The Neutronium Alchemist (The Night's Dawn)

This book & series is space opera at its finest. Plenty of action, rich characters & great science - a trifeca! I haven't read the 3rd book in the series yet, but if its anything like the first 2, I don't think I'll be disappointed. a must-read for true sci-fi fans.

I enjoy Hamilton's writing and look forward to reading this book. Subterranean Press typically does a top notch job creating a work of art at a time when publishers are focusing less and less on quality.

Nice work Sub Press!

-Trevor

This was the first space opera book I bought, only then did I realize it was part two of a trilogy. I had to wait to find the remaining books and only got them as a special order from the book shop, the store wasn't as accessible. I could barely dare begin these books as everyone has noticed they weigh a ton. I knew I would find time during the summer, (remember those days when summer was a three month vacation?) Summer came and I started the books it was exhilarating you were stuck from the first chapter. The books would move from abstract to high tech to extreme science fiction then plunge into a pre-tech world then blast out of that world into the metaphysical. It was impossible to put down it was impossible to get bored, but I had to find time to enjoy the summer as well. I planned it out I would read twice a day about 2 hrs each, but never could stick to it I would often find myself reading late through the night. The characters, the characters where incredible the depraved the ambitious and the kind all battle out there wills and the result is captivating. Anyone willing to push through and read this epic because of my review will thank me!

Investing time in Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy is heart-breaking. I finished Book 1 in fifteen days during a long holiday, but I polished off Book 2 during a month of full-time work--all 30 days of it. While reading the 393,000 words of The Neutronium Alchemist, I could have read six shorter (and better) novels in the same amount of time. At the same time, I'm trying to make space on my bookshelves; with these tomes will have been completed, and most likely sold to my favorite second-hand bookstore, they will free up some much needed shelf room... though not enough for the 50 books which are stacked elsewhere. Alas, another book, another review, another slot made available on my to-read shelves.

Talking about numbers here, comparatively, Book 1 (The Reality Dysfunction) has 385,000 words and is 1,094 pages long, which is 46 pages shorter than Book 2. As these books are part of a trilogy, they must be read in order, with a behemoth conclusion in Book 3: The Naked God that tips the scales at 1,332 pages and 469,000 words (!). This is a trilogy with a total of 1,247,000 words--be prepared for the battle: focus, focus, focus and frequently consult the "Cast of Characters" appendix (pages 1139-1144).

Rear cover synopsis:
"The ancient menace has finally escaped from Lalonde, shattering the Confederation's peaceful existence.

On planets and asteroids, individuals battle for survival against the strange and brutal forces unleashed upon the universe. Governments teeter on the brink of anarchy, the Confederation Navy is dangerously overstretched, and a dark messiah prepares to invoke his own version of the Final Night.

In such desperate times, the last thing the galaxy needs is a new and terrifyingly powerful weapon. Yet Dr. Alkad Mzu is determined to retrieve the Alchemist--so she can complete her thirty-year-old vendetta to slay a star. Which means Joshua Calvert must find Dr. Mzu and bring her back before the Alchemist can be reactivated.

But he's not alone in the chase, and there are people on both sides who have their own ideas about how to use the ultimate doomsday device."

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The aftermath of the Lalonde possession is a spreading wave of possession through the Confederation by Quinn's cohorts.

A Saldana planet, Ombey, is invaded by a trio of the walking dead, but the swift action of the police force limits the spread of possession to a single town which becomes overrun with the malicious dead-returned. While many of the returned are unscrupulous heathens and sybarites, a handful of them actually have a kind side and take to caring for children, who are not possessed, and taking them back to civilization away from the growing red cloud which hangs over the village. However they channel their powers, the humans are worried... very worried:

"The energistic power which was the inheritance of every possessed was capable of near-miraculous feats as it bent the fabric of reality to a mind's whim. As well as its destructive potential, items could be made solid at the flicker of a thought. It was also capable of reinforcing a body to resist almost any kind of assault as well as enhancing its physical strength. Wounds could be healed at almost the same rate they were inflicted." (181)

The very progressive, technological center of the Confederation is New California, a planet with strong defenses and a strong security force, both of which fall to the man who is possessed by Al Capone. This criminal mastermind of the early 20th century find that, even though 600 years in the future, the basic elements of running a city still run true for taking over an entire planet. For Al Capone, already corrupt, with power comes lust for more power and there's a galaxy of planets just waiting to be possessed!

