The Dreaming Void (Commonwealth: The Void Trilogy)

Peter F. Hamilton is an amazing author. All of his books are so indepth. He writes multiple story lines in the same book and brings them all to amazing conclusions. This book is definately sci-fi and completely different from every other authors writings.

way over the top tech and quantum musings, love story, sex & violence all perpetrated by boosted humans, elder races, humans getting it done! cult's science so advanced its like magic, it has everything you need.

Very creative world and interesting, real feeling characters. Set in a very different, but very possible universe. The various story lines are interesting on their own and when they eventually weave together into one conclusion it is well worth the wait.

I had previously read fallen dragon by Peter Ham. This was an incredible book, fantastic character development, plenty action and captivating. I was disappointed with this book though. I found myself skim reading some of the details as there was sometimes too much detail put into every event, often not ralivant to the main story... A long book without much action. Can't really be bothered with the next in the series unfortunately. Fallen dragon however is one of the best books I've read!!

The dust jacket proclaims, "The year is 3589, fifteen hundred years after Commonwealth forces barely staved off human extinction in a war against the alien Prime". The arithmetic is flawed ("Judas Unchained" was circa 2380, so about 1200 years have elapsed), but Hamilton's story-telling, character development, and world-building are virtually flawless.

After a prologue introducing Inigo and the mysterious Void, which is being studied by the ancient Raiel race, Commonwealth humans, and a number of alien races at Centurion Station near the galactic center, the story alternates between the main time sequence following various Commonwealth characters, and chapters detailing Inigo's past "dreams" of apparently medieval humans. As the story unfolds, it is soon revealed that Inigo's "dreams", which have been recorded and shared with millions of other humans through the gaiafield (a kind of telepathic network enhancement that many have chosen for themselves), are believed to originate from the Void and to chronicle actual life inside the Void. Millions of humans believe life inside the Void to be idyllic -- a religion, the Living Dream, grows around this belief, culminating in a plan for a mass Pilgrimage into the Void.

In conflict with the Living Dreamers are the Raiel, at least one faction of the human-created non-physical intelligence ANA, and an alien race called the Ocisen Empire. The Raiel have been struggling against the Void for a million years, having seen the Void expand and devour countless inhabited worlds, and they expect that a Pilgrimage could trigger another deadly expansion. The Living Dream Pilgrimage, if not stopped, may cause the destruction of the galaxy. But the Living Dream religion persists, and ANA:Governance, controller of the immensely powerful Navy (a military force which has grown in power since defeating the Prime in "Judas Unchained"), seems inclined to protect the Living Dreamers from outside influence or attack.

A number of characters are introduced, both in Inigo's dream chapters, and in the Commonwealth chapters. Aaron is searching for Inigo (who has disappeared sometime after having his famous dreams), but he does not know why or who sent him, and he seems strangely accepting of the mission script he is following as it is gradually revealed to him. Edeard is an orphan boy from Inigo's dream who is trying to find his place in a world that is both hostile to him and able to be shaped by his telepathic powers. In the Commonwealth where technology can be employed to keep one's body fit and perfect, Troblum is a physicist who is extremely fat, a collector of memorabilia from the Starflyer war, and gifted at creating advanced technology and weapons for whoever is willing to feed his obsessions. Araminta is a young, ambitious first-life woman who is trying to start a property-development business herself after a divorce, but her adventures are just beginning.

Justine, Paula, and Oscar from the Commonwealth Saga also have storylines, and there are appearances by several other characters from the Commonwealth Saga. Commonwealth Saga characters notably absent from "The Dreaming Void" are the alien Silfen, any escaped alien Prime, the SI (sentient intelligence), the Bose motile, and Nigel and Ozzie (although Ozzie has apparently become a common swear word).

There is a timeline at the end of the book that provides a number of helpful historical references to fill in some of the events between the end of the Commonwealth Saga and the events in "The Dreaming Void". For example, "2833--Completion of ANA first stage on Earth; Grand Family members begin memory download into ANA rather than to SI....3001--Ozzie produces uniform neural entanglement effect known as the gaiafield." There are no significant spoilers in the timeline, and since Hamilton does not fill in all the details in the narrative, it may be helpful to read the timeline before beginning the novel.

While there are at least 9 viewpoints running simultaneously in "The Dreaming Void", I did not find myself bored by any of them. In contrast, I frequently skipped over various uninteresting viewpoints in Hamilton's Nightsdawn trilogy. Hamilton has done an excellent job of choosing the viewpoint characters in "The Dreaming Void", balancing the action between them, and keeping all of them relevant and interesting. I appreciate that Hamilton has not spent many words summarizing events from the Commonwealth Saga, since that would merely bore readers who are familiar with those events, and probably not help those who have never read those books. Also, since this is not strictly a sequel (1200 years have passed and the most important characters are new), I suspect that it can stand on its own for someone who has not read the previous books. However, as expected in the first book of a trilogy, "The Dreaming Void" does leave quite a few plot lines hanging at the end. If I had not already read the Commonwealth Saga books, I am sure I would feel compelled to read them while waiting for the next Void Trilogy book to be released.

His "Night's Dawn Trilogy" remains his seminal work. The "Judas Unchained" dualogy was superor SciFi.
"The Dreaming Void" is crap! How many words can an author make up to describe the indescribable/impossible? Peter has probably set a record here!
Let alone the the sex obsession of so many of the main line characters, ala the senile/late Heinlein channeling of virgin 15 year old males.
The worst thing however, is despite an unbelievable society/culture/technology/cast of characters, I'll buy the next installment because Peter has once again come up with an original story. However, while I'll read this series to conclusion, I'll never again purchase a volume one from Mr. Hamilton

I found this novel to be boring and unintelligible. It is 620 pages long and nothing happens in those 620 pages. Without the explanation on the dust jacket, the novel would have been wholly nonsensical instead of mostly nonsensical. It seems he is doing what a lot of sci-fi authors are doing these days. He has a kernel of an idea, and a commitment to do three books. So the reader has to suffer as this kernel of an idea is stretched out over three books, with a lot of filler inserted to take up space. You can easily skip 50 pages at a time and not feel that you missed anything. The book is written in a disjointed style, and often refers to past events or uses terms that are either never explained, or vaguely explained 100 pages later. He never explains the settings in the current world either. After 600 pages, I still don't understand what the ANA is, or the differences between various types of Humans. Why so many pages on Inigo's dreams - the dreams are incredibly boring, with no sci-fi content. The really great sci-fi writers don't leave their readers puzzled, or scratching their heads trying to figure out whats going on. They introduce their concepts, settings, and characters within a comprehensible context. The Void appears to be a big deal about nothing.

Yet another insufferable clunker by Mr. Hamilton, "costumed" as if it were science fiction.
It contains literally hundreds of incomprehensible terms, presented as if they were scientific
jargon, but in reality it is just pure meaningless junk. Just a few examples should suffice: biononics,
Unisphere, gaiafield, Skylord, neutronium (which is a term not used in scientific literature for the
simple reason that nobody knows the composition at the core of a neutron star), u-shadow, Dyson-Pair generators,
a Hawking m-sink, and on and on and on. Plus a considerable amount of telephatic and telekinetic
capabilities, which even if they could be forgiven in a 1950s science fiction book, it is unexcusable to
use them today, since they have long been discredited by any serious scientist.

Add to this a typical (for Peter Hamilton) sophomoric plot and cartoonish characters, and the incredible
bad judgment of taking 600+ pages (plus two additional books!!!) to tell it.

All of Peter Hamilton's books are somewhat disjointed by normal standards but this one is nearly incomprehensible. Multiple story lines, with no obvious connection even at the end of the book, story relies on many past events that are never explained.

The premise is pretty terrible. There's a region of space that nobody can pass through. No one can detect what's inside. A person has dreams about what's in it. This starts a religion. Implausible, but not wildly so. Delusional people occasionally start religions, and sometimes those religions become popular.

A number of governments become eager to get into that region of space, largely because of what those dreams say about the interior. That's no longer plausible.

