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Night's Dawn #3
The Naked God
The "reality dysfunction" is a break in the fabric of time that allows the dead to return by possessing the bodies of the living. As more and more star systems fall to the possessed, the Confederation starts to collapse economically and politically. With the human race now in imminent danger, Quinn Dexter plots the Final Night -- from which humanity will never recover. But on the far side of the Orion Nebula, an alien god may hold the solution to the crisis...if only Joshua and Syrinx can discover it before it's too late.
975 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
435 people are currently reading
5796 people want to read
About the author
Peter F. Hamilton
208 books10.2k followersPeter F. Hamilton is a British science fiction author. He is best known for writing space opera. As of the publication of his tenth novel in 2004, his works had sold over two million copies worldwide, making him Britain's biggest-selling science fiction author.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 546 reviews
June 6, 2021
Retrospectivality! What were the coolest elements of this amazing series Hamilton was able to reproduce, expand, prequel, sequel, write handbooks about,… that created the legend of the man space opera is irreversibly merged with forever. Peter, you are my hero!
Immortality, other universes and dimensions, life extension, and the afterlife: Gaia, the tech, ships, medicine, fractions, everything in this universe has some elements of the most fundamental and elemental manifestation of life: avoiding and defeating death. Depending on in which epoch of what series one enters Hamiltons´ world creation, there are more primitive forms of life extension such as just adding a few hundred years, or already getting uploaded to a collective consciousness for a few thousand years until the last copies vanish, to the sophisticated versions of becoming immortal entities with technology of parallel universe quanta fantasy induced immortality. How the society and the protagonists react in the different stages of evolution is always of interest and has highest potential for endless plotting.
Characters totally instrumentalized for the sake of the plot. Forget detailed and believable character descriptions, here it´s all about the ultimate fusion of world and protagonists, there will hardly be anything that doesn´t accelerate the telling engine. It´s quite the same as what I said about worldbuilding in another review
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_an...
and this switching between some grains of characterization and backstory and full metal action in dialogues and happenings makes the telling dynamic, one is always waiting for a slower description scene, a cool argument, or an intergalactic space battle that may follow next.
The aliens (in all of his series): They are so detailed, their evolution so stylish, that I could still endlessly blatter just about how the different antagonists evolved in Hamiltons´work, so avoid asking me about it for the sake of the conservation of your lifetime. Often, in sci-fi, the motivations and detailed descriptions of the alien races are minimal or even forgotten, they are not more than plot vehicles, used for action scenes, stereotypical too exotic or too human-like, too onesided evil or good, but here they are unique fractions with strange, but in itself logical and consistent motivations. Overanalyzing, one could go so far as to interpret many philosophical implications into the culture of the species.
This wise, just joking, advice is added to all reviews of Hamiltons´series.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Hamilton´s future vision is to see the technology and society developing in very detail over long periods of time, making a return to his universe something always stunning and inspiring. It also makes me wonder why he is the only author I know of who did this. One, who is new, lucky you, by the way, ought consider reading it in chronological order, although the series set closest to now, Salvation lost, is still unfinished, so better read before in the following order:
Salvation year 2200
Commonwealth year 2400
The Night´s Dawn trilogy year 2700
The Chronicle of the Fallers year 3400
Void trilogy year 3600
You can of course do as you wish, it´s just how I arrange my rereading to get the most out of it and slowly move further and further away from the boring present.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
Immortality, other universes and dimensions, life extension, and the afterlife: Gaia, the tech, ships, medicine, fractions, everything in this universe has some elements of the most fundamental and elemental manifestation of life: avoiding and defeating death. Depending on in which epoch of what series one enters Hamiltons´ world creation, there are more primitive forms of life extension such as just adding a few hundred years, or already getting uploaded to a collective consciousness for a few thousand years until the last copies vanish, to the sophisticated versions of becoming immortal entities with technology of parallel universe quanta fantasy induced immortality. How the society and the protagonists react in the different stages of evolution is always of interest and has highest potential for endless plotting.
Characters totally instrumentalized for the sake of the plot. Forget detailed and believable character descriptions, here it´s all about the ultimate fusion of world and protagonists, there will hardly be anything that doesn´t accelerate the telling engine. It´s quite the same as what I said about worldbuilding in another review
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_an...
and this switching between some grains of characterization and backstory and full metal action in dialogues and happenings makes the telling dynamic, one is always waiting for a slower description scene, a cool argument, or an intergalactic space battle that may follow next.
The aliens (in all of his series): They are so detailed, their evolution so stylish, that I could still endlessly blatter just about how the different antagonists evolved in Hamiltons´work, so avoid asking me about it for the sake of the conservation of your lifetime. Often, in sci-fi, the motivations and detailed descriptions of the alien races are minimal or even forgotten, they are not more than plot vehicles, used for action scenes, stereotypical too exotic or too human-like, too onesided evil or good, but here they are unique fractions with strange, but in itself logical and consistent motivations. Overanalyzing, one could go so far as to interpret many philosophical implications into the culture of the species.