But Capone is no dummy criminal. He changes the complete economy of New California, ruthlessly punishes those who stand in his way, and probes deeper into the powers which the possessed have. When the bodiless souls in beyond want to enter a body, Capone converses with the all-seeing souls to gather information about activities from around the Confederation; secrets and plans are revealed to Capone, and an enticing bit of information has come to him: a woman named Dr. Mzu has information about the most destruction weapon ever known to mankind--the Alchemist.

When Dr. Mzu's planet was destroyed by the Omuta's thirty years ago, much of her experience was invested in creating the Alchemist. Aside from Mzu, nobody really knows what it does except that it can destroy a star. In the realm of the dead exists souls from every planet, including Earth and Mzu's home planet; logically, there must exist and assistant of Mzu's, someone who can help build a new Alchemist if the original Alchemist cannot be discovered. This is Capone's chance to own the great weapon known to man when he also knows that Mzu has escaped and is attempted to retrieve her deadly device.

Also chasing the hermetic Mzu is Joshua, kind of as a favor to Ione Saldana and partly because his duty of gallivanting across the galaxy always includes these kinds of things. With his capable crew (and with Ione unknowingly stowed as a mechanical serjent), Joshua tracks down Mzu's movements across space and is followed by Confederation Navy spies who also quest for Mzu's capture and, with it, knowledge of what exactly the Alchemist is capable of.

Not to be forgotten, Dexter Quinn still roams open space with a burning vendetta against Earth. Being his primary target, Quinn shoots for Earth but is quickly deterred by his lack of preparation. Instead, Quinn visits a planet with a long history of strife and war--Nyvan, humankind's first attempt at colonizing a world with multiple ethnicities. Due to the fractured nature of the social and governmental landscape, Quinn easily pins all the nationalistic forces against each other. Meanwhile, in the derelict asteroids orbiting the planet, Quinn is planting fusion bombs for a grand spectacle of his vision: Final Night.

Pregnant, frightened, free and rich, Louise Kavanagh, along with her sister Genevieve and the gentlemanly possessed Titreano, head to the Sol system in order to ultimately find a ride to Tranquility. However, their progress is limited by Titrano's interference with electronics on both the starship and at the Mars' transfer facility. Louise considers Earth an impossibility but still thinks Tranquility is the best choice for her recuperation.

Tranquility becomes a hub of activity when it's discovered that Capone is marshalling forces of voidhawks to fight the Confederation. His rate of expansion is impressive, so the Confederation governance takes extraordinary measures to fight the incoming fleet of warships. Their information isn't exact, so precautions are spread across many regions, a fault which may either hamper Capone's progress or seal his victory in one decisive battle. Inside Tranquility, Jay Hilton, a young refugee from Lalonde, innocently plays with the xenoc (Kiint) youth named Haile. Haile builds a remarkable sandcastle, a structure similar to one which was viewed by Ione but one which should never have been seen by Haile or anyone else in the Kiint race.

Questions and eyebrows are raised at Kiint's passive attitude towards the possession of human bodies from the souls of the beyond. They maintain that all intelligent species must face this turn of events with their own fortitude, as each species will have a different solution to their possession. All information is scant about the Kiint's history as is the reality of the beyond. When some of the possessed are captured and interrogated, reassurance is given to one scientist when he learns that time does indeed pass in the beyond, therefore space exists and so, logically, they dead can be beaten with familiar techniques: "It [the Beyond] obviously exists, therefore it must have some physical parameters, a set of governing laws; but they [scientists] cannot detect or define them" (666). However, the captured possessed have their own ideas of justice and they don't play by our rules. When the Confederation take the possessed to court, hell breaks loose all over again.