The dreams turn out to be true. At this point, I'm burning the book, burying the ashes at the crossroads, and salting the earth on top.

Almost all the women in the series are treated as sex obsessed. The first woman we see pouts when a stranger refuses to have sex with her, for instance. Araminta's coworkers chide her for thinking of a career rather than marriage -- while she still had litigation in process regarding a troublesome divorce. She later meets a man who is perhaps a little charming but is mainly good in bed. That man is manipulative, but she ignores that fact beyond the end of the series. I think maybe five female characters are not treated as the author's masturbation aid: two prepubescent girls, a woman introduced as the Delivery Man's wife, and a couple characters who are killed off too quickly.

There is a huge tendency for characters to succeed. A good story is about people's struggles, not just bumbling through on serendipity and lucky guesses. But Aaron almost always succeeds with little difficulty. The only problems he has are caused by Corrie-Lyn, which is mainly a chance for the author to carve out a specific type of woman to sneer at.

Edward, on the other hand, goes forward on impulse and other people's suggestions more than any plan of his own.

It's kind of like Mr Magoo played for serious.

The one great thing about this book is the series of little background tidbits that imply the author did some thinking about the setting. It's inconsistent -- there's a free trade zone with no indication of what is being traded, for instance, and that's the least of it -- but things like a centuries long search and rescue operation after a planet is made uninhabitable, recovering people by means of their memory backup implants.

If you're writing speculative fiction, you may want to mine it for ideas. If you don't mind nonsensical plots with no real struggle, characters you don't really care about, occasional gratuitous descriptions of violence (the jelly gun, for instance), and appalling depictions of women, and you really really wanted to be a Jedi for years, you might actually enjoy this book.

This book is really two novels rolled into one. The reason it falls short is that one of the novels is really, really interesting, compelling and entertaining while the other one falls short. The good novel is the part about Edeard and his friends and it is unfortunately far too short. The characters in the bad novel are simply not very interesting and difficult to relate to - it's difficult to care much about what happens to them. For example, there is very little need to have the Amarinta segments. Her struggles are simply not that interesting and they don't reveal much about her character except a constant desire to get laid. There are a lot of unnecessary characters that play small roles and seem to be there just to enrich the milieu. To be effective Hamilton needs a central character they would naturally revolve around. Unfortunately they are split up a lot. That can work if you are George Martin, but it's important to remember that Martin does an amazing job interweaving the lives of all his characters so that they just barely touch each other. Hamilton is less successful although he gets better toward the end of the novel.

'Dreaming' is still worth reading because Hamilton is a very good writer and his fascinating ideas that are developed well. But it's very clear his passion was spent in developing the 'void' portions of the book. It would have been best to make that an actual novel instead of sandwiching the two together like an ice-cream cake. In any case, I'm interested enough to move on to the second book in the series.

Generally, I re-read all previous books in a series when I buy the next book. This means I've read The Dreaming Void three times. I like it as much now as I did the first time, but I find it just as complex.

The Dreaming Void takes place millennia after two other books (Pandora's Star,Judas Unchained) that I have not read. That backstory gives the book depth, but also sometimes leaves the reader keenly aware that he is not part of the inner circle. There's nothing technically wrong with Hamilton's 'historical' references - they're not essential to the story, and he's generally careful to provide what is important in a digestible form. But the sheer number of 'inside' comments becomes a bit wearing, and makes a substantially complex plot even harder to follow. It's not always clear what is decorative and what is substance, as supposedly historical figures reappear from right and left

I'm sorry to say that even on a third reading, I didn't recall who all the factions were - on every run through the book, there were simply too many to keep track of, and I let them float by as narrative scenery ("complex politics, got it. Next."). That works pretty well. You don't have to remember the detailed differences between Highers, Advancers, Dreamers, and the ANA in general, because Hamilton does a very good job of keeping the actual foreground actors clear. I found I enjoyed the action even without making much effort to penetrate the presented mystery of who was secretly supporting whom.

The deep background works better with the many alien races presented - they're interesting, and here it's a pleasure to know that there's more to be explored if I choose. I probably will. It seems likely, for example, that the earlier books provide more information about the Sylfen - apparently a race of high-tech elves. As a writer, I'm curious as to whether they triggered Hamilton's desire to mix fantasy and SF.

That's really what this book is about - it presents a hard, high-tech, political science fiction environment interleaved with what's essentially a light steampunk story. The overall narrative is about how the two connect, and it works surprisingly well. I've only previously read Hamilton's SF (as far as I know, that's all he's written), but he has a remarkably deft touch with fantasy. While I liked the whole book, I much preferred the steampunk-y bits to the epic space opera sections. They definitely leavened the heavy SF politics of the main book. In essence, in fact, the fantasy bits had the same effect on me as they do on the characters of the SF universe - they left me wanting more.

Overall, then, a very satisfying read that sent me right out for the next book. If it's a bit complex keeping apart the factions, the Waterwalker, the Skylords, the Starflyer, etc, it's also a lot of fun following some very believable characters meeting interesting challenges.

I've seen Peter Hamilton's hefty tomes in bookstores, and way back when, I read one of them but was not that dazzled. But the first of his new series plopped into my mailbox, and I thought it's only fair I should give such a long-running author another shot - and it worked out just fine.

Now, `The Dreaming Void' (Del Rey, $26.95, 640 pages) doesn't signal a revolution in science fiction, nor is it the latest post-cyberpunk, blood-drenched noir tribute to Dashiel Hammett. It's just a fun read, set in the far future where natural humans distance themselves from artificially augmented ones, and even further from genetically altered ones. And then there are those who download themselves into a bodiless state, from which they continue to interfere in the affairs of flesh and blood.

Add to this mix a strange kind of black hole that may (or may not) expand to swallow the galaxy, dreams that somehow propagate across interstellar space at superluminal speeds, and the constant human emotions of lust, love, greed, revenge and thirst for power, and you've got the recipe for three thick volumes of grand old (space) opera.

Hamilton knows what he's about as well, and the pace moves briskly along. Some of the characters are more compelling, and better drawn, than others (Araminta, a young female would-be entrepreneur, is my favorite), but it's clear that much is going to happen before this series winds down - and I'm ready for the ride.

"The Dreaming Void" is a well-written book, much better written than "Pandora's Star" and "Judas Unchained" were, and its pacing and plotting are excellent. The characters are much better developed than in the Commonwealth Duology as well, because there are fewer of them to concentrate on, and though some of them are bogeymen whose interior life we do not see much of, the central characters are deeply developed, and you find yourself rooting for them.

The plot is intricate and complicated and takes 625 pages to unfold, so it's a bit hard to summarize. The story takes place in the 34th century, when human technology is quite advanced but not so advanced as that of several other species humanity has encountered in its spread across the stars. At the center of our galaxy is the Void, a microuniverse created by a surreally ancient species. A human named Inigo receives dreams from humans inside the Void, and a religion grows up around his dreams. But Inigo apparently tires of being a religious leader and disappears, and now many factions are looking for him. In Inigo's absence a second dreamer has started dreaming of the Void, and this person's dreams are being broadcast through the gaianet, a multi-planet system that broadcasts the thoughts, feelings, dreams, etc. of its users to each other on a 24/7 basis. The same factions that are pursuing Inigo begin to pursue the so-called Second Dreamer, in an effort to get him under control of their faction.

There is another narrative thread in "The Dreaming Void," and that is the story of Edeard, a young man inside the Void. It is dreams of Edeard that Inigo dreamed, and for whatever reason Hamilton has chosen to give us these dreams verbatim. These may be the best part of "The Dreaming Void," being quite moving in their content. They are certainly the best writing of Hamilton's that I've yet come across.

So throughout "The Dreaming Void" all these factions are chasing around looking for both Inigo and the Second Dreamer. Their agents sabotage each other, harass each other, and generally try to undercut each other to get to their targets first. This narrative and the stories of Edeard weave in and out of each other in alternating chapters.

