort here, but finishing
Night’s Dawn is its own reward.
Rating: really liked it
Wow, what to say about this book. It is NOT EASY READING, that's for sure. The first 1/4 almost is like running through a valley of quicksand, but I swear the momentum is worth it. I felt my interest waning sometimes because it is SO DENSE, but then, rather than stopping, I'd skim a bit forward over all the meticulous details of the worlds etc and get back on track with some of the characters. This book requires stamina but if you're into sci-fi is worth the effort. All the thought and imagination that went into this universe is breathtaking, truly beyond anything I could invent. The book definitely gets going at a certain point because you latch onto characters that are fascinating, and once the mystery behind the "invaders" becomes more evident you really can't wait to see what happens, or at least I couldn't. Anyway, for hard Sci-Fi people this is a great recc. Just be prepared for 3000+ pages of fun before the end. Off to book 2!
Rating: really liked it
Awesome.
When I went through law school and then bar school I was forced to eject many vital tidbits of information that were taking up valuable space in my brain: my address, my year of birth, etc. I have no idea how Peter F. Hamilton holds all of this massive universe, its technology and characters in one noggin. He clearly does not remember his wife's birthday or his underwear size. We all have to make sacrifices.
The Reality Dysfunction is fun. Lots of fun. I flew through this book and forgave its flaws (there are some useless digressions but heck, I even enjoyed those). The action is incredible, the ideas are grand and the universe is relatively plausible. Hamilton's prose is not necessarily eloquent and sharp, but it is good. The story just powers through that.
I'll address most people's two biggest critiques of Reality Dysfunction. First, yes it's long. The edition sold in Canada is over 1200 pages. Second, some people are disappointed with what the spooky threat ends up being (hereinafter: the "Spolier Bit"). With respect to the length, I'm no editor, but I'm sure this could have been clipped a bit with only a positive result. However, a good story is a good story. I'm over that. With respect to the Spoiler Bit, it's a matter of personal choice. Some like it, some don’t. I know those two comments are not entirely helpful, but my point is that they should not detract from what is a kickass book.
In a nutshell, this is the first book in a huge space opera trilogy. It qualifies as "New Space Opera" with all the verisimilitude in the science that goes along with that relatively new term. The novel is set in the 26th and 27th centuries with much of the story happening in 2610 and 2611 within a group named the Confederation. A handy timeline at the start of the book is not only useful to following during your reading but gives you some background when you start. Humans have split into two groups: Edenists embrace the introduction of biotechnology into the human genome and all the wacky consequences and Adamists stick to mechanical and cybernetic technology. Adamists are less well off to Edenists, a group with is comparable to Iain M. Banks' Culture on some levels. There is a whole chunk of religious, political and technological interest in the book, but the real story comes in the form of an unknown invader that is threatening first a planet in the Confederation and then perhaps even beyond.
I'm very excited to continue onto the next volume, The Neutronium Alchemist.
Rating: really liked it
*sigh*
I wanted to like this. I did. And I liked parts of it a lot, many of the ideas were fascinating, several of the characters I really dug. But there were other issues that hampered my overall enjoyment, and they can't be ignored.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Rating: really liked it
I really wanted to like this novel a lot. I wanted to get invested from the sheer length of the novel and come out the other side, saying, "Wow, that was fantastic." Just because I'm not doesn't mean that the novel wasn't worthwhile, it just means that the negative qualities of it managed to outweigh what was good.
Let's face it. A novel that is almost 1500 pages is either full of characters, full of story, or full of meandering and inconsequential shit that didn't really serve the final solid tale. I can sort of see why the planet got so much face time before the crap hit the palm. I can also see why the branches of humanity needed to get so much time as well. What I can't understand is why so much time was devoted to each. I swear, this would have been a fantastic novel with some serious cutting. The action scenes were good. The young captain was thoroughly enjoyable. I didn't even mind the turn of the sci-fi into practical fantasy. It was interesting.