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Rather than focusing exclusively on the physical war between the able-bodied humans and the possessed minds of other humans, The Neutronium Alchemist also highlights the metaphysical battle between the two. For the bodily humans, it's damned if they do join yet damned if they don't join:

"I'm sorry, Ralph, but as I said, you simply cannot threaten me. Have you worked out why yet? Have you worked out the real reason I will win? It is because you will ultimately join me. You are going to die, Ralph. Today. Tomorrow. A year from now. If you're lucky, in fifty years time. It doesn't matter when. It is entropy, it is fate, it is the way the universe works. Death, not love, conquers all in the end. And when you die, you will find yourself in the beyond. That is when you and I will become brother and sister in the same fellowship. United against the living. Coveting the living." (165)

The damned, the supposed eternal souls living in the beyond, still live with the "naked emotions which drive us all" and they "know exactly what we are in our true hearts, and it's not nice, not nice at all" (1079); their intrinsic drive for domination, possession and submission rests in their very nature.

This is an interesting turn on the once uni-faceted possessors who were once only out for two things: bloodlust and domination. It's refreshing, in light of contrast, to see some figures of the possessed control their emotions for the benefit of the children, for the benefit of the innocent. Though not the majority, by far, at least there is a hint of hope in Hamilton's prose that allows for some of the possessed to maintain the humane side of humanity rather than the more pessimistic animalistic side which is more often portrayed.

Originally, in my review of The Reality Dysfunction, I had a difficult time accepting two premises of Hamilton's trilogy: (a) the very nature of dead souls living in the Beyond and (b) the nature of the Edenist affinity link which has a genetic source for its non-interceptable mental transmission (as for the Kiint [1089]). Considering the created universe of The Night's Dawn trilogy is 600 years in the future, you would think that everything which could have ever been observed in the universe, all that which is affected by laws of electromagnetic forces of other forces in the predicted unified theory, would have already been predicted and/or observed. Therefore, the affinity and Beyond are part of the physical universe, in one way or another, and should easily have been predicted, observed or measured.

Yet, there are some not-so-subtle hints about the reality of the beyond: "[T]hey [scientists] sought out the elusive transdimensional interface" (800). There are also vague, unquotable inferences that both phenomena have quantum origins, perhaps non-interceptable because of quantum entanglement (or as Einstein had called it, spooky action as a distance [spooky... possession... get it?]). This theory of mine is merely a self-assurance that Hamilton has everything neatly planned out and won't leave any loose science ends hanging; I'm assuring myself that The Naked God will herald all the answers to all the nagging questions in my mind.

One huge improvement in Book 2 is its typographical consistency. In The Reality Dysfunction, particularly in the second half, there were many abbreviated inconsistencies, changes in font, missing bold face and compound adjectives. I'm happy to report that The Neutronium Alchemist is much better in these regards, but still isn't perfect; granted, you can't exactly expect it to but still I, one reader, can point out at least things:

a) Helium-3 is used as fuel for the ships in the Confederation's fusion reactors. Rather than use the lengthy term "Helium-3", Hamilton understandably uses the accepted He3 abbreviation for the isotope. This would be fine but he also occasionally uses subscript for the "3" as in He3: notably, on pages 1049, 1050 and 1096 (three out of eighteen isn't so consistent).

b) Hamilton's use of the word prone greatly annoys me. Though the definition of the word is commonly used to imply a recumbent, flat resting position, the actual definition of the word prone suggests that the subject in laying "face downward", in contrast to the word supine which means "having the face upward". Hamilton's disuse of supine and his awkward uses of prone are curious:

i. "Black figures were lying prone on the feed roads" (66);

ii. "The sidewalk was littered with prone bodies" (99);

iii. "He gingerly positioned Gerald's buttocks on the side of the bed, then lifted his legs up and around until his charge was lying prone on the cushioning" (106);

iv. "The captain was lying prone on his acceleration couch, unconscious. His fingers were still digging into the cushioning, frozen in a claw-like posture, nails broken by the strength he'd used to maul the fabric. Blood dribbling out of his nose made sticky blotches on his cheeks." (174);

v. "[T]he four crew members lying prone on their bulky acceleration couches" (328);

vi. "Two ceiling-mounted waldo arms had been equipped with sensor arrays, like bundles of fat white gun muzzles, which they were sweeping slowly and silently up and down the prone body" (445);

vii. "They even perceived Dariat and Tatiana lying prone on the escape pod's acceleration couches" (960);

viii. "Alkad Mzu was lying prone on one of the spare acceleration couches" (1104).