"The Dreaming Void" is quite an enjoyable book, I thought. It is tighter than the Commonwealth Duology, with many fewer wasted words and much tauter storylines. The Commonwealth Duology was sloppy in its writing, relying on pell-mell forward momentum and words splattered across the page to carry on, but "The Dreaming Void" maintains a steady energy and smooth momentum throughout. I can recommend it as an enjoyable read and a good time!

After reading The Night's Dawn Trilogy and The Commonwealth Saga I can say that I am a diehard fan of Peter Hamilton. Pandora's Star is still one of my all time favorite science fiction books. So I started reading some of Hamilton's in between, stand alone books. What I found in Fallen Dragon and Misspent Youth really left me doubting myself cause they left a lot to want for. With trepidation at the prospect of reading another book by Hamilton that let me down I picked up The Dreaming Void. I was not disappointed.

Perhaps Hamilton does best when he can spread his wings, when he can let the story develop over thousands of pages and multiple books as opposed to the single volume stand alones. As is I really got in to The Dreaming Void. Right from the beginning you know that Hamilton is going to bring adventure and many ideas to the table to make the read both believable and fun. The story has many paths. One of the main ones is with Aaron, a secret agent to some group or other, and Corrie-Lyn, a cast out priestess of The Living Dream. Their quest, along with virtually everyone else, is to find Inigo, the Dreamer. There are governments and factions within each government vying to be the first to find Inigo and, perhaps just as importantly, the second Dreamer. This leads to a romp around the galaxy, hopping from star to star and planet to planet, truly in space opera style.

What makes this different is that every other chapter is following Inigo's dreams of the inside of the Void. These chapters are mostly fantasy style chapters so they have a completely different feeling than the high technology feel of every other chapter. You follow Edeard in a world where "magic", or the closest thing to it, is commonplace. Although these chapters aren't near as fascinating as the Commonwealth chapters, they ultimately change the pace and allow for a bit of day dreaming of the power that some could wield with their minds. Additionally, another aspect different from most Hamilton books, is that there seem to be quite a bit more alien races, a lot more so than the couple we saw in The Commonwealth Saga, which was a welcome surprise.

All in all I couldn't wait to continue reading Void and was sad to see it finish. That being said I immediately ordered The Temporal Void and can't wait to jump in to that. Although not as good as his two other series The Void Trilogy is shaping up to be another favorite of mine and one that look forward to reading. A definite recommend.

4.5 stars.

This book is the first volume in Peter Hamilton's Void trilogy, continued by The Temporal Void, and The Evolutionary Void. Be warned, however, that these three novels are more like the volumes of one single work. The Dreaming Void has no ending to speak of. It finishes in mid action, or at least on a cliff-hanger, so that if you begin this, you are committing to the 2,000+ pages of the trilogy.

That said, the pace is quite fast and the reading far from dense, so that this goes by quickly. The Dreaming Void has a large cast of characters, letting the reader switch from one side of the action to another. And it sets alongside two main plots: one taking place in an advanced technological future located in the thirty-sixth century, and the other in the atemporal void, on a pseudo-medieval fantasy world. What I like about the void series, though, is that it offers a positive vision of the future. In a sense, it is a return to the heroic era of science fiction, and it stands far from the gloomy dystopias that have become fashionable today. Humans live very long, for centuries and even millennia. Their biological functions are enhanced. They interface, mostly in a civilised manner, with equally advanced aliens. They eventually download into a virtual life. And though they have mastered space travel, they remain centred on Earth, which has survived. One character is even based in London. So Hamilton's portrait of the future is rich and imaginative, yet still beset by the conflicts, political, religious, and psychological, to drive a thick and lively plot. Though the second instalment in the series flags a little, the Void trilogy is well worth reading.

If you are expecting an amazing sci-fi story like Judas Unchained or pandora's Star, as I was, you'll be disappointed. Dreaming Void was horribly hard to get through. I kept putting it down. I put it down for so long at times, and cared so little, that I tried restarting it twice, and finally finished it.

While Dreaming Void has some of the characters from these other books, they are shallow, two dimensional and go no where. Well, actually, many of them run around all over the known and unknown universe, but to no real avail. One of the evil characters from the previous books had returned, and maybe I'm supposed to be worried, but since I have no feelings to any of the characters, I find I don't care.

There is some interesting parts, some political intrigue and manuvering of factions, that I found so facinating in the StarFlyer books, but they are few and far between in Dreaming Void. Even the technology, something that amazed me in the StarFlyer books, was not emphasized. A new type of existance, one personality shared across multiple bodies, that isn't really explored.

Hundreds of pages are taken up with a storyline set on a world somewhere where techology doesn't work and the people have developed psychic abilities, such as telekinesis they call their "third hand". There are bad guys, and a good guy who stands up to them, strange cities made for apparently long gone non-humans, and animals engineered sort of by these psychic people. If I had known that the majority of this series was going to be about psychic people, and poorly developed, boring people at that, I wouldn't have bothered.

THE DREAMING VOID is the first book in a trilogy, followed by THE TEMPORAL VOID, and THE EVOLUTIONARY VOID.

The core of our galaxy, called the Void, is an object of worship for religious followers of the Living Dream. Despite the Void's supposedly impenetrable wall, Living Dream fanatics are going to make a pilgrimage there. The trouble is that in ancient times, when an alien race trespassed into the Void, the core expanded, destroying star systems and multitudes of living beings. Some contemporaries say the expansion took place so long ago that it is basically just a myth and is not likely to recur. The pilgrims should be allowed to exercise their religious freedom. Other contemporaries form an armada to destroy the pilgrimage.

THE DREAMING VOID has many far-out futuristic, speculative, science fictional elements, and most people would not hesitate to categorize it as science fiction. But above all, it is a paragon of space opera. Unlike Star Wars, however, THE DREAMING VOID is a sophisticated piece of adult literature. Not just because the few sex scenes are unabashedly descriptive, and not just because the action sequences are more aptly termed HYPER-action, which some of you would want to censor from children. But it is also sophisticated because you are going to need some reading muscle to make this an easy read.

Multiple characters, multiple factions, and multiple storylines make for challenging complications of plot. The narration is standard and proceeds forward smoothly, but the diction includes some fancy scientific, or quasi-scientific terms. I even ran into a couple of architectural terms that motivated me to check my dictionary. Finally, you will encounter a good amount of descriptive detail. Some readers say that detail adds to the effect of immersion. Some readers say that a novel should avoid detail and should include only the rudiments necessary to progress the story. For all readers, detail slows the pace.

THE DREAMING VOID certainly has more than just a rudimentary amount of detail. But I say just keep your nose glued to the page. Forge ahead through those long paragraphs of description, and you will be rewarded by a kind of state-of-the-art writing that makes fiction worth reading.

I promise.

Peter F. Hamilton fans won't be disappointed with this, a return to the universe of Misspent Youth and the Commonwealth Saga approximately 1,200 years after the events of the latter. Hamilton's usual themes and motifs are here: fantasy combined with science fiction (here a world in the ravening Void at the heart of the galaxy, a world where psychic powers are quite common and technology rather limited); a keen visual sense exhibited in his combat action scenes and descriptions of architecture and clothing; outre sex (here an important character coupling with a man who shares one mind across several bodies); worldbuilding that combines economics, politics, law, technology, and geography to make credible several settings; godlike technology, and a plot with elements of espionage and police thrillers.

What is that plot? Well, I'm going to be lazy and leave it up to other reviewers to give you the broad outlines and dramatis personae. I will say that, at its core, the novel is about a very human tendency - even though many characters strive for a post-human, post-physical existence: the fear and belief that other humans just shouldn't be allowed to make their own lifestyle choices. Several characters take the justifiable position that sometimes those choice are threatening to outside parties. Here the argument is how much humans should modify their minds and bodies or even abandon them altogether, if man is to bootstrap himself into a Rapture or if it will be an alien god.

If the Commonwealth books were sort of a science fictional belle époque complete with anarchist and trains, this series is very much concerned with some of the issues of the Singularity, the looming debates of our world.