This wise, just joking, advice is added to all reviews of Hamiltons´series.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Hamilton´s future vision is to see the technology and society developing in very detail over long periods of time, making a return to his universe something always stunning and inspiring. It also makes me wonder why he is the only author I know of who did this. One, who is new, lucky you, by the way, ought consider reading it in chronological order, although the series set closest to now, Salvation lost, is still unfinished, so better read before in the following order:
Salvation year 2200
Commonwealth year 2400
The Night´s Dawn trilogy year 2700
The Chronicle of the Fallers year 3400
Void trilogy year 3600
You can of course do as you wish, it´s just how I arrange my rereading to get the most out of it and slowly move further and further away from the boring present.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
December 2, 2021
The sight which greeted her was so incredible that the breath stalled in her throat.
The Brobdingnagian conclusion to a Brobdingnagian trilogy.
Just finishing this is an accomplishment (tap on shoulder). If you manage to make it through the trilogy you will have read more than 1.1 million words (this instalment alone contains more than 400,000 words and weighs in at almost 1,300 pages). Relevance? Well, if you are going to be spending so bloody long reading a SF trilogy it had better be damn good!
As challenging as it was to read all of this, I have to marvel at the mental fortitude required (or whatever one would call it) to write something like the Night’s Dawn. This is a huge story with characters, factions, races, ideas and tech enough to fill encyclopedias. While predominantly a Space Opera (albeit with scientific flourishes) it contains elements of Horror and even Fantasy. I simply couldn’t read the novels back to back (it would probably have rendered me catatonic), but I possibly missed out because of this. A few characters I simply didn’t remember, even though their storylines were clearly carried over from the previous books.
Dark wings slowly spread wide, sweeping eagerly, sending motes of interplanetary dust swirling in his wake. He shook his neck, blinking huge red eyes, flexing his talons. In this state, he was perfectly at one with himself and life.
As edgy as this story is (and it’s pretty damn edgy), Hamilton still manages to casually chuck in sense of wonder elements that will take your breath away. From artefacts to parallel dimensions, and a whole lot in between, it’s as if he was bent on seeing how far he could push the boundaries of (cosmic) plausibility, while retaining the focus on a character driven narrative, and without neglecting the basic plot. Often, with big idea Sci-Fi, characters take back seat, but not so here. In fact, it’s the very act of trying to indulge both aspects (plot/ideas vs characters) that bloats these books so much (for better or worse).
[It] exploded out of the top of the lift shaft at near-sonic velocity, a comet of anti-light.
During the course of the trilogy I was horrified, awed, perplexed, anxious, stunned, thrilled, [add synonym / antonym of choice here] …in equal measure. Arguably, by this point I was getting a bit fed up with all the “possessed” politics and brouhaha. After thousands of pages depicting the abuse and violation of their host bodies, their justifications just ring empty (“It’s because they’re lonely”, “it’s because they want to feel something” – pffft). Also, unremittingly omnipotent antagonists make for frustrating and futile reading. Anyway, the author touches on some philosophical questions regarding the nature of “souls” and religion etc. The reality dysfunction isn’t an external threat, it’s a good hard look at what it means to be human.
Occasionally the grimness crosses a line (this holds true for the whole series). The author does a good job of
Real worry began to seep into [his] thoughts. It was the visitor who was causing this part of the affliction. Almost an anti-presence, soaking up life and heat like some hazy event horizon. This was alien at its extreme.
One of my favourite sequences (by far) detailed the search for the Sleeping God, which is essentially a journey across and beyond the Orion arm of the galaxy with some awesome visual descriptions and a few gobsmacking revelations. The whole thing is an exercise in extremes: the exciting bits are very exciting, the grim bits are very grim, and when the novel slows down it stands completely still (the philosophical meanderings won’t be to everybody’s taste). In the end, I do believe that the whole trilogy is still a remarkable achievement, especially in its world building and sprawling scope. I would recommend it to people who are serious about their Space Opera, but with two provisos: (1) these books, and this last one in particular, are ridiculously thick, so reading stamina is required and (2) there is a certain amount of
[He] saw it then, a delicate haze of light, like God had wet his thumb and smeared a star across the canvas of space.
Inevitably, the resolutions at the end were never going to be to everybody’s liking. However, there’s no denying the spectacle of the main event. Is it Deux Ex Machina? To qualify, it needs to be a previous unknown, and yet there has been foreshadowing from book 1. In fact, the climax is the conclusion of one of the main storylines of this novel. So, not necessarily god-in-the-machine, by definition, but it's the way it happens that gets you. I will concede, it is OTT in the extreme, and it does sort of make everything moot. Leaving us to ponder the question: what was the point of all this? Ah, but there’s the rub. Looking forward and not backward.
Right out on the very edge of visibility, there was a perturbation in the curtain of darkness. Faint shadow-shapes moved sinuously, the surface distortion of something stirring deep inside.