For the most part, The Neutronium Alchemist paddles along at a fairly even pace with a predictable lengthy action scene towards the conclusion. Yes, there's a car chase scene but the hitch is it's exacerbated by the coming of a megaton asteroid. Like a 100-car freight train crossing the Midwest (something I have familiarity with), the hulking mass of the plot moves along steadily, surely and with one hell of a momentum; once it gets rolling, it's hard to interrupt or shift. Hamilton should stick to his complicated, interweaving plots rather than dabble in occasional and horribly awkward poetic passages, such as: "He was sure that someone had been watching the incident. A spoor of trepidation hung in the air like the scent of a summer flower" (812).

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With a few minor annoyances, a few premises which are unbelievable, a few typographical errors and a rather lengthy stretch of mediocrity (though the length is impressive, the performance is not [wink], wink]), The Neutronium Alchemist, and the entire Night's Dawn trilogy as a whole I assume, is a moderately enjoyable task rather than a continually adventurous excursion. I need a break from the series so, while on another long holiday, I'll be dabbling in some other, hopefully, more profound literature.

"The ancient menace has finally escaped from Lalonde, shattering the Confederation's peaceful existence. On planets and asteroids, individuals battle for survival against the strange and brutal forces unleashed upon the universe. Governments teeter on the brink of anarchy, the Confederation Navy is dangerously overstretched, and a dark messiah prepares to invoke his own version of the Final Night." This brief synopsis of Peter F. Hamilton's second installment in The Night's Dawn trilogy can't be more true to the point, and is just a peak at to what this electrifying installment has to offer.

I love science fiction, I live for it, and The Night's Dawn trilogy is easily one of the most memorable sci-fi epics ever created. With The Reality Dysfunction, Hamilton established a grand universe in which humanity had split into two different "strands;" the Edenists and Adamists. Humanity also discovered that we are not alone in the universe, and that there is something that will threaten the existence of all life in the universe. When a transcendent being known as a Ly-cilph goes to examine a strange break in the space-time continuum, everything begins to unravel and utter chaos ensues.

I don't want to get into The Neutronium Alchemist (without spoiling anything), but I will say that it is a very incredible read. From a first look, the book seems to be quite long at 1137 pages long, but for a slightly good reason. Hamilton loves to examine the details within a story, and this is proven by the massive amount of filler in paragraphs, analyzing the scene with force. But it's his writing that makes the long journey worth it. Now, while it is a fantastic read, I took one star away because the story plays out as a sort-of separate tale. Yes, it fits in the same universe and conflict, but the end result doesn't have as big of an effect in the epic finale, The Naked God.

So, The Neutronium Alchemist is a truly fantastic read and an epic journey into the unknown. If you really love science fiction, or an epic with grand scope & scale, get The Night's Dawn trilogy. Filled with pulse-pounding action and some emotional drama, The Neutronium Alchemist is a powerful sequel that will leave you wondering, what happens next?

Like the universe itself, Peter F. Hamilton's NIGHTS DAWN TRILOGY appears infinite. That is a nonsense of course; as we hold the set of three books in our hands we can see both its beginning and its end. But taking a microscopic viewpoint, each time we take a deep breath and jump head first into Confederation space we become as one with the Edenists, the Adamists, and dare I say it, the possessed. The trilogy is all-consuming. As I said in my review of book one, reading the trilogy is like a story having the scope and size and "epic-ness" of Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings set in outer space. Sort of.

Book two of this trilogy starts off directly from the end of book one. One valid criticism I could make at Mr Hamilton is his focus on technology as opposed to an apparent lack of willingness on his part to simply "entertain" his readers. For example, the first hint of plain old fun in this series came when Dr Mzu finally managed to exact a small measure of revenge for what happened at the start of book one. The way it was handled by Mr Hamilton was fine but if there were more moments like this one scattered throughout series, it would be a lot easier to read. And a lot more fun. And dare I say it, this is where book one could have ended?