Are the Commonwealth Saga books a prerequisite for this new series? They are not strictly necessary. (It's been long enough since I've read them that I forgot a lot of details about the many characters who show up in both series and plot details. But then I frequently feel like I need a reader's guide and concordance even when I'm in the middle of a Hamilton series.) However, certain characters are going to have a lot more resonance if you know their background.

As usual, Hamilton's prose pulled me through a thick book quickly. The only part I didn't care for initially was the magical world in the Void. However, after the initial set up there, those dream interludes became much more interesting though they still were sometimes annoying breaks in the action of the central plot.

Peter Hamilton is very good at space opera. If you like exotic and almost plausible-sounding technology on a grand scale with political and military machinations to match, he's the writer for you. Exotic matter, singularities, hyperspace, quantum-entanglement-based telepathy, cloning, artificial intelligence, memory-wiped secret agents, genetic engineering, beautiful hermaphrodite "angel" sex-agents, neuromuscular enhancements and body sculpting - they're all there, along with plenty of non-hominid inscrutable aliens (including the eight-legged cross between a fanged water buffalo and a squid who was once a human-emotions junky married to a human porn star and is now a starship captain - read the Commonwealth books, it actually makes sense), a man with 30+ bodies (one-man orgies, anyone? - Hamilton doesn't ignore the obligatory bodice-ripping) and a 1400-year old part-Asian obsessive-compulsive detective.

The story in this trilogy is interesting, and it moves at hyper-speed compared to some of Hamilton's other books. I found it a fun read. But it has so many characters and intertwined story-lines that it can be difficult to follow. As good as he is, Hamilton is no Tolstoy and I'm not willing to cut him as much slack in that regard as I cut Leo Nikolayevich; I don't always like bringing my "serious reading" concentration to my light reading. Hamilton obviously doesn't think of himself as an author of "light reading," so perhaps the failure is mine for assuming that space opera should be something I can read while I'm also watching really crummy BCS bowl games. Hamilton also assumes that his readers have the attention span to wait a few-hundred pages for him to explain things he throws out without explanation because his characters would know them without exposition.

The gore is a bit too detailed for my taste, even if the scenes of mayhem are kept to a moderate number, and I'm not sure it's mitigated by the casual assumption that the victims can be "re-lifed" without memories of their ghastly demises. Even characters who are supposed to be sympathetic often think nothing of slicing, dicing and incinerating opponents and removing the tops of crania and crushing fingers and pulverizing innocent passers-by when it's expedient. The casualness of the violence is almost pornographic. "Gosh, we know our leader was a psychopathic killer who really knew how to drag out a death, but she helped us understand it's okay to be strong. She was evil, but we hope you're okay with that. Now do you think we'll be able to try out any of our neat implanted weapons on lots of bad guys when we help you on your righteous mission? Huh? Pleease?!" Blood-lust is cute: "We will destroy you. Squirrel!"

The sex scenes aren't long or frequent by the standards of the genre, and I'm not a prude, but the sexual sensibilities in this book seem both adolescent and absurdly casual. In a universe where even old people have young and beautiful hard bodies, one expects some sweaty fun in bed, but you'd think that hundred-year-old 20-somethings would have learned that sex has more emotional content than a game of mahjong. It's not the sex I find disturbing in this novel, but rather the complete lack of post-coital impact of the sex beyond, "gee, who'd have thought a menage a dix would be so exhausting." "I was sad to find out my multi-bodied boyfriend was having sex with another woman while he was having sex with me, but I guess all his bodies have needs, I can only handle six at a time, and that other tramp only managed four. I guess he really is a keeper." And when characters just think about sex, it's along the lines of, "gee, if I'd known she was going to die I'd have had sex with her," or, "son, if you're going to have sex with the 15-year-old novice-priestess, remember that she's officially a virgin, so keep it safe."

In spite of the negatives, I look forward to reading the next book in the trilogy. Ordinarily I'd save it for my next vacation, but along with gee-whiz technology and multiple story-lines, Hamilton likes cliff-hangers, and if I wait too long I'll forget some of the first novel and have to review, so I'll try to squeeze it in to a couple of weekends this month. I give this one a solid-with-reservations vote of approval.

The Commonwealth Universe, a place where humanity has prospered, evolved and expanded throughout the galaxy. As the Commonwealth has grown, colony ships have set out to found new human worlds far from the current occupied space, and the galaxy has been circumnavigated. Many new alien species have been encountered and the Void, an artificial universe at the centre of the galaxy protected by a deadly event horizon, has been discovered.

This is the setting for Peter F Hamilton's eagerly awaited new novel, The Dreaming Void, which is the first in the Void Trilogy. After the events in the Commonwealth Saga, where humanity were fighting for existence against the invading Prime aliens while trying to uncover mutiny from within from the deadly Starflyer alien, the human race has prospered and is now one of the most technologically advanced species in the galaxy.

A human has now started to dream of the existence within the Void and the paradise within. He shares these dreams in the Gaiafield for all to experience them. The Living Dream movement is born and its followers grow in number until it becomes the majority party in the planets parliament. When Inigo, the first dreamer, disappears from public life, the movement carries on much the way it has in the past, although many start growing restless and impatient for the pilgrimage to begin. However, a new chief cleric, Ethan, is elected and answers the hopes of millions by announcing the construction of starships to pilgrimage into the Void.

The Dreaming Void follows two main story plots - the implications following the announcement of the pilgrimage and the dreams experienced by Inigo that focus on Edeard, a youth living within the Void.

Peter once again delivers a hugely enjoyable story with plenty of action, adventure and surprises. Setting the story in the 36th century with the technology available gives such a large canvas to work on and he uses it to his advantage on so many different levels. The characters that we meet are alive on the pages, although some are more developed than others, especially when new characters are introduced late on in the story. This by no means detracts from the story, but as the first part of a trilogy it is to be expected that the growth of some characters will really take hold in the next instalment, if not the third.

Edeard is by far the most developed character, and with almost half the book telling his story it is to be expected. From meeting him as a young teenager in the Eggshaper's Guild through to his time as a junior constable in Makkathran, Edeard grows in many ways and Peter shows just how accomplished he is at creating believable, in depth characters. The same could be said for Aaron, although by having a character with no memory it is easy enough to mould our own view of him, whether that is right or wrong, we will surely find out before the end of the trilogy.

Peter's six month planning really does show this time around and the story and universe feels much tighter because of it. With clear ideas how he wants to take the story forward, he manages to drag you into his imagination and take you on a ride you won't forget. There are plenty of hints hidden within the pages and many will be guessing at various aspects of the story until the next instalment.

As the first part of the trilogy, this book does everything it needs to do - the characters are introduced and the stage set for the next part. With a cliff-hanger at the end of the book, many will be counting those months until the release of The Temporal Void, but the revelation that comes to light will encourage others to re-read it.

What may surprise some is the page count. Although many would be expecting a huge brick sized door-stopper, this is a much tighter book and more enjoyable because of it. Many people feel Judas Unchained (949 HB pages) was overlong, but this is a fine return to form and just what was needed. A fine example of space opera with all the right ingredients - a typical PFH novel.

The Void Trilogy, of which The Dreaming Void is the first book, is a same-universe continuation of the Commonwealth Saga, of which Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained were part of. The Commonwealth Saga was a massive effort in science fiction as it encompassed a well-thought out universe where humans are expanding their territory, where these humans eventually meet other such civilizations, where human understanding of the universe is expanding faster then they realize and where technology is as progressive as the exodus from earth. I was floored by all these different levels imbedded in these two Hamilton's novels that I was understatedly eager to delve into the Void Trilogy.

Sadly, much of what made the Commonwealth Saga so endearing (Ozzie and Nigel, mainly) is absent from this book. Ozzie has `departed the Commonwealth for the Spike to build a galactic dream' and Nigel has long since `departed on a colony-founding flight outside the Commonwealth.' Their presence is still felt in the technologies they have gifted to the Commonwealth, in the lexicon used by its citizens (inferring tongue-in-cheek that Ozzie as god), and everyone's suspicions on just what the hell is Nigel. The alien species Raiel make a come back but their importance to the Starflyer story isn't clear (if you remember at the end of Judas Unchained, the Barsoomians took an unusual special interest in the Raiel). The Silfen and theMotile aliens don't make appearance.