September 14, 2016
Okay, so now I’m a little annoyed. To have invested so much time in a series, only to have it end with the author kind of throwing up his hands and saying “well, it has to end sooner or later” is quite frustrating. I mean it, the books ridiculously rapid ending involves a quite literal deus ex machina. Poof! — the entire conflict of the book wrapped up without any real resolution whatsoever. It also didn’t help that the big reveal at the end about the Beyond was exactly what I thought it was going to be way back in the first volume.
Don’t get me wrong — the books are pretty good. I kept reading, right? They have excellent parts — several great action sequences, for instance. (Balancing those are one or two clunkers.) Also there are a lot of vividly drawn environments, and Hamilton has this knack of making a long infodump (like, say, the first chapter) interesting.
It’s just that there are far too many threads and too much detail on the ones that don’t matter, and some are just discarded along the way. For instance, Alkad Mzu — the entire second book is named after her and her invention, for crying out loud! — becomes a total non-entity after her storyline ends. She’s on-stage during the last third, but she might as well not be.
Even the Hamilton ending aggravated me because so many people weren’t mentioned. Or maybe I was just sore about the Mary Sue climax, I don’t know.
I guess the best thing I can say is that it’s clear from the Void sequence that Hamilton has grown as a writer. That series is much more cohesive and focused, even taking into account its length. I’m not sorry I read these, it’s just that I kind of wish I had done it some other time; a lot of exciting stuff came out in these four months (!) that I now have to play catch-up with.
Don’t get me wrong — the books are pretty good. I kept reading, right? They have excellent parts — several great action sequences, for instance. (Balancing those are one or two clunkers.) Also there are a lot of vividly drawn environments, and Hamilton has this knack of making a long infodump (like, say, the first chapter) interesting.
It’s just that there are far too many threads and too much detail on the ones that don’t matter, and some are just discarded along the way. For instance, Alkad Mzu — the entire second book is named after her and her invention, for crying out loud! — becomes a total non-entity after her storyline ends. She’s on-stage during the last third, but she might as well not be.
Even the Hamilton ending aggravated me because so many people weren’t mentioned. Or maybe I was just sore about the Mary Sue climax, I don’t know.
I guess the best thing I can say is that it’s clear from the Void sequence that Hamilton has grown as a writer. That series is much more cohesive and focused, even taking into account its length. I’m not sorry I read these, it’s just that I kind of wish I had done it some other time; a lot of exciting stuff came out in these four months (!) that I now have to play catch-up with.
February 5, 2019
This particular novel was almost 1,200 pages and between it and the other two in the ongoing single story that takes up this trilogy, it's almost 3000 pages. Let me stress this: It's a single story. This isn't a huge ongoing big-book deal like the one Robert Jordan made... but it's close.
And it's epic Space-Opera with anti-mater explosions, the dead coming back to take over the living, vast interstellar exploration, hunting for a god, and lots and lots of regular people just happening to make up pop superstars, Al Capone, runaway rich kids, and the fate of us all... considering the idea that souls persist. The dead come back. And we have a choice to make... as a species.
The aliens refuse to get involved. They had to make their own choices when it came to this.
In the meantime, humanity is devolving in a war between possessed bodies and the high-tech remaining populace. Earth is under siege. Both sides are running out of options even with the ability to transmute matter, move whole planets, put themselves in zero-tau, or live in shared-consciousness ecologies. :)
Just... wow. The ideas and the buildup is freaking amazing.
BUT. I should mention, the execution is often bloated, full of long sequences about nothing much in particular, and while it helps develop characters, there's just SO MUCH OF IT and I found myself wanting the really BIG stuff to happen. And it eventually does. The reward for putting up with over 50 hours of this third novel is well worth the wait. :) BUT.
My observation? Be patient. Enjoy the ride. It's not a race. Enjoy this honker of a novel for what it is and watch the original Poltergeist again for the sheer enjoyment of it. :)
And it's epic Space-Opera with anti-mater explosions, the dead coming back to take over the living, vast interstellar exploration, hunting for a god, and lots and lots of regular people just happening to make up pop superstars, Al Capone, runaway rich kids, and the fate of us all... considering the idea that souls persist. The dead come back. And we have a choice to make... as a species.
The aliens refuse to get involved. They had to make their own choices when it came to this.
In the meantime, humanity is devolving in a war between possessed bodies and the high-tech remaining populace. Earth is under siege. Both sides are running out of options even with the ability to transmute matter, move whole planets, put themselves in zero-tau, or live in shared-consciousness ecologies. :)
Just... wow. The ideas and the buildup is freaking amazing.
BUT. I should mention, the execution is often bloated, full of long sequences about nothing much in particular, and while it helps develop characters, there's just SO MUCH OF IT and I found myself wanting the really BIG stuff to happen. And it eventually does. The reward for putting up with over 50 hours of this third novel is well worth the wait. :) BUT.