Any who, the story is pumping along at a fair old pace and the characters are beginning to jump out of the page at you as the story progresses. Events are beginning to wind up both behind the scenes and in front of your face and it gives the reader a good feeling to know that events of a galactic scale are about to occur. The awe factor and the gosh-wow-heck impact is still there for the reader to discover and enjoy just like book one, but I guess, by definition, the reader is already accustomed to the "culture" of Confederation Space, so he/she is used to Mr Hamilton's incredible imagination. We are beginning to take it for granted.

So at the half way mark of book two, I award THE NEUTRONIUM ALCHEMIST four stars out of five. I imagine that by book's end it will shoot up to five stars (or even higher) if the ending is as good as I have heard.

******************

July 10, 2013. I am proud to say that I have finally finished his monolithic beast of a tribute to the genre of science fiction and space operas. The story is brilliant. The writing in the second half picked up to the extent that the book was actually fun to read, instead of being a continuous, heavy, slog-fest.

I would like to say, and publishers, please take note: THIS BOOK IS TOO LONG AT 1259 pages. The story itself is gripping, and earth shattering, and wonder inducing, but the story telling itself is not good enough to warrant selling this book in the format of one massive volume. That said, once you get to the end of THE NEUTRONIUM ALCHEMIST- be it in one volume or two - you simply have to learn how it all ends. The book itself ends on a splendid cliffhanger, with several story strands left hanging like the greasy tendrils of the infamous red cloud taking over the possessed half of Lalonde. And characters and species alike that previously have no (or little) part to play in the story suddenly have a major role and you have become attached to them with out realising it.

So to summarise, I give THE NEUTRONIUM ALCHEMIST four stars out of five. The second half is worth full marks, but the slowness and over longness of the first 600 pages prevents me from giving part two of this classic, incredible trilogy a higher score. The trilogy overall, however is sure to go down in history as one of the all time great stories of science fiction.

Peter F Hamilton is a genius.

Now onto book three...

BFN, Greggorio!

An epic space opera about the here and the hereafter and what happens when souls from the hereafter (called the beyond in the book) come back and possess the bodies of the living.

The Kavanagh sisters, Louise and Genevieve, know they have to leave Norfolk after they narrowly miss being possessed like the rest of their family. With the help of Fletcher Christian (of Mutiny on the Bounty infamy) they do eventually get off the planet.

In New California most of the 40 million inhabitants are possessed however the main organizer soon realizes that they need some non possessed people to run the infrastructure. The possessed have an electrical charge that interferes with electronics and so they can't operate anything that is electrical or electronic in nature. This includes spaceships and most modes of transportation.

Someone is controlling the rift between all the souls in the beyond and the here and now. How it is being done is one of the questions that need to be answered. The type of souls being released is rather surprising as it seems to be the worst of humanity.

As the possessed spread amongst the human populated worlds only Tranquility and Earth have been able to stop penetration by the possessed. Questions of how to deal with the possessed are not easy to come by. If they are killed then the bodies that they occupy cease to exist and the souls that were in the body just return to the beyond and wait to possess another human body somewhere else. In addition everyone dies eventually so you will also end up in the beyond at some time and souls keep grudges forever it seems.

Doctor Mzu (the M is silent) has created a doomsday device that the possessed are after in a big way. However, she is very elusive and multiple agencies chasing her whereabouts keeps her on the run. Thirty years ago she developed her weapon called the Alchemist but never had a chance to use it. If the possessed get it first it is not going to go well for humanity.

Another race called the Kiint have faced the possessed before and prevailed however they are adamant that each race that faces the possessed must defeat them in their own unique manner. So they are no help at all.

Quinn Dexter is the Messiah of the Light Bringer sect and the Messenger of Gods Brother who is going to bring the Night to humanity. As the most ruthless and skilled of the possessors he is a formidable adversary.

There is lots of adventure in the book, well developed characters and relationships, palpable terror and multiple plot twists and turns.