I would have thought it was more interesting at half the total size, too.
Maybe I'm just overcritical and grouchy, but I really got tired of reading this novel in sections and just prayed for my favourite characters to come back.
I think I got spoiled because I had read Leviathan Wakes long before I picked this novel up. I saw a lot of good similarities, but I'd always choose Leviathan over this. Perhaps one day I'll pick up the sequels to this one and pray it gets more fit, but I won't be doing it now.
Rating: really liked it
"TL,DR. There are very few SF stories that justify more than 120,000 words."
- Jo Walton's blog on Hugo Nominees: 1998
Jo Walton is the best sf books reviewer extant (IMO), as an author she is no slouch either. Unfortunately for her
The Reality Dysfunction is the exception that proves the rule, this is one of the "very few SF stories" that she is talking about. Certainly a book this magnitude, clocking on at over 1,200 pages, is dissuasive for many people. If you are interested in reading this book but feel intimidated by the high page count I suggest you treat this one volume book as you would an entire trilogy. Read one third, go read another book, come back read the second third, go read yet another book etc. Don't worry that there are two more gargantuan volumes in the
Night Dawn Trilogy, you may not even want to read them! Sandwiching shorter books between long ones work wonders for me. Of course nowadays long novels are in vogue, especially for fantasy novels, clearly books this size is exactly what a lot of readers want.
The Reality Dysfunction is Peter F. Hamilton's breakout book, it established him as the leading exponent of huge sprawling epic space operas. Still, I have to admire the author's gumption in writing a novel of such an uncompromising length, which is certainly not the norm for science fiction. He clearly did not do it for the money, he could have written shorter faster paced books and they probably wold have been easier to get published. He has this huge story to tell and he wants to tell and he will tell it in as many pages as necessary. The success of this book and the series as a whole totally vindicated him. His shorter books are far less popular than his whale size space operas.
The Night Dawn Trilogy is essentially about humanity's fight for survival against invaders from another dimension. The twist is that the invaders are not aliens. To say any more would be venturing into spoiler territory, though if you have read other reviews you probably know what I'm being coy about already. Actually before I read this book somebody told me it is about space zombies, I thought may be it would be something like
Dawn of The Dead in space which sounded like a hoot to me though I was surprised such a story could span three elephantine books. Any way, it is not about zombies, there are no zombies in The Reality Dysfunction (I can't speak for subsequent volumes at this point but I doubt the zoms will show up), but I now understand the oversimplification.
As he is working on such a huge canvas Hamilton takes time to setup his pieces, worldbuilding, characters developing (so damn many of them), and meticulous plotting. For the first 300 or so pages I had no idea where the story is going, or who the main protagonists or antagonists are. The book is not hard to follow though, Hamilton has a clear clean prose style, not much in the way of lyricism but the more prosaic style is more practical for this kind of epic space opera I think. There are already so many worlds, species, people and cultures to introduce without further befuddling the readers with a poetic narrative. The author saves his inventiveness for his creations, living organic spaceships, cities, houses, all kinds of weird gadgets, and more alien and strange creatures than you can shake a stick at. This book is also, to some extent, a sci-fi/horror mash up, there are scenes of supernatural horror that I did not expect to find in a space opera. A lesser author would probably make the whole thing ridiculous but Hamilton is no ordinary author and he made it work. This book is also, to some extent, a sci-fi/horror mash up, there are scenes of supernatural horror that I did not expect to find in a space opera. A lesser author would probably make the whole thing ridiculous but Hamilton is no ordinary author and he made it work.
As mentioned earlier there is a huge cast of characters and sometime it is hard to remember who is who, but he does return to a few main characters more than others. Many of the characters tend to be archetypes, the evil charismatic genius sociopath, the rebellious teenager straight off a daytime soap who gets more than she bargained for, the bad boy turned good etc. Characterization is not one of the strengths of this book, though the characters are not so flat as to leave you with no one to root for or want dead. There are also a lot of sex scenes in this book which I don't find particularly sexy or relevant to the story, certainly this is not a book to read to your children.