My observation? Be patient. Enjoy the ride. It's not a race. Enjoy this honker of a novel for what it is and watch the original Poltergeist again for the sheer enjoyment of it. :)
April 18, 2014
Well that took just over three weeks to read. There is more of a sense of accomplishment from reading this last volume of the Night’s Dawn Trilogy than with the others. Due to each volume being a continuation of the previous ones finishing the last volume feels like having just read a 3000 pages book, rather than just a measly 1000 or so pages.
I have been a little too lenient with my rating of the books in this series I think. At more than 1000 pages per volume I clearly have to like the books quite a lot to go through all those pages. However, the books are clearly overwritten with quite a few superfluous characters and scenes. There are so many side characters I forget who half of them are. Still, to Hamilton’s credit his narrative style is always readable, often quite riveting and the less exciting scenes never actually grind to a halt. I never felt like I was wading through molasses of dense, yawn-inducing text.
The Naked God of course carries on immediately from where the The Neutronium Alchemist Night's Dawn 2 left off. The possessed people are generally at war with the living except for the few nice or heroic possessed characters. Some planets and one city have been moved by the possessed to another dimension where they expect that they will be free to live their stolen lives. As with the previous volumes there are multiple plot strands to follow and it is to Hamilton’s credit that they are not hard to follow, though some subplots are more interesting than others.
In some way the Night’s Dawn Trilogy is comparable to “science fantasy” books like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom (John Carter) series or C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy due to the inclusion of magical or supernatural elements like possession, ghosts and souls, not to mention the possessed characters wielding seemingly magical powers including conjuring things out of thin air. However, for this third volume Hamilton incorporates more actual science into the story than the previous ones with expositions about event horizons, naked singularities, anti-matter etc. The more “magical” elements are explained away with “handwavium” pseudo-science.
Hamilton puts a lot of effort into developing characters though some of them turn out to be quite irritating. The worst by far is the uber- possessed Quin Dexter who for some reason is blessed with the power of invisibility. This would be fine if he has more of a formidable “dark lord” type of personality rather than the foulmouthed yobbo thing he does. On the side of the angels Joshua Calvert and Louise Kavanagh are not quite believable.
One frequent criticism of this book that I have come across is the “Deus Ex Machina” ending. I personally don’t mind it too much as I feel Hamilton had been building up to it from the first book, he did not simply pull this ending out of his backside. It reminds me of the climax of a Doctor Who episode called “The Parting of the Ways”. If you have no idea what I am talking about all I can say is “I’m so so sorry!”
The main strength of this book and the series as a whole is surely the meticulous worldbuilding. I imagine the creative process involves a lot of graphing, flow charting, mind mapping and such. You get a sense of the size of the universe by the diverse settings which encompasses other continuums and the very strange creatures that live in them. Fans of inscrutable weird aliens should have nothing to complain about.
I always find Hamilton’s prose style reader-friendly without being either literary or hack-like. The odd metaphysical or philosophical passages are quite thought provoking while the few pervy sex scenes barely readable. I was quite pleased when I arrived at the end of the book and found the series to be an overwritten but fun read. Peter F. Hamilton has gone on to write better books and series. I have probably read enough from him for this year but I definitely intend to wade through more of his mega-tomes next year.
4.5 stars for the book and the series as a whole then, I am penalizing him half a star for excessive writing and he is getting off lightly here!
I have been a little too lenient with my rating of the books in this series I think. At more than 1000 pages per volume I clearly have to like the books quite a lot to go through all those pages. However, the books are clearly overwritten with quite a few superfluous characters and scenes. There are so many side characters I forget who half of them are. Still, to Hamilton’s credit his narrative style is always readable, often quite riveting and the less exciting scenes never actually grind to a halt. I never felt like I was wading through molasses of dense, yawn-inducing text.
The Naked God of course carries on immediately from where the The Neutronium Alchemist Night's Dawn 2 left off. The possessed people are generally at war with the living except for the few nice or heroic possessed characters. Some planets and one city have been moved by the possessed to another dimension where they expect that they will be free to live their stolen lives. As with the previous volumes there are multiple plot strands to follow and it is to Hamilton’s credit that they are not hard to follow, though some subplots are more interesting than others.
In some way the Night’s Dawn Trilogy is comparable to “science fantasy” books like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom (John Carter) series or C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy due to the inclusion of magical or supernatural elements like possession, ghosts and souls, not to mention the possessed characters wielding seemingly magical powers including conjuring things out of thin air. However, for this third volume Hamilton incorporates more actual science into the story than the previous ones with expositions about event horizons, naked singularities, anti-matter etc. The more “magical” elements are explained away with “handwavium” pseudo-science.
Hamilton puts a lot of effort into developing characters though some of them turn out to be quite irritating. The worst by far is the uber- possessed Quin Dexter who for some reason is blessed with the power of invisibility. This would be fine if he has more of a formidable “dark lord” type of personality rather than the foulmouthed yobbo thing he does. On the side of the angels Joshua Calvert and Louise Kavanagh are not quite believable.