As the middle book of a trilogy (The Naked God and The Reality Dysfunction being the other two in the series) it can still stand on it's own as an enjoyable read. The ending is a cliff hanger and you'll just have to get the third book in the series to see how it all ends

Early in the 27th century Humanity has colonized planets, asteroids and vast sentient bitek habitats in more than eight hundred star systems. The geopolitical structure of the Confederation oversees this great Human diaspora. In The Reality Dysfunction, an accidental rending of the fabric of the Universe opened a rift into the beyond...the featureless, sense-deprived dimension where souls go after their body can no longer support them in the dimension of the living. This rift allows a soul to inhabit another living form, but at a price. The intruding soul suppresses the host persona, trapping the rightful owner of the body deep within and allowing the possessor to control the body. Not only are the possessed given another opportunity at life (even if it is a stolen one), they are endowed with energistic powers granting them the ability to create just about any physical object at a whim as well as giving the possessor enormous strength and the capability to shoot a lethal white fire at an opponent.

Now the possessed are out to ruin the Confederation, contaminating world after world with their brethren; souls seeking an escape from the depredations of the beyond. And, despite a few minor victories, the Confederation is finding it nearly impossible to contain their spread.

Added into this writhing mass of subplots of possessed incursions on world after world, habitat after habitat and the Confederation's attempt to neutralize the threat from the possessed is Dr. Alkad Mzu. A minor character in the introductory tale, Mzu is thrust to the forefront in The Neutronium Alchemist after her escape from Tranquility. After Mzu's homeworld was destroyed by a rival star system three decades prior to the events in this novel, she swore to exact revenge on the transgressing world. And Mzu is uniquely capable of accomplishing this feat. Thirty years earlier, during the climax of the interplanetary squabble, Mzu created the Alchemist, a device capable of destroying a star. Now, Joshua Calvert and the crew of the Lady MacBeth have been charged with the task of returning Mzu to Tranquility, a task made more difficult, because not only is just about every security and intelligence agency in the Confederation after Mzu, the possessed now know about her and the Alchemist as well.

With panic spreading throughout the Confederation at the threat the possessed present, will Calvert and his crew be able to find Mzu in time to keep the Alchemist out of the hands of the possessed? And will the Confederation be able to hold the line against the possessed as they claim world after world?

The Neutronium Alchemist is a worthy middle tale for a trilogy. It provides plenty of action, a healthy dose of suspense as the main plot thread leads us to the culmination of the tale in the third installment, and most importantly in any story, continues to enhance characterization of the primary personae, suspending our disbelief as any good story should as the characters wrestle to find a solution to the dead returning to the land of the living and putting everything right with the Universe again.

The main problems I had with the first installment of the trilogy, The Reality Dysfunction, was the massive amounts of gratuitous sex and the copious quantities of new characters that were introduced, making it difficult to follow all the events going on because so many characters were doing so many different things. The good news with The Neutronium Alchemist is that both of these issues were rectified. Gratuitous sex was nearly nil (possibly because the characters are too busy fighting off the possessed) when compared to the previous novel and the quantity of new characters introduced in this installment was dramatically reduced as well, primarily following the exploits of characters we already knew from the previous novel and introducing only a meager handful of new people we had to keep track of.

All of this (and more!) comprises a story worth reading in a Universe that has believable characters and believable technology in a believable society even if the unbelievable (the dead returning thing!) is happening. The Neutronium Alchemist is the second good reason to pick up this trilogy...I am looking forward to soon picking up what I hope will be the third.

An epic space opera about the here and the hereafter and what happens when souls from the hereafter (called the beyond in the book) come back and possess the bodies of the living.

The Kavanagh sisters, Louise and Genevieve, know they have to leave Norfolk after they narrowly miss being possessed like the rest of their family. With the help of Fletcher Christian (of Mutiny on the Bounty infamy) they do eventually get off the planet.

In New California most of the 40 million inhabitants are possessed however the main organizer soon realizes that they need some non possessed people to run the infrastructure. The possessed have an electrical charge that interferes with electronics and so they can't operate anything that is electrical or electronic in nature. This includes spaceships and most modes of transportation.

Someone is controlling the rift between all the souls in the beyond and the here and now. How it is being done is one of the questions that need to be answered. The type of souls being released is rather surprising as it seems to be the worst of humanity.

As the possessed spread amongst the human populated worlds only Tranquility and Earth have been able to stop penetration by the possessed. Questions of how to deal with the possessed are not easy to come by. If they are killed then the bodies that they occupy cease to exist and the souls that were in the body just return to the beyond and wait to possess another human body somewhere else. In addition everyone dies eventually so you will also end up in the beyond at some time and souls keep grudges forever it seems.

