Subject: Review: Peter F. Hamilton's _Night's Dawn_ trilogy.

From: [email-masked] (Excession)
Date: 15 Sep 1999 13:46:01 -0400

Peter F. Hamilton's "Nights Dawn" trilogy
	Review Copyright 1999 David Andrew Clayton

_The Reality Dysfunction_  (referred to as TRD)
_The Neutronium Alchemist_ ("              TNA)
_The Naked God_            ("              TNG)

I originally picked up TRD entirely "on spec".  A fat new Trade Paperback
science fiction book from an author I'd never heard of, and the first part
in a trilogy as well.  That isn't how I normally start out with a new
author, especially one I've never heard before.

The cover blurb for TRD lured me into getting the book -- and the hefty
size.  At over 1,000 pages, it was the biggest TPB book I'd seen in quite
a while.  I forget how long ago it was that I got the first book, my way
back machine is stuffed.

When I started the novel, I didn't know that it was going to be a trilogy!
The novel opens up with some snazzy pyrotechnics and juicy space-operetic
scenes, and then gets down into introducing characters, and characters,
and more characters.  Mr Hamilton has taken the chapter shuffling style of
David Brin as his very own; maybe it's some kind of game he's playing with
the reader "how long will it take them to figure out where this is
occurring?" -- I found it kept me on my toes, since character viewpoints
changed not only at the start of chapters, but between paragraphs on a
page.  TRD, as well as TNA and TNG are all extremely convoluted and
complex books.  TRD was a romp, and I was enthused, but didn't see how he
was possibly going to tie up the threads -- until I reached the 'to be
continued' at the end.  Grr.

Many months later, I splashed out on the hardcover version of _The
Neutronium Alchemist_.  In the intervening time I had read some of Mr
Hamilton's 'Mindstar' books, mystery SF novels set in a slightly
futuristic, post Global Warming England, and mostly liked them.  Opening
up TNA was a surprise; straight into the story.  No preface, no "this is
what happened before", no list of characters, just whammo, straight back
into the story as if there had been no break.  Again, this was a 1,000+
page novel, and lots and lots of stuff happens.  The same point of view
chopping and changing permeated the book, and whilst a few mysteries from
the first book were adequately solved, the major plot lines were still
wide open, and a slew of new plot lines were thrown at the reader.
Complexity piled on complexity.  By the time I had finished, and Al Capone
was really starting to look like doing the Confederation a great deal of
damage, I was thirsting for answers.

I pestered the local bookshop, and was told "don't expect the final novel
until October 1998".  The 'when it is done' of the literary world can be
so annoying -- sometimes being on the bleeding-edge of reading new SF can
be counter-productive. :-)

Apparently, Mr Hamilton decided to put together a collection of short
stories instead of finishing the Night's Dawn trilogy, and whilst that
collection (_A Second Chance at Eden_) was satisfactory, it didn't satisfy
my NEED TO KNOW what was happening in the Night's Dawn saga.

Just last week, around August 19th, an IRC chat revealed that _The Naked
God_ was available in TPB format in shops in Sydney.  I instantly acquired
details, and ordered one to be delivered.  Of course, that was on a
Friday, so I didn't get the book until the Wednesday of the next week :-(.

TNG is a whopping 1,174 pages in length.  It's printed on very thin pages,
and since it's in trade paperback format, it's very difficult to hold
whilst reading in bed!  As I now expected, Mr Hamilton rushed straight
into the story, no preamble of any kind.  I noticed some quite subtle and
some very unsubtle references to popular culture, and other books/stories
that PFH has written, which gave me pause to grin and chortle.  The story,
if anything, grew even more complex than the previous two installments had
managed to portray.  Nothing really gets resolved until the last two
hundred pages.  Much action ensues, with death and suffering aplenty.
It's very difficult not to spoil the novels by letting out information in
a review of this sort -- I'd like to talk about Valisk, and Dariat, or
Norfolk, and the Beyond.  In _The Neutronium Alchemist_, you don't find
out what the alchemist IS until nearly the end of that book, but I can't
easily say what Hamilton does with these concepts in the final book,
without spoiling things for readers.

The final hundred pages wrap things up nicely, ties up probably all the
loose ends, and left me feeling exhilarated as well as wrung-out.  Whilst
TNG isn't a non-stop rollercoaster ride, it's pretty damned impressive,
and the finale is worth the 3,000+ pages of precursor!

I liked this series a whole bunch, and recommend it to anyone who doesn't
mind complex stories filled with dozens of characters and a million
different viewpoints.

%A  Peter F. Hamilton
%T  The Naked God
%T  The Reality Dysfunction
%T  The Neutronium Alchemist
%I  MacMillan
%D  1999
%G  ISBN 0 333 72503 4
%P  1174pp.
%O  Trade Paperback, $AUS25.00

David Andrew Clayton     # Please remove NOSPAM when 
[email-masked]   # sending email replies.
I post therefore I am.   # ICQ 6862357 : ObWierd 1999 / 3 = 666.33333333333