Hamilton makes up for the sad loss by producing a fairly decent (maybe 3-star effort) in the post-Starflyer universe story and an excellent Void story (definitely 5-star here). The balance between the two is fairly equal: high-tech space faring humans vs. bucolic humanity with supernatural powers). These said supernatural powers suggest a fantasy based story but Hamilton has avoiding the nasty (IMO) tagline simply by being widely known as a hard science fiction author. I wasn't disappointed by the simple observation that I actually LIKED the non-SF story more than the SF-based one.

The Commonwealth story progresses diabolically; human fractions reveal their agenda, individuals show their loyalty and the aliens stand resolute. The flipside of that is the Void story where the protagonist, Edeard, seemingly evolves or rather fine tunes his natural gift. The grain of this contrast is finely sculpted, making for an excellent read as the chapters are placed back-to-back. Conspiracies arise in the mind reader as to just HOW these two stories can be linked beyond by the interpretive Dreamer and Second Dreamer. This mystery won't be revealed in this book... which is why it's a trilogy.

I salivate waiting for opening of the second book in the Trilogy.

There are few authors who can manage a Space Opera as Peter F. Hamilton can. The breadth, depth, and realness of the worlds, nay, universes he creates is astounding. You never quite know what is going to happen and its a thrilling ride the whole way. In order to enjoy this trilogy it really does help if you've read Judas Unchained and Pandora's Star since this trilogy does reference those previous works quite a bit and reuses characters established in those works.

As for the Dreaming Void, it is a good book that lays a great foundation of an epic trilogy. Action, writing, plot, and characterization are all superb. I think what makes his book/trilogy good is that every character good or bad has depth and real motivations beyond cookie cutter archetypes. This enables him to weave complex plots that are fun to experience as you and the characters progress through the story.

I wish I could have rated this 4.5 stars but the store doesn't do the half star rating so I rated it 5 stars.

Peter Hamilton is one of those authors whose new books I always look forward to as he is always extremely inventive in his world building and plots.

By the standards of most SF, this would be brilliant. By his standards, it is adequate. The world is interesting, but not quite as novel as his Confederation Space series or the indeed its predecessor, the trains-based Commonwealth. I guess the problem is that 3500 AD is somewhat difficult to describe both in terms that we can relate to and in terms that evoke wonder. In this case, I related to it more than I wondered at it. Some descriptions seem eerily similar to Pandora's Star/Judas, like that of a heavily armed cyborg intruder raiding a temple. And... recycling main characters from the Pandora/Judas storyline is a bit of a letdown.

The setting for the low-tech world-in-Void was actually the more inventive and engaging of the storylines, to me (many disagree).

Once again, we get multiple threads unfolding at the same time. But it is more difficult to stay interested, because there is no overriding menace/change happening at this point in the plot. Indeed it is hard to understand exactly why everyone cares so much about the Void. And, once again, Mr. Hamilton drags out his somewhat-besides-the-point sex scenes.

But the main problem is how slowly everything unfolds. Sure, it is interesting, but taking up 700 pages to basically set the foundation for books 2 and 3? Keeping in mind that Mr. Hamilton occasionally shows weakness in concluding his stories (ex: The Naked God), we are looking at a 2000 page run with an uncertain payoff.

My advice if you are not feeling completely compelled to start on this series: wait till the conclusion of the trilogy, or at least the second book, and check what readers think of it.

update April 2012 - started reading book 2 and felt totally underwhelmed. There is not the slightest bit of re-explanation on who's who, which is not so great given the big cast of characters. And, since we are supposed to get right back into the book, character development, or just plain description, is totally left out, with the exception of Araminta and Edeard. I might have waited too long to get back into it, but the books still had a year gap at the first time of publishing - cut busy readers some slack and at least make an attempt at providing some plot reminders.

I'll repeat myself: re-cycling characters from the Pandora series is just plain old lazy. Paula Myo was cool, 3 books ago.

More than that, the modern part of the book has caught a bad case of Star Trekkish gobbledygook techspeak, with all sorts of made up words and weird sentences replacing more believable world building. Hamilton usually does much better than this. For me, and I know I seem to be a minority here, there is much more heart in the Waterwalker's world.

So after about 150+ pages of not enjoying book 2 I quit. YMMV.

I loved Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained and since this took place in the same universe I had to read it. It's divided into two alternating sections, the bigger of the two takes place in the Commonwealth universe and isn't too bad although no where near as exciting as the previous two books. The other part takes place in dreams and is very, very dull but the people who dream this part long to go to "the Void" to be in the land that is dreamed of. Why is never explained. The whole dream seems pretty miserable and no one is really happy there. Why this is considered somewhere people want to be is not explained. I hated it every time I came to a chapter that began in the Dreaming Void. I do not care to read the sequels.

William Shatner better demand royalties from Peter F. Hamilton, for stealing the plot from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Hamilton gives the reader two stories here, about a far future civilization that is menaced by dreams being sent from the center of the galaxy. At the same time, the reader is regaled with a 'dream' of a primitive civilization living a cruder form of existence. A faction of human religious fanatics (won't they ever go out of style?) want to fly into the galactic center to join the dream. And a coalition of alien races and human artificial intelligences want to stop them, for fear of what the 'God' in the center of the galaxy will do as punishment to the surrounding star systems. Sound familiar? All that's missing is Sybok, and a trip to El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

I truly wanted to believe in Hamilton's latest fantasy offering. After all, I re-read his entire Night's Dawn Trilogy, and that's something I've never done for any other science fiction author. In that series, he had 21st-century characters and more primitive types attempting to react to the modern galactic federation they found themselves in. It was a way to draw the reader into an unfamiliar setting. No such primitive analogue exists for readers of this trilogy. All the characters in the future are inaccessible, remote, and beyond anything we can conceive. And yet, people are still murderously amoral, just for more lofty reasons. Whatever. I found myself bored with the characters we were supposed to identify with and follow, and flipping past the 'dream' chapters whenever they came up. This distant future of humanity is all fantasy and no science fiction. He might as well have saved himself the trouble and made this a sorcery fantasy with the characters seeking a mysterious lair in a remote mountain. If you're looking for more of Hamilton's gorgeously realized hard scifi, steer clear of all three books. (I pre-ordered all three, and now regret it after the first volume).

If you like Peter Hamilton, you will like The Dreaming Void. However, if you haven't read the two earlier books in the same universe, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, I recommend that you read those first. Those books are as good as The Dreaming Void, cheaper, and will be a good foundation for any reader tackling this latest book.

Hamilton's biggest gift is SF universe building. He takes nanotech, bioengineering, space flight, and any number of other features and develops future societies that are fascinating and wonderful. His challenge is how to leverage this talent into actual books. After a series of action mysteries, Hamilton hit on what seems to be his best form - civilization-wide disaster epics, where dozens of interlocking characters are affected by or respond to some disaster, allowing Hamilton to reveal his universes through their eyes.

In the two earlier Commonwealth books, two dozen or so characters responded to a threat to human society brought about by hostile aliens. Now, twelve hundred years later, human society has evolved into different strains. At the periphery of the human worlds are slightly engineered, but still recognizable humans. The central worlds are home to the "highers", highly engineered post-humans who have evolved beyond market economics, modern government, etc. At the very core is the ANA, a quantum computer where highers tired of physical life upload their memories and personality.

This time around, humanity is threatened by the Void, a gigantic black-hole-like object at the center of the galaxy that periodically expands, consuming entire star systems. Some characters are seduced by a series of dreams that indicate that human life can survive and thrive within the Void, while others seek to prevent a pilgramage to the Void, fearful that a mass migration will trigger a final expansion and destroy the galaxy. Several characters from the original series reappear, or affect events from offstage.

All in all, it's typical Hamilton - good, intruiging, and a little scattered. If you liked Pandora's Star and the Judas Contract, you will like this one.