One frequent criticism of this book that I have come across is the “Deus Ex Machina” ending. I personally don’t mind it too much as I feel Hamilton had been building up to it from the first book, he did not simply pull this ending out of his backside. It reminds me of the climax of a Doctor Who episode called “The Parting of the Ways”. If you have no idea what I am talking about all I can say is “I’m so so sorry!”
The main strength of this book and the series as a whole is surely the meticulous worldbuilding. I imagine the creative process involves a lot of graphing, flow charting, mind mapping and such. You get a sense of the size of the universe by the diverse settings which encompasses other continuums and the very strange creatures that live in them. Fans of inscrutable weird aliens should have nothing to complain about.
I always find Hamilton’s prose style reader-friendly without being either literary or hack-like. The odd metaphysical or philosophical passages are quite thought provoking while the few pervy sex scenes barely readable. I was quite pleased when I arrived at the end of the book and found the series to be an overwritten but fun read. Peter F. Hamilton has gone on to write better books and series. I have probably read enough from him for this year but I definitely intend to wade through more of his mega-tomes next year.
4.5 stars for the book and the series as a whole then, I am penalizing him half a star for excessive writing and he is getting off lightly here!
June 22, 2014
Without a doubt, one of the most entertaining,expansive, and satisfying trilogies I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Fun, smart, and fully realized, I can't remember the last time I had so much fun reading!
July 7, 2010
Unfortunately The Night's Dawn trilogy is a huge, festering shamble where a few nuggets of interesting story is drowned in a horribly over-long stream of irrelevant and meandering side- and subplots. It starts off ok, focusing on just one plotline, which leads up to a rather nice "?" moment, but then it seems like Hamilton lost all his marbles because the story loses all focus and coherence, and the only thing that kept me painfully reading the last 4000 pages was to find out how in the world he would be able to tie everything together in the end (which, regrettably turned out to be a big fizzling anticlimactic Deus Ex Machina disappointment).
His male characters have an unfortunate tendency to be rather flat and Mary Sue-ish, and he can't really write female characters at all, but his vivid imagination makes for at least potentially interesting stories IMO. Too bad you have to plough your way through thousands of pages of irrelevant fluff to get to the good parts.
His male characters have an unfortunate tendency to be rather flat and Mary Sue-ish, and he can't really write female characters at all, but his vivid imagination makes for at least potentially interesting stories IMO. Too bad you have to plough your way through thousands of pages of irrelevant fluff to get to the good parts.
November 8, 2017
Some superb parts, especially when the action is in space. The ground battles and activities tend to be mired in treacle/mud. Some conversations go on and on and on
and on and on... Kill me now.
The ending was hurried and loose ends wrapped up in a nice big bow very fast.
This trilogy is my least favourite of all Hamilton has written. All of his other work is 4-10x better.
WARNING: the first book in this series includes very graphically described torture and rape and mutilation (sometimes of teens and children!)
and on and on... Kill me now.
The ending was hurried and loose ends wrapped up in a nice big bow very fast.
This trilogy is my least favourite of all Hamilton has written. All of his other work is 4-10x better.
WARNING: the first book in this series includes very graphically described torture and rape and mutilation (sometimes of teens and children!)
December 15, 2014
This book single handedly made me stop reading sci-fi/fantasy for several years, which I guess I should be thankful for. The ending to this book and series is honestly one of the most incomprehensibly badly written endings to any book I've ever seen, and it was especially stunning given how highly regarded this series seems to be. The series itself is full of misogyny, has a blatant self insert as a main character who every woman finds super sexy and who solves everything amazingly perfectly but it has enjoyable moments and although the set up is kind of ridiculous there are some cool ideas - the series has REALLY cool aliens, comparatively, who are actually sketched interestingly and I really liked the scenes they were in. And then. You get to the ending of this. And it makes everything that came before come that much worse. Details are somewhat hazy 6 years from when I read it but what actually happened was at least as absurd as what I say.
I realised after reading this that so much sci-fi is like this - crappy self insert character with a bad plot that even if it has good ideas or good "world building" inevitably fizzles out in an awful way, after way too much writing. It was a good wake up call. Don't read this series. Oh and another thing - the entire second book is almost 100% irrelevant -
I realised after reading this that so much sci-fi is like this - crappy self insert character with a bad plot that even if it has good ideas or good "world building" inevitably fizzles out in an awful way, after way too much writing. It was a good wake up call. Don't read this series. Oh and another thing - the entire second book is almost 100% irrelevant -
September 26, 2015
Deus ex machina.
What should an author do when his story has run amok, subdividing into dozens of storylines of dimishing value to the overall plot that would require another 3500 pages to resolve individually? Yeah, but at least it is over. I am grateful I did not tackle this before enjoying Hamilton's good works; after eating this rotten elephant, I would not have been able to bring myself to risk another.
