Subject: Review: "The Nano Flower" by Peter F. Hamilton

From: "John Shiali" <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Aug 1997 12:38:06 GMT

"The Nano Flower" by Peter F. Hamilton
		Review Copyright 1997 John Shiali

[This review contains minor spoilers for this book and for the first two
books about this character.  --AW]

In this third novel, Greg Mandel is once again pulled from his peaceful
retirement by Julia Evans, owner of Event Horizon.  For fifteen years,
Evans has used Event Horizon to create England's economic renaissance.
With processing wetware in her head, two AIs of herself and one of her
grandfather Philip to help her, she has made Event Horizon a major force
in the world.

However, things are starting to go wrong.  Her husband Royan, the mutual
friend of Greg Mandel, whom she rebuilt from the crippling injuries
sustained during the uprising against the previous hard left government,
has disappeared.  Rival companies are offering technology that far
outstrips anything previously seen, threatening to swallow Event Horizon,
or leave it blown away in their dust.

Julia Evans then receives an anonymous and unusual flower, whose genes are
millions of years in advance of anything on earth.  Of course, the only
man who can figure out what is going on is Greg Mandel.

This is quite simply, a brilliant book.  There is a fully rounded world
here, with everyone out on the make and with an angle to play.  Big
corporations move their pieces on the chessboard, trying to outflank each
other.  They use tekmercs and hard-liners where necessary, hackers and
stealth where they can.  Hamilton shows us wonderful characters again:
Suzi the streetfighter turned tekmerc, and her nemesis, the vicious Leol
Reiger who likes to humiliate his opponents if he hasn't already killed
them; Julia Evans has grown into a clever and sharp business woman who
fears nothing more than the loss of Event Horizon; Charlotte, the high
class prostitute who finds herself being hunted for what they think she
might know; And of course Greg Mandel.  Although resigned to his happy
retirement, with his family and farm, he finds that the lure of action
again ensnares him once again.

The Nano Flower is a fast-paced thriller that insists that you stop and
think, forces you to get to like the characters, and surprises you with
constant twists in the storyline as you unravel the convoluted web that
the inhabitants of Greg Mandel's world have woven.  A must read if you
like techno-thrillers.

%A	Hamilton, Peter F.
%T	Nano Flower, The
%D	1995
%G	ISBN 0-330-33044-6
%C	London, UK
%I	Pan Books Ltd.
%O	paperback 4.99 UKP
%P	566 pp
 
 John - 
"To you it's a potato; to me it's a potato. But to Sir Walter Bloody
Raleigh, it's country estates, fine carriages and as many girls as his
tongue can cope with." - Blackadder II: "Potato"