The one new idea is Hamilton's narration of the dreams, which is a nice effect. From time to time, Hamilton describes the dreams to us, which are a fantasy story about Edeard, a psychic living in the medieval world within the Void. In doing so, Hamilton draws the primary characters themselves into one of the most common fantasies of fantasy and sf readers -- the desire to join the characters in the fiction they themselves are experiencing. It's a nice effect and a good idea.

The Commonwealth series and the Void Trilogy are such a treat! The very best in space opera that I have read in a long time. The multi-verse that Peter Hamilton has created is vast, complex and always interesting. The science is futuristic and believable. The characters are many and varied and complicated and intertwined like a tapestry. The story line is full of intrigue and surprises and twists & turns. All I can say is WOW and Frank Herbert is smiling down from heaven at this one!

In the circles in which I read, making disparaging remarks about Peter F. Hamilton's big fat space operas is nearly as accepted as making fun of Twilight. And I have to admit, I kind of get the criticism. Big, politically dubious, overblown, overly complicated. True, true(ish), true, true. Probably all true.

But still, I really like his books, and read them with great pleasure. The Dreaming Void (Void trilogy book 1) is no exception. Set in the world of the Commonwealth, but 1000 years in the future, it dislocates the reader in time even as it provides a semi-familiar setting. I suppose that the only thing that I really tripped over in this book is how many of the familiar figures we see back from the other Commonwealth novels.

Good fun, if you like this sort of thing. If you don't, you'll probably not find this an exceptional outing for Hamilton. Myself, I've already bought The Temporal Void and am looking forward to reading it. By the way, even though this trilogy is supposed to be able to stand on its own, I would still read the earlier books set in the Commonwealth first. Some back knowledge of characters adds quite a bit of depth.

[Edit]: For some reason when I wrote the review, I thought the Commonwealth Saga was a trilogy. So when I refer to the previous trilogy below, I'm referring to "Pandora's Star" and "Judas Unchained". Sorry!

I didn't buy the book here. I bought it in a B&M store, and have been reading it in-between textbooks as a nice break.

I hadn't read Hamilton previous to the Starflyer series, and my criticisms about that still remain largely the same fro the Dreaming Void.

While I applaud Hamilton's imagination when it comes to technological verisimilitude and odd environments, I still feel that he trawls on far too long with the latter. In Judas Unchained he went on for pages and pages about mountain ranges and lakes with paved roads, to the point that I was skipping entire paragraphs to get to the story again. The Dreaming Void doesn't have quite the extensive detail of the previous trilogy set in the same universe, but it does have plenty of lengthy departures. Entire cities are worded in extreme detail - leaving little for my imagination to conjure up.

Again, like the previous books in the universe, sex is something that seems completely forced in. While sex is more essential in the Dreaming Void for plot reasons, I never thought it flowed smoothly with the story. Only once or twice were the sentences describing the act intimate or sensual. They always read like a bit of fanficition that happened to find its way into the real novel.

In true Hamilton fashion characters are still introduced 3/4ths the way through the novel. Luckily, thus far, the sheer number of people to keep track of isn't as insane as it was in the previous trilogy. Thumbs up there, since by the end of Judas Unchained it was getting difficult to tell what was going on without a crib sheet.

Also in true Hamilton fashion, the characters are adequately developed. There's enough time with each one to make their movements seem believable and their actions fairly predictable. Only a handful fall into caricatures of characters instead of actual characters, most noticeably during Inigo's Dreams.

Speaking of the dreams, I found the interludes to be - overall - refreshing and frustrating at the same time. I found them refreshing because the story goes from Sci-Fi to Fantasy in feel and writing at a good pace. The dreams aren't introduced too close together or too far apart. I found the dreams frustrating because the dreams are supposed to have been the inspirational pieces for moving entire swathes of humanity to action, and frankly - I never found them compelling.

Yes, it'd be very neat to have a "third hand" to telekinetically move things about and the ability to telepathically talk with friends. However the society is stuck in the Middle Ages. That may be enticing for a while, but with a society that lives for hundreds or thousands of years - a society that has been built up to be selfish and quickly moving on from one rush of excitement to the next - I couldn't see why billions wanted to travel to the Void. Perhaps more surprisingly, the followers of the "Living Dream" were portrayed as bordering on fanatic. After thousands of years and millions of worlds, and religion never making a dent in the previous books, the about turn for human society is interesting - almost a repentance performed by countless millions.

Personally, I found the gaiafield to be a much more compelling reason for the religious actions of the Living Dream. The ability to share emotions and dreams with those around you seems like an incredibly compelling piece of technology - one that I could easily see leading to religious action, unlike a handful of dreams involving telepaths.

Also, before coming to a conclusion, Hamilton has developed a writing tick that makes me cringe every time I read it. "He liked really the way..." and "The sled edged gently..." are two examples that I recall. The adverb coming after the verb really got on my nerves. It's obviously purposeful, as it occurs again and again. However, luckily, if you have the same internal monologue hiccup whenever you've read a sentence like the examples, they're sparse. Maybe a dozen throughout the book.

Is it the greatest thing I ever read? No. Whereas authors like Herbert and Reynolds have a way of infusing some greater purpose into their writing, Hamilton describes the future as if it were the present. His style wouldn't change if he decided to write a fictional piece about a plot to blow up New Zealand in 2011 or a family struggling to survive in the year 7738. I can't say whether it's a good or bad thing, because it's both. The writing style provides instant familiarity and connection - neither the plot or the characters are alien, nor are the settings. If an alien environment is introduced, Hamilton's descriptions are almost an analogue for what it should be - a version close to what he sees in his head, but easily interpreted by the reader. It means you can read the books without going too deep - just keep going and let the many intertwining plots unfold the entertaining story.

Concertedly, if you try to go too far beneath the surface you will be disappointed. The social commentary is cynical and the same as his previous works. Themes are superficial, if they exist at all, and I always got the sense (as you can tell from my last paragraph) that the novels are a way to express his imagination via the new technology presented in them rather than any plot-related innovations. Hamilton just never pushes it further than that. ANA is a prime example - an entire quantum network housing countless billions of people all melded together - and when you meet ANA:Governance for the first time, instead of a calculating, monolithic achievement created by an absolute genius with the ability to catapult humans into their post-physical form, it has as much presence as a normal person. It is almost mundane.

Ultimately, it is an entertaining book. For the start of a trilogy, many things can be forgiven. Also, knowing Hamilton, many of my criticisms and praises are a given. What will I say to my friends, though? "If you want to see some imaginative technology, read Hamilton." So, that's what I'll write here.

If you want to see an incredibly imaginative mind exert itself on version of modern-day society on steroids with a plot that will be tied together in later novels, pick it up and spend a few days to a few weeks entertained. If you're looking for copious depth or unique mental calisthenics, try Alistair Reynolds, the ever-classic Herbert, or others.

Peter Hamilton is nothing if not extremely creative. Some of his previous work, including the Night's Dawn trilogy, was astonishing in its portrayal of aliens, living spacecraft, genetic engineering, space habitats and the evolution of the human species.

Hamilton's exhalted reputation for creativity is preserved in The Dreaming Void, though the book also contains examples of Hamilton's other renowned habit which is including a level of story detail where the reader's pace is periodically slowed. The detail often feels tangential while you experience it, but you finish the book with the feeling that you know the characters very well. Overall, Hamilton pulls it off in a reasonably successful way. Hamilton fans will know the experience well and his work tends to strike the right balance.

The story arc is understandable, but falls short of giving readers an emotional connection with the forces that are driving the characters, especially the Knights and to some degree the Living Dream movement. For me, one of the most compelling concepts was that of ANA - the amalgamation of personalities and memories into which humans uploaded themselves when they became bored of their extremely long physical lives. In particular, that this collective sought post-physical, god-like existence is fascinating and definitely forms a compelling justification for their seeking contact with the Void. The fact that ANA is composed of ideologically compartmentalized factions that are constantly engaged in shifting alliances and conflicts is reminiscent of the gods on Olympus, though their motivations are a little flat and could use some of Hamilton's attention to detail. Hamilton's description of space battles and combat between the augmented humans is unparalleled in the SF genre.