The book
is longer than it needs to be, but not by too much; cutting down on the unnecessary sex scenes would probably shear off a centimetre or so from the book's thickness. But Hamilton makes it all worthwhile by the explosive end of this first volume where a small group of characters win a minor victory for humanity. The war itself has just begun of course.
If you have never read Peter F. Hamilton before I would recommend reading Pandora's Star first. This is the start of an entirely different series which he wrote some years later than this book, it is better written, more refined, and the characters are better developed. Still, if you insist on The Reality Dysfunction as your first Hamilton I doubt you will regret the decision. I am certainly going to read the next obese volume The Neutronium Alchemist. Damn you Mr. Hamilton, you are practically monopolizing my reading time!
Update December 2013: Just read
The Neutronium Alchemist (my review) it is a substantial improvement on
The Reality Dysfunction. I particularly enjoy the chapters from the possessed people’s point of view.
Rating: really liked it
Part of my 2020 Social Distancing Read-a-thon
Well, that was a lot of reading for very little joy. This is the second book by this author that I've read and both of them in my opinion were way too long and had rather ridiculous plot elements. This novel had so many characters to keep track of and so many intertwining plot lines that I couldn't set the book down for very long or I would lose the thread.
It's too bad because I thought there were tons of good ideas in the course of things. For example, the sentient habitats and spaceships, biological rather than AI. Those reminded me of Iain Banks' Culture books, the AI Minds that populate that universe. The alternation between Tranquility habitat and the rough pioneer world of Lalonde made me think of Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep.
What I have trouble with is thinking that there will still be Earth-based religions in 2520. I certainly think that Satanism will have been left far behind by then. Maybe Buddhism will survive, but surely we will have outgrown the other belief systems.
I know I've set myself a mission to read most of the books on the list that I've devised, but there are 2 more volumes in this series and they are every bit as long as this one. I just can't face them. I had difficulty finishing this one. This is it, folks, I'm not reading any further.
Book number 360 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project
Rating: really liked it
Warning: this is NOT science fiction, it's Christian fantasy disguised as Radical Hard SF. It starts out as a fairly ripping space opera with some clever worldbuilding, but then somewhere around page 700, a Satanic ritual conjures forth the souls of the deceased from the Afterlife into our universe.
YES I'M SERIOUS! One of the few books I've ever
literally thrown across the room in disgust. I sold the book back to the used bookstore from whence I bought it, but in retrospect, I deeply regret not keeping it by my toilet so I could tear out pages to wipe my ass with.
Fuck you, Hamilton.
Rating: really liked it
It took a hell of a long time, but I've made it through The Reality Dysfunction, the first volume in a trilogy recommended to me by Ennis. It's a "space opera" about a futuristic society plagued by an evil force that "sequestrates," or maybe just possesses, people.
The story takes place in the Confederation in the 2600s. The set-up is quite detailed and interesting. One group, the Adamists, lives on a failing planet Earth and various other planets. The Adamists are mostly like the people of today, but with neural implants that allow them to "datavise" or communicate directly with computers. They have starships and nuclear weapons and whatnot. Another group, the Edenists, has a different kind of technology that is organic. Edenists have genetic changes that allow them to have an affinity bond with each other and with their habitats, which are miniplanets made entirely of organic matter. This bond allows them to share thoughts and feelings inside their own heads, without speaking, and to see through other people's eyes. They also have spaceships that are organic and have personalities and memories. When Edenists die, the intangible part of them is absorbed into the habitat. The distinction between the two groups is essentially religious; they trade and coexist more or less peacefully.