I did enjoy myself from time to time, so maybe it is just me. But don't say I didn't warn you.
What should an author do when his story has run amok, subdividing into dozens of storylines of dimishing value to the overall plot that would require another 3500 pages to resolve individually? Yeah, but at least it is over. I am grateful I did not tackle this before enjoying Hamilton's good works; after eating this rotten elephant, I would not have been able to bring myself to risk another.
I did enjoy myself from time to time, so maybe it is just me. But don't say I didn't warn you.
January 10, 2011
Ultimately I only finished this series because I have a hard time not finishing a series I've started unless it is really bad. The Night's Dawn trilogy never quite strayed into "really bad" territory. There were a handful of compelling characters. The writing style is adequate and many of the scenes well written. My main problems with this trilogy were that it was too long, it followed too many protagonists, the main conflict was entirely unsatisfying and it ended poorly.
Each of the three books is about a thousand pages. There was too much bloat which manifested mainly in the form of my second complaint, which was that there were too many 'point-of-view' protagonists. There were a number of characters who were uninteresting and didn't contribute much to the overall story who nevertheless received page counts devoted to their PoV that would be considered lavish in novels that didn't go over a thousand pages.
As for the main plot, let's just say the author pulled a bait and switch some time in the second novel regarding what the whole series was about. You start the series thinking the main conflict is centered around the eponymous "The Neutronium Alchemist," but you'd be wrong. Instead you get this bizarre pseudo-spiritualist ghost possession story that crops up and, to my growing horror, takes over the series. There is never an adequate explanation given for what is going on. That's not to say that there is no explanation given, just that when the big reveal happens near the end of over 3,000 pages of fantasy masquerading and science-fiction it left me agape with its sheer insipidness. The whole thing is wrapped up in about fifteen pages of about the worst case of Deus Ex Machina I've ever seen.
If, like me, you read Mr. Hamilton's entirely more entertaining Commonwealth Saga first, please do not repeat my mistake by reading his earlier work.
Each of the three books is about a thousand pages. There was too much bloat which manifested mainly in the form of my second complaint, which was that there were too many 'point-of-view' protagonists. There were a number of characters who were uninteresting and didn't contribute much to the overall story who nevertheless received page counts devoted to their PoV that would be considered lavish in novels that didn't go over a thousand pages.
As for the main plot, let's just say the author pulled a bait and switch some time in the second novel regarding what the whole series was about. You start the series thinking the main conflict is centered around the eponymous "The Neutronium Alchemist," but you'd be wrong. Instead you get this bizarre pseudo-spiritualist ghost possession story that crops up and, to my growing horror, takes over the series. There is never an adequate explanation given for what is going on. That's not to say that there is no explanation given, just that when the big reveal happens near the end of over 3,000 pages of fantasy masquerading and science-fiction it left me agape with its sheer insipidness. The whole thing is wrapped up in about fifteen pages of about the worst case of Deus Ex Machina I've ever seen.
If, like me, you read Mr. Hamilton's entirely more entertaining Commonwealth Saga first, please do not repeat my mistake by reading his earlier work.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 8, 2009
The third volume of the Night's Dawn trilogy suffers the same flaws as the previous two; it is over-long and has too many characters leading to over a dozen endings (maybe - I didn't actually count) rather than a neat conclusion. Much of the time instead of enjoying the current scene I was wondering what was going on elsewhere with other characters, only to get back there and find myself wondering what was going on elsewhere with even more other characters. The ending is obvious to readers of the first two volumes just from the title of the third, at least in principle and rather unsatisfying. It feels as if Hamilton's ambition was not quite matched by his skill.
September 19, 2013
I...I can't even.
These books have been an integral part of my life.
For the last year and a half, I have been slowly burning my way through.
Other books came and went, but at the end of the day, The Reality Dysfunction and associated novels were waiting by my bedside, ready to guide me into the night with tales of horror, space, love, and humanity.
And now it is finished.
And I really do not know where to go next. Sure, there will be other books down the line.
But something so constant?
Who knows.
A word about Peter Hamilton. He is an inspired genius. To be able to create and write such a series is beyond my comprehension. The sheer ideas and amount of "stuff" that he has is baffling. One would think he copied a future history textbook. Its amazing, and he has my highest regards.
And of the book? The way everything ties together was fantastic. Few loose ends were left and much was explained. The ending itself? While not what I was expecting, and in some ways far less dramatic than other aspects of the story, it was still good. Genius. To the critics: could you have done better?
And Joshua. Joshua, you amazing man. Louise, the bravest girl in the galaxy. Fletcher, the man every man should strive to be.
The list goes on.
Each character, each story, each life. All were astounding.
Each death hurt.
Every. Single. Time.
So really, I cannot say much. But I do want to say this.
Thank you, Peter Hamilton. Thank you so very much.
With this, a chapter of my life closes. I wonder what the next one holds.