Doctor Mzu (the M is silent) has created a doomsday device that the possessed are after in a big way. However, she is very elusive and multiple agencies chasing her whereabouts keeps her on the run. Thirty years ago she developed her weapon called the Alchemist but never had a chance to use it. If the possessed get it first it is not going to go well for humanity.

Another race called the Kiint have faced the possessed before and prevailed however they are adamant that each race that faces the possessed must defeat them in their own unique manner. So they are no help at all.

Quinn Dexter is the Messiah of the Light Bringer sect and the Messenger of Gods Brother who is going to bring the Night to humanity. As the most ruthless and skilled of the possessors he is a formidable adversary.

There is lots of adventure in the book, well developed characters and relationships, palpable terror and multiple plot twists and turns.

As the middle book of a trilogy (The Naked God and The Reality Dysfunction being the other two in the series) it can still stand on it's own as an enjoyable read. The ending is a cliff hanger and you'll just have to get the third book in the series to see how it all ends

Really and truly awed. I've read authors with wild imaginations before but Peter F. Hamilton is on another level. He's to science fiction what Ken Follett (another favorite of mine) is to historical fiction/period pieces.

This book is so sprawling that I almost don't know how to review it! The novel's central plot is focused on Alkhad Mzu, which if you've read the Reality Dysfuntion you should recognize. Where she seemed to play a minor type roll in the first novel, her involvement in the story here becomes paramount as her mission of revenge fuels a chase across the galaxy to stop her from acquiring the most powerful weapon ever devised, bringing to fruition a plan for vengeance 30 years in the making.

All the while the possessed are quickly taking over system after system in the Confederation. I will admit, some of the personalities that have come back from 'the grave' may seem a little campy at first but they are indeed historical figures and add an additional layer of entertainment to the saga.

This isn't just The Reality Dysfunction Part 2. It's the progression of the series. More and more characters are thrown out of their norm as the possessed run rampant throughout the Confederation looking for someplace to hide from being taken over. Friends are split up, loyalties are made and broken, characters' perception of what they thought they believed in are turned upside down.

Going into the book you just have to realize that there are going to be alot of factions, locations, and characters to keep up with. Those are staples of Hamilton's books. While different than The Reality Dysfunction in terms of pacing and content (less set up, more action and changes in locale) it's no less entertaining. It's not difficult reading as long as you pay attention.

Great great trilogy thus far and further cements Hamilton near the top of my must read list.

The 'reality dysfunction' has escaped from Lalonde, overrunning several other Confederation worlds and asteroid settlements, subverting people to its will. On the Kulu Kingdom principality world of Ombey, Ralph Hiltch, a veteran of Lalonde, organises a desperate battle against the enemy. Pastoral Norfolk is easy pickings for the menace, but, with help from an unexpected ally, Louise Kavanagh manages to stay one step ahead of it. Ultra-advanced New California comes under siege, whilst the decadent Valisk habitat becomes a raging battleground between the subverted and the habitat's insane controlling personality.

As the Confederation goes to a war footing and unleashes its resources against the new threat, another problem arises. Dr. Alkad Mzu has escaped from Tranquillity and is now on the run, seeking to complete a thirty-year vendetta to annihilate an entire star system. Joshua Calvert reluctantly agrees to pursue her, although half the intelligence agencies in the Confederation are also on the case. Meanwhile, Syrinx recovers from her own considerable physical wounds but finds her mental recovery to be much harder. At the urging of the Edenist government, she travels to the Kiint homeworld to find out how they defeated their own brush with the dysfunction thousands of years ago...

The second volume of The Night's Dawn Trilogy is the direct continuation of The Reality Dysfunction, pretty much picking up the story immediately. The book has a slightly different focus - Lalonde has been left behind and a couple of superfluous characters like Kelven Solanki have been rather abruptly jettisoned from the story - but it's generally a continuation of the same writing style as the first book. Simply put, if you liked the first book, you'll like this one too.