The plot of the book revolves around a new planet, Lalonde, which is being settled under a Dutch East India Company-esque scheme. Colonists have bought in, and come from Earth or other failing urban planets to farm. We see a group of the colonists struggling to get their village, Aberdale, up and running. This is fresh stuff--after all, in sci-fi like Star Wars and Firefly, the farmers are just there as redshirts or comic relief. However, an evil force appears on the planet and begins to take over villages and people in a mysterious way. The book has a huge number of characters, including Joshua "Self-Insert" Calvert, a strapping starship captain with remarkable sexual and technical skills, and many female figures that are almost characterized well enough for you to be able to tell them apart. There is a planet with a culture nostalgic for 19th century England and a bunch of marines who have huge machine guns welded to their forearms. So while Lalonde turns out to be central to the plot, it doesn't dominate in terms of number of pages. There is a lot going on here, and some if it must pertain to the later volumes of the trilogy, since it doesn't pan out in this one.
This book is either rather good or completely terrible. The author is certainly inventive, but I often had occasion to wish that he'd handed over his ideas to someone else to write. The pacing here is frustrating. At times, he is so enamored of discussing planetary trajectories and technology that you wonder if you will ever see a sentient being again. There seems to be little structure governing the arrangement of scenes. There are problems with the POV. You'll be reading about Person A doing something from the point of view of Person B, watching them from 20 yards away. Then all of a sudden you're in Person A's head. Or, scenes of a space battle cut back and forth between the POVs of people in different, even opposing spaceships, with no notice. This problem is so basic to telling a story that I'd expect even a novice to avoid it instinctually.
The novel is quite long and there are two volumes left. In the end, I feel about it the way I did about A Game of Thrones. It has its good and bad points, and I thought I was intrigued enough by the plot to read the sequels, but I never did. We'll see about this one.
Rating: really liked it
This is the worst-written book I've ever read twice. Hamilton is not just a bad writer but a bad writer in a hurry--superabundantly verbose, careless about style and tone, overdescriptive, flaccidly repetitive, malapropistic when he isn't spouting tired old cliches. He's a lousy scene-painter, too, careless about details and how they fit together and given to commencing every descriptive paragraph with the physical dimensions of whatever is being described--twenty kilometers long and weighing nine hundred thousand tonnes, that kind of thing. None of his visions is in the least original, none of his ideas are new or even newly crafted. His basic premise--dead souls returning from the afterlife, defying the laws of physics by means of a conveniently-named 'reality dysfunction' to sieze the bodies of the living and possess them--abounds with metaphysical inconsistenies and scientific impossibilities. And his sex scenes, gratuitously introduced whenever he feels the action is flagging a bit, make signally unpleasant reading. Women, in particular, may feel the need to take a shower after a few pages of being pleasured by Hamilton's priapic heroes and villains.
There is also a vast oversupply of pornoviolence, most of which I skipped.
All of which begs the question of why I have just re-read this book and its sequel volume with great enjoyment, and am now halfway through the final book in the trilogy.
I suppose it helps that the
Night's Dawn trilogy is action-packed, spectacular space opera, and that bad as the writing is, it is also compelling: you just devour it, ugly bits and all, you're so eager to learn what happens next. The multiple storylines, though mostly absurd, are still humdingers. There are hundreds of characters and the principal ones, walking cliches though they be, are engaging enough to keep you interested. The dozens of subplots twist and turn all over the place, and if the outcome of no scene is ever in doubt, Hamilton still manages to spring a surprise or two to keep us interested.
But all these are just self-justifications, really. I consider myself a literary gourmet, and this book is a bit like junk food--tasty in a crude way, unwholesome and empty of real nourishment. Yet even a gourmet may relish a Big Mac once in a way.
Rating: really liked it
Ah, the Night’s Dawn Trilogy. One of the most amazing, wild space opera’s ever written. In the UK it is 3 massive books, while here in the US they nickel-and-dimed us by splitting them up into 6. It doesn’t really matter though, because it is not so much a trilogy as it is one gigantic continuous story, regardless of where they are split. One book ends at whatever chapter, and the following book simply begins at the next.