These books have been an integral part of my life.
For the last year and a half, I have been slowly burning my way through.
Other books came and went, but at the end of the day, The Reality Dysfunction and associated novels were waiting by my bedside, ready to guide me into the night with tales of horror, space, love, and humanity.
And now it is finished.
And I really do not know where to go next. Sure, there will be other books down the line.
But something so constant?
Who knows.
A word about Peter Hamilton. He is an inspired genius. To be able to create and write such a series is beyond my comprehension. The sheer ideas and amount of "stuff" that he has is baffling. One would think he copied a future history textbook. Its amazing, and he has my highest regards.
And of the book? The way everything ties together was fantastic. Few loose ends were left and much was explained. The ending itself? While not what I was expecting, and in some ways far less dramatic than other aspects of the story, it was still good. Genius. To the critics: could you have done better?
And Joshua. Joshua, you amazing man. Louise, the bravest girl in the galaxy. Fletcher, the man every man should strive to be.
The list goes on.
Each character, each story, each life. All were astounding.
Each death hurt.
Every. Single. Time.
So really, I cannot say much. But I do want to say this.
Thank you, Peter Hamilton. Thank you so very much.
With this, a chapter of my life closes. I wonder what the next one holds.
December 11, 2012
I read this sometime in the early to mid '00s.
Like every Peter Hamilton trilogy I have read, this one was really good - until the last third of the final book, at which point it always feels like Hamilton says to himself, "Oh, shit, now I've gone and put myself into a corner? What do I do? What do I do? Oh, I know! Eureka! Deus ex machina!!" and pfffft. Out fizzles the story. It's so sad, because I know if he put a little effort into it, he could write a wonderful and imaginative ending - but as it is, it feels like a cheap shot. But I keep hoping and keep buying his books in hopes that maybe, this one, this time ...
Like every Peter Hamilton trilogy I have read, this one was really good - until the last third of the final book, at which point it always feels like Hamilton says to himself, "Oh, shit, now I've gone and put myself into a corner? What do I do? What do I do? Oh, I know! Eureka! Deus ex machina!!" and pfffft. Out fizzles the story. It's so sad, because I know if he put a little effort into it, he could write a wonderful and imaginative ending - but as it is, it feels like a cheap shot. But I keep hoping and keep buying his books in hopes that maybe, this one, this time ...
July 19, 2017
Ori de câte ori mă apropii de sfârșitul unei serii care mi s-a strecurat în suflet, ma agăț inconștient de fiecare capitol, fiecare pagină, fiecare paragraf, străduindu-mă să amân inevitabilul... Cam așa a fost și cu
Zeul adormit
, ultima parte a trilogiei
Zorii nopții
.
Căutând cu disperare o soluție care să salveze omenirea din ghearele sufletelor ce amenință să nimicească întreaga civilizație umană, Confederația și Consensul edeniștilor se aliază și explorează orice variantă ce le-ar oferi speranța eliberării; astfel, în timp ce cercetătorii din Marina Confederației perfecționează anti-memoria , Lady Macbeth și Oenone pornesc în căutarea Zeului Adormit , misterioasa divinitate Tyrathca ce poate modela dimensiunile realității. In alte planuri narative, Quinn Dexter reușește să se infiltreze pe Pământ, plănuind aducerea Nopții asupra întregii Confederații, Campania Liberation de pe Ombey se transformă într-un coșmar sângeros, Valisk-ul este prins între tărâmuri, iar kiintii supraveghează îngrijorați strădaniile oamenilor. Dar exista oare scăpare?
Chiar și după atâtea mii de pagini, eleganța și ingeniozitatea stilului lui Peter F. Hamilton rămân uimitoare; vraja acestui volum este completată de descrierea culturii kiinte, iar conturarea mentalității Tyrathca și integrarea în poveste a rasei Mosdva aruncă lumină asupra volumelor precedente.
Nu aș putea spune că modul în care Hamilton încheie întreaga poveste a fost chiar pe placul meu, dar evoluția personajelor, dilemele etice ale acestora, spectaculoasele scene spațiale, originalitatea intrigii și complexitatea întregii serii mi-a amăgit nemulțumirea.
Aș mai vrea câteva pagini.
PS: înspăimântătoare a mai fost viziunea asupra Pământului din viitor: o planetă bântuită de furtuni violente, populată de miliarde de oameni îngrămădiți sub cupola orașelor... vai.
Căutând cu disperare o soluție care să salveze omenirea din ghearele sufletelor ce amenință să nimicească întreaga civilizație umană, Confederația și Consensul edeniștilor se aliază și explorează orice variantă ce le-ar oferi speranța eliberării; astfel, în timp ce cercetătorii din Marina Confederației perfecționează anti-memoria , Lady Macbeth și Oenone pornesc în căutarea Zeului Adormit , misterioasa divinitate Tyrathca ce poate modela dimensiunile realității. In alte planuri narative, Quinn Dexter reușește să se infiltreze pe Pământ, plănuind aducerea Nopții asupra întregii Confederații, Campania Liberation de pe Ombey se transformă într-un coșmar sângeros, Valisk-ul este prins între tărâmuri, iar kiintii supraveghează îngrijorați strădaniile oamenilor. Dar exista oare scăpare?