It improves on the first book in a few key areas as well. Hamilton reigns in the info-dumping, apparently partially a conscious choice and partially because after the first book set up the Confederation setting so well it's no longer necessary. In addition, the slow start to Book 1 is missing. Book 2 hits the ground running and, if anything, the pace increases and the tension ramps up throughout this immensely thick volume (it's actually several dozen pages longer than the first book). The sex scenes, which I know put some people off the first volume, have been radically reduced in quantity as well. After all, with the extinction of the human race looming and the Galaxy at war, getting laid is not the highest priority any more ;-)

Unfortunately, the book does have a couple of niggling issues which detract from it. Hamilton develops this very peculiar obsession in the second volume of his broad-canvas space operas to have an extremely tedious car chase taking up a chunk of the book. It's not as bad as Judas Unchained (where such a chase takes up about half the book, intercut with other stories), but The Neutronium Alchemist does feature such a sequence which takes up several dozen pages. In addition, the Valisk storyline is simply not as compelling as many of the other plots in the trilogy, and the pages devoted to it do feel like they could have been better spent on events elsewhere. Once you've completed the trilogy and realise how little this plot thread adds to the overall story of all three books, it's inclusion feels even more pointless, despite some good lines from Rubra.

Readers' reactions also vary immensely to what happens on New California. I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt it was a logical extension of the premise, and if you can swallow the premise of the reality dysfunction itself than what happens next shouldn't pose any problems. But I do know people who thought it a step too far and stopped reading. A shame, because it actually works very well, and sets up the absolutely brilliant ending.

The Neutronium Alchemist (****½) is a very fine continuation of the story begun in The Reality Dysfunction. The story is meaty enough to support its immense length, and Hamilton's prose skills have improved somewhat from the first book. That said, the absence of some characters from the first volume and the amount of time spent on less-compelling plot-threads does leave it as a slightly less-accomplished novel. Still, as readable, epic space operas go, this is one of the very best out there, and it ends on an absolutely killer cliffhanger which at the time of publication was jaw-dropping (although now you can just go out and buy the third book straight away). The book is available now in the UK and, at long last, in one volume in the USA.

Whether it's weaving a plethora of characters together or introducing insanely new concepts for spaceflight and technology, this story has everything. Madness and utter evil battle against a wide range of protagonists, none of whom manage to steal the show, making this an excellent space opera story with immense potential.

While it is not revealed until the last of the (MASSIVE) trilogy of books, the resolution is a rather trite deus ex machina, which lessens what is otherwise a phenomenal romp through a well thought out universe. Unfortunately, the author attempts to deal with "the"
big question and leaves the reader with something of a let-down when the "answer" really isn't one. Add to this that he seems to introduce and then ignore a number of potentially interesting characters and you get a phenomenal backdrop against which a good but not great story gets told.

Possession organisation spread.

The numbers of those from beyond the grave continue to grow, and a famous gangster is among them, and he puts his 'Organisational' talents to use, once he calms down a bit.

They also find that they can possess the sentient ships, gaining useful weaponry in the process.

Then there is the serious grudge-carrying escaped scientist and her superweapon.

Space battles and zombies and zombie space battles, if you like, although there is no lack of intelligence after possession, just a lot of desperate conflict going on as people learn about this problem and set out to try and do something about it.

While Hamilton has the writing skills to produce any quality plot he wants, his work is more at home in a superhero comic book.
While all fantasy requires the reader to swallow some unusual and different concepts, to have villains (borrowed from Invasion of the Body Snatchers) who arrive in the thousands and thousands with super powers like individual control over nuclear reactions, hands that are virtual cornucopia machines (like in Charles Stross), almost indestructible, and genitals with unbelievable endurance and flexibility, makes the reader almost forget about the gratuitous ultra violence and super-sex. These villains are demigods in bulk. This plot panders the obscene and violent side of human tastes and self-indulgences. Creativity is lost in its machinations. It could have been written by the marketing department of the publisher.

Incredibly difficult to get into. I forced myself to read the first 300 pages and then gave up. The author must have been on drugs after reading Riverworld and watching Zombie movies. If you can accept Al Capone being reborn into a future zombie, this is the book for you. There is nothing scifi about this. I enjoyed some of Hamilton's other books but this one more than disappointed, it was a waste of money and time. Literary vomit.