Hamilton does a good job of engaging the reader without knowledge of the Commonwealth series of books, but the background is very useful in proving richer context for The Dreaming Void and is a very exciting read itself. In total, I would rate "The Dreaming Void" almost on par with those thrilling books and well short of the first book of the Night's Dawn trilogy.

Enjoyable set of books with old favorite characters and themes from the previous series. This is book 1 of 3. By the last page of the last book all important loose ends tied up, and connected if not fully explained. Justice served for almost everyone, bad guys getting what they deserve (except one who seems to get off a little light) and good guys getting positive justice also, indeed more justice for them than you might be expecting. Long books with great characters, science, fantasy, magic-realism and fiction. I would recommend the two books that precede this story and introduce the main characters. Not essential, but those books are also excellent, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. I'd call this enjoyable science fiction, rather than depressing, or hard, or fantasy. An interesting and exciting story set in the far far future.

Peter Hamilton is one of the most ambitious and engaging writers in contemporary science fiction, and The Dreaming Void, the first novel of a trilogy, will please many of his old and new readers.

Told as a dual narrative, The Dreaming Void takes its title from the Void, an inaccessible "microuniverse" that most of the galaxy's races see as a threat to their existence. One strand of the narrative centers upon astrophysicist Inigo's dreams of the humans living within the Void. Since Inigo was serving as an observer, these dreams were broadcasted by the "gaiafield" (a kind of VR Internet) to humanity, and their appealing vision of paradise spawns The Living Dream movement--a new religion whose goal of "living the dream" soon changes to the goal of a Pilgrimage into the Void.

The second strand of the narrative details the galaxy-wide power struggle that unfolds as Ethan, the newly appointed leader of Living Dream, secretly plans to launch a fleet of ships into the Void. Like all of Hamilton's stories, The Dreaming Void features a massive cast of characters: scientists, political leaders, agents of various factions, fathers and daughters, lovers, aliens, and believers. Some, like Aaron, an agent of the faction, do not know whom they are working for; others, like Troblum or Corrie-Lyn, do not know whom they can trust. And then a Second Dreamer surfaces.

Kirkus Reviews describes the book as "a far leaner and more purposeful product: a real spellbinder from a master storyteller," while The Times (London) says, "compulsively readable and abundantly full of ideas." I agree with most of that praise. What distinguishes Hamilton's books is the exploration of how technological progress changes the experience of living. In The Dreaming Void, one example is the "near-postphysical" existence of the people who have uploaded themselves into the Advanced Neural Activity (ANA) system. Yet the balance between exposition/ideas and character development seems slightly less effective than it was in Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy.

That is a small quibble, though. Overall, Hamilton has successfully launched another theologically thought-provoking trilogy and a rich vision of one possible future for humanity.

Armchair Interviews says: Super addition to the bookshelves of fans of sci-fi.

I just finished this last night, and I enjoyed it a lot. If you like Peter Hamilton's other works, you'll like this. If you've not read Hamilton before, start with the Night's Dawn books. Also, make sure you read Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained before you read this book, as this book follows those with some of the same characters. Also be aware that there are 2 more books in the series, and the third one is not out yet (as of Feb 2010), so if you like to read a trilogy straight through, you'll have to wait a bit longer.

If you're cool with all that, you'll love this book. :)

The Void trilogy, along with Pandora's star and Judas unchained, which should be read first, this is space opera at its best. Except ... the author has a penchant for happily everaftering. I found the last part of The Dreaming Void to be a major letdown. He did the same sort of thing in the Pandora stories.

In spite of that, I would definitely go for it. I give the first two in this series 5 stars.

The Dreaming Void (2007) is the first SF novel in the Void trilogy. It is set about 1500 years after the Commonwealth duology in a galaxy filled with many sapient species. At least one alien species -- the Raiel -- has been active in galactic affairs for more than a million years and others preceded them.

Humanity has separated into three different cultures: Higher, Advancer and Original. They have developed genetic and implanted technologies that allow them to emulate psionic talents. And the ANA -- Advanced Neural Activity -- facility provides a perceptual reality environment for those who wish to become postphysical.

The center of the galaxy is occupied by the Void. What was thought to be a black hole in the twentieth century is actually a giant artifact with an event horizon. Humanity has joined a Void study effort at the invitation of the Raiel.

Inigo came to Centurion Station to study the Void. He attended the handover party to celebrate the departure of one set of researchers and the arrival of their replacements. After the party, he had the first dream of the Void. It wasn't his. Afterward, Inigo instituted the Living Dream organization that has grown into a political power within the Greater Commonwealth.

In this novel, the Cleric Council of the Living Dream has not been very innovative under the past few Cleric Conservators. Then Ethan is selected by the Conclave as the next Conservator. He immediately declares that Living Dream will take the Pilgrimage into the Void as soon as possible.

Aaron is in Golden Park when Ethan announces the Pilgrimage. He is on Ellezelin to find Inigo. He does not remember why he has to perform this mission -- if fact, he doesn't remember much of anything -- but every now and then he suddenly remembers just what he needs to know. Aaron has been equipped with some heavy duty biononic weapons to facilitate the task.

Corrie-Lyn had been very close to Inigo. He had appointed her to the Cleric Council, but Ethan bumped her from that position shortly after being selected as Conservator. Aaron locates Corrie-Lyn in a bar and walks out with her when she leaves. Then he defends her against a Living Dream assassination team.

Marius is an agent of the Accelerator faction of ANA. He offers to provide ultradrive engines for the Pilgrimage ships. Ethan agrees, but still orders the design crew to furnish standard hyperdrive engines for the ships just in case.

The Delivery Man is an agent of the Conservative faction of ANA. He delivers an ultradrive to Ellezelin shortly after Marius confers with Ethan. The Delivery Man carefully avoids Marius at the spaceport and soon returns to his family.

Araminta is a divorcee living in Colwyn City on Viotia. She had married Laril despite her families disapproval of the much older man. Since the divorce, she has been working as a waitress at Niks. Then her cousin -- and attorney -- Cressida tells her that Laril has left the planet, leaving her 83,000 pounds as a divorce settlement.

Troblum is a physicist and a Starflyer collector. He works for the Commonwealth Navy as a consultant and has just delivered an evaluation of the Dyson Pair. He also works secretly for the Accelerator faction as a spacedrive designer and has another project related to the Dyson Pair.

In this story, various human elements and alien societies are very opposed to the Pilgrimage. The alien Ocisen Empire threatens to put a stop to the whole idea and sends a fleet toward Ellezelin. Even the Raiel are concerned.

According to the Raiel, they had previously sent a fleet into the Void to reconnoiter in force. None of that fleet had returned, but the Void had generated disruptions and expanded to incorporate more of the galaxy into itself. Many fear that the Pilgrimage will lead to an even greater set of disruptions resulting in the entire galaxy sliding into the Void.

Meanwhile, the Living Dream organization is still monitoring dreams about life within the Void, featuring Edeard and his friends and the Skylords. Lately they have noticed a Second Dreamer stirring up the gaiafield. Living Dream believes that this new Dreamer is located on Viotia.

This tale is an epic science fiction story. The sheer size of the action and cast rivals classical space operas. Yet the approach is hard SF. There are reasonable explanations for the technology, but naturally much of it is very speculative. What else would you expect for such advanced technology?

Longevity is a major element in this story. The natural lifespan is lengthened and several forms of rejuvenation are available. ANA allows minds to continue without their bodies. People can be suspended in stasis, reincarnated from ANA, and even brought back from death itself.

The very nature of the culture changes because of these various methods of life extension. Some social viewpoints become perpetual factors, especially within ANA. Yet some individuals rise above their original mindset and genes through sheer perseverance.

Anyone who has not read the Commonwealth duology probably will be greatly confused by this storyline. Some of the characters and plot elements featured prominently in the previous series. Yet many aspects have arisen over the past fifteen centuries. Since the backstory -- newer advances as well as ancient history -- only appears bit by bit throughout the book, the reader will be inundated with data.