Peter Hamilton is probably my favorite SF writer when it comes to world building and action. In this series, he skillfully synthesizes the best aspects of cyberpunk, space opera and even horror, and creates tons of different planets, each one vivid and unique. He has a knack for describing some minor detail like the local economy of a big city planet or the landscape of some frontier world colony that brings the scene to life in the reader’s imagination.
After creating this very high-tech universe, a supernatural element is introduced to the story (I highly recommend that anyone interested in this series avoid reading any plot synopses on the books). While I am generally extremely averse to anything resembling magic in my SF, Hamilton pulls it off. The magical element is described in a very scientific manner, making it more palatable, and the SF elements are enough to send me into multiple geekgasms.
I should mention that the first 60 pages or so are a tad difficult to get into, but after that it just begins to flow. Additionally, I must admit that the sex sometimes comes off as a tad juvenile. And finally, I hate to say it, but the ending is kind of anticlimactic. However, the ride is so amazing that any of these downsides are far overshadowed.
While this is not primarily an action story, when it does first hit at around 200 or so pages in, it is some of the most enthralling I have read. Only Neal Asher has come close to matching Hamilton in conveying the kind of kinetic, over-the-top action contained in this story.
Rating: really liked it
Re-read because I own the two following installments in the series, but couldn't remember much about "The Reality Dysfunction" (apart from the fact that I enjoyed it heaps) as I read it back in 2000...maybe 2001.
What we've got here is super-advanced technology featuring sentient starships able to give birth to other starships. The commanders of said starships grow inside/with them, and are sort of telepathically connected with them, and treat them like brothers, parents and, in general, family...which is a pretty fucking amazing concept, if you ask me.
(Art by Paul Chadeisson)
The first twenty chapters or so are equally divided between space & starships and the surface of the planet Lalonde which is some kind of tropical rainforest paradise far from being hyper-technologically advanced. Of course, Lalonde has got its own flora and fauna with trees whose wood is hard as steel, and dangerous predators like sayces & croklions (the latter being some sort of mythological creature, like the bunyip and the drop bear, y'know).
(Art by Nicolas Bouvier)
The book features satanists as well (aye, you got that right,
satanists!). And a very ancient invisible energy being everybody is oblivious of, which, at some point, starts to
literally fuck everything up in Lalonde. In the worst possible way.
And that's about it, otherwise I'll end up spoiling the whole thing bigtime.
OK, at the end of the day, I'm glad to report that "The Reality Dysfunction"
DELIVERS and hasn't lost its appeal after all these years.
Five stars.
(Oh, there's plenty of SEX as well. I like dirty stuff myself. Well, there is a BIG BOWL of sex in here, hey! So even better.)
Rating: really liked it
Good news for white cishet dudes who are into segregation and racial purity. Also in the future, most of you will be issued harems. There are some neat ideas in here, and I love the affinity-bonded relationships with bitek (biotech) ships and habitats. I'm curious about what ended the decimated alien civilization that left the ruins, too, but not enough to hack my way through this. Notes / highlights follow my progression from mild consternation about the race and gender stuff ...through sexual violence and female characters defined by their biology, and sexualizing kids... to much more than mild consternation. This post and this one do a pretty handy job of articulating the things I couldn't get past. (Also, and next to those issues it is a mere quibble, but there is no writer more committed to giving measurements of every. physical. object. the reader encounters.)
There are so many better examples of expansive, centuries-spanning space opera that manage to do those things without all the WTF.
CW for (view spoiler)
[rape, sexual slavery, gross male-gazey descriptions of female children/teenagers, casual statutory rape, animal cruelty and blood sport, murder, weird racial stuff and emphasis on "ethnic" segregation by planet, holy shit the fat-shaming, and the book's antagonist, who is a Satanist, rapist, murderer, etc., also just happens to be the only gay character in several star systems--probably coincidence, right? I'm sure I missed some, but those are the obvious ones. (hide spoiler)]UPDATE to add: When I wrote that there is no writer more committed to endless measurements of physical objects, I had not yet encountered Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