This work is shorter than the volumes in the previous two series, but it is still over 600 pages. Moreover, the stories are interleaved and the Void dreams are presented among the Commonwealth segments. The novel is interesting, but frequent rest breaks may be necessary to digest the contents. Enjoy!

Highly recommended for Hamilton fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of the mid-future, human enhancements, and a large cast.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Let me give you my adivce after finished reading this book:
You can skip all the "Inigo's dreams" chapters and not missing a dime on the story. Those "dream" chapters are just down right boring as hell and honestly, I don't really care what happens there, and they are not even sci-fi at all.

If you skipped all the "dream" chapters, then you left with half of the book which is actually not bad. In fact, the other half is quite good and with a reasonably interesting story line. I have read Hamilton's Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained and it seems like you really have to bare with his boring description thats go on-and-on with mandune stuffs, but if you can tolerate that, then you will see some gems in his works.

Here's the thing about Peter F. Hamilton - take any one aspect of his overall body of work (weighting the Commonwealth Saga ahead of the Night's Dawn stuff because I consider the latter to just be an earlier draft of the former) and there's probably someone in SF who can do it better. Any number of military SF writers do better space battles. Bruce Sterling handles near-singularity hyptertech better. Vernor Vinge's mastery of sheer epic scope is better. And I'm sure there is better porn.

And yet I find Hamilton's stuff incredibly readable. I'm such a sucker for space opera, and tore through The Dreaming Void in about a week. It looks like he's finally doing something other than an alien-invasion story (although there is plenty of time to bring that in) and all the usual tropes are there. The technojargon is a little less impenetrable than normal, which is nice to see (although I have no problems being thrown into the deep end). No honking big space battles, but instead there are a few really nice brawls between hyper-enhanced humans with a delightful amount of collateral damage.

Still, not without downsides. First, he can't seem to kick a few of his old habits, notably a few-too-many callbacks to the Commonwealth Saga (including a cringe-inducing bit of exposition right near the end), and of course, lots of gratuitous sex. Apparently one of the major benchmarks as to how posthuman you are is how often you get laid. And the other demerit is that he's back to writing trilogies, meaning I have to wait at least 2-3 years to see how this all turns out.

I really enjoyed this and am grateful to the author for his dedication. I read it about a month ago and the character of the Water Walker is still fresh in my mind as if I had just finished the novel. Remarkable work, great fight scenes. I have read everything Hamilton has in print and this was a major celebration of fun and proof that the author is still at the height of his powers.

The Dreaming Void is actually 3 books under 1 cover.

Book ONE continues with characters from the previous Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained series which takes place in our future -- which is about 1,000 years in their past.
Book TWO is about the second dreamer who is unnamed but self-evident as a character.
Book THREE is the set of Inigo's dreams.

Read the prequels (Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained) first.
Then read the set of dream sequences as a stand alone. These sequences have a different typeface.
THEN go back and read the rest of the book.

Otherwise, you will be lost temporally, geographically, and character-wise.

Never had to deal with so many seemingly unconnected storylines at once .
Book comes to an end without any conclusions, hopefully that will occur in the second or maybe the third and final book?
Probably best to read the two preceding books 1st . A bit long-winded.

Holding,captivating the audience is truly the key to writing,as much as it is in oratory or the arts.
Peter Hamilton has a clear skill in that field. my only worry is that my life seems to disappear while i await the next novel.
i have read everything Mr Hamilton has written, as it was published , a fair portion of my life slipped past in the meantime, and all i had was the crass likeness of authors like Ian m Banks to read...that or just re read my well thumbed Hamiltons over and over.
i love these books....but i wish the intervening years were fewer. please Peter...write faster

Fifteen hundred years have passed since the Commonwealth conspiracy occurred (see PANDORA'S STAR AND JUDAS UNCHAINED). Mankind ha prospered, but now humanity is divided once again. This time it is over the Void at the core of galaxy. A powerful sect the Living Dream has formed around Inigo the human who insists he dreams of the paradise world inside the Void. The star of his dreams is Edeard who Inigo believes lives inside the Void and is contacting him.

Inigo's followers become the most powerful political and social force in the galaxy. Meanwhile the human clamor to enter the Void frightens the ancient species who somewhat understands and fears the unintentional consequences of entering the Void will trigger the Void's concentric expansion until the galaxy is destroyed. When Inigo vanishes without a trace, Ethan takes over and announces a pilgrimage into the Void.

As expected, Peter Hamilton provides an extremely complex very entertaining futuristic science fiction that in some ways is quite simple as the story line focuses on two prime subplots. First there are Inigo's dreams of Edeard's young life as a teen member of the Eggshaper's Guild to his rookie days as a junior constable in Makkathran; second there is the various reactions across the galaxy when Ethan announces the pilgrimage into the Void. Each holds up quite well as the key players, Edeard and Ethan seem real, which in turn makes the Void feel genuine. This is a great opening of the second act as fans return to the Hamilton galaxy fifteen or so centuries since we left following the events of PANDORA'S STAR AND JUDAS UNCHAINED.

Harriet Klausner

Peter F. Hamilton has the talent, creativity, and vision to take a seat among the greats of science fiction. His previous works, including the Nights Dawn Trilogy, The Commonwealth Saga (Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained), and Fallen Dragon, demonstrate not just his mastery of projecting scientific and technical concepts into the future of Humanity, but his ability to weave a grippingly good story as well. He has everything it takes to assume his rightful place among Wells, Verne, Asimov, Clark, Heinlein, Niven, Pournelle, Harrison, Bova, Herbert, Le Guin, and other icons of the genre. But he just doesn't seem to want to get there.

The Dreaming Void, Hamilton's first offering in a new trilogy, continues his demonstration of vision and imagination. The plot presents a true "Seldon Crisis," as competing factions scattered throughout far-flung Human settlements scattered across our galaxy pursue differing agendas regarding "the void," an impenetrable zone at the galactic core which holds mystery, danger, and promise. Many of the main characters in this work were introduced in The Commonwealth Saga, and the events of those books form an historic backdrop for The Dreaming Void. Although the Dreaming Void is not precisely a sequel to the Commonwealth Saga, the familiarity of the technologies, characters, and events provides a greater context for this work which I found appealing.

What I did not find appealing, however, and the reason I have rated this work as only a "two-star" production, is Hamilton's foray into science fiction porn. It seems that some contemporary writers in this genre just can't resist the temptation to spice up their work with tawdry scenes of lurid sexuality, and much-too-detailed descriptions of coital gymnastics. These excepts generally add absolutely nothing to the plot, do not enhance character development, deepen the theme of the work, or sharpen the moral of the story. Call it the "Pornsmen of Gor" syndrome, if you will.

The particular offender in The Dreaming Void is Araminta, one of the novel's main characters, and Hamilton's narratives of her sexual exploits with "Mr. Bovey," and others. Is Hamilton indulging an inner compulsion toward voyeurism? Is he regaling us with his own juvenile sexual fantasies? Or do his editors demand that he include such passages in order to increase sales? Even if Hamilton somehow believed these portions of the work were somehow important to the "artistic" expression in the book, he could at least have toned them down and presented them in a more tasteful manner.

The impact of Hamilton's side-trip into gutter literature is that I now have a difficult time recommending this book to people. Can I tell my teen-age son that he will love it, in the same manner I could enthusiastically recommend Asmiov's Foundation Trilogy? Can I give a copy to my adolescent daughter for her amazement the same as I can pass a copy of Ringworld to her? Can we recommend it to our friends at church, the same way we could suggest Herbert's Dune? The answer is clearly "no".

The only conclusion I can come to is that Hamilton is struggling with some sort of identity crisis as a writer. He can't quite decide if he wants to write great science fiction, or screen plays for low-grade cable-t.v. skin flicks. I certainly hopes he resolves the issue before he ruins too many more otherwise good books.

(Had it not been for this issue, I would have rated this a five-star offering.)