Chiar și după atâtea mii de pagini, eleganța și ingeniozitatea stilului lui Peter F. Hamilton rămân uimitoare; vraja acestui volum este completată de descrierea culturii kiinte, iar conturarea mentalității Tyrathca și integrarea în poveste a rasei Mosdva aruncă lumină asupra volumelor precedente.
Nu aș putea spune că modul în care Hamilton încheie întreaga poveste a fost chiar pe placul meu, dar evoluția personajelor, dilemele etice ale acestora, spectaculoasele scene spațiale, originalitatea intrigii și complexitatea întregii serii mi-a amăgit nemulțumirea.
Aș mai vrea câteva pagini.
PS: înspăimântătoare a mai fost viziunea asupra Pământului din viitor: o planetă bântuită de furtuni violente, populată de miliarde de oameni îngrămădiți sub cupola orașelor... vai.
June 4, 2019
Well I finished all 3 (Zombies in Space). I was waiting for him to finally say "Wait" this premise is ridiculous and veer away in another direction but nope. He does keep pulling new players out of the void (joke) when a deus ex machina is needed and the over-writing is still there
But I read all of them so that says something.
And this volume was not copy edited. The spelling errors kept pulling me out of the story.
I will continue to read his new stuff.
But I read all of them so that says something.
And this volume was not copy edited. The spelling errors kept pulling me out of the story.
I will continue to read his new stuff.
July 22, 2012
Wow. What a shitty, shitty, shitty ending. I read over 3500 pages of fun for THAT?
*****
MASSIVE SPOILERS DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE BOOK
****
...
Oh, yay, a magical wormhole transport cleared the universe of possessed people! And Quinn took all the bad possessed into Hell, which is where they wanted to be! Yay, happy feeling, everyone lives happily ever after. All the formerly possessed have cancer? No worries, the Klint will give us magical machines to cure it! No one has to messily die or get sick. Everyone will be ok! Louise is in danger? No worries, Joshua will TELEPORT to her side at the end using new found god powers!
It was just awful to read. I felt like I was watching a train wreck. Nothing that was built up throughout the book came to any kind of a meaningful end. Not a single thing. The author just reached down into the book and handed us a meaningless happy ending.
And all throughout the second and third book I was bothered by massive plot holes. None of the solutions for dealing with the possessed were future-proof.
Even if the memory erasing device had worked, and eradicated every soul in the Beyond.... what about the thousands of souls that die that day, and the day after, and the day after? What do you do about them? The damn thing isn't a permanent solution and not a single character in the book addressed this. The memory-erasing device was a flawed idea from the start.
EVEN IF you eradicate every possessed right now..... What about the thousands of new people who die every day? Some of them still die in poverty, some of them still hate, some of them don't let go. So where do those souls go? Why, they build up in the Beyond of course! Maybe someday human society will have progressed to a point where people transcend when they die, but obviously they have a long way to go.
Not a single time was Joshua's "solution" called a temporary fix or did anyone call attention to the fact that the problem still exists. Everyone was too busy living happily ever after.
And the author really ham-handedly dealt with Joshua's new "powers"... by not dealing with them at all. He hands this character god-like powers, spends about twenty pages on them, and then just completely forgets about them.
Anyways, I could go on. I was massively dissatisfied with this ending. I thought it was absolute garbage and I'm embarassed to have spent a week or two reading these books.
*****
MASSIVE SPOILERS DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE BOOK
****
...
Oh, yay, a magical wormhole transport cleared the universe of possessed people! And Quinn took all the bad possessed into Hell, which is where they wanted to be! Yay, happy feeling, everyone lives happily ever after. All the formerly possessed have cancer? No worries, the Klint will give us magical machines to cure it! No one has to messily die or get sick. Everyone will be ok! Louise is in danger? No worries, Joshua will TELEPORT to her side at the end using new found god powers!
It was just awful to read. I felt like I was watching a train wreck. Nothing that was built up throughout the book came to any kind of a meaningful end. Not a single thing. The author just reached down into the book and handed us a meaningless happy ending.
And all throughout the second and third book I was bothered by massive plot holes. None of the solutions for dealing with the possessed were future-proof.
Even if the memory erasing device had worked, and eradicated every soul in the Beyond.... what about the thousands of souls that die that day, and the day after, and the day after? What do you do about them? The damn thing isn't a permanent solution and not a single character in the book addressed this. The memory-erasing device was a flawed idea from the start.
EVEN IF you eradicate every possessed right now..... What about the thousands of new people who die every day? Some of them still die in poverty, some of them still hate, some of them don't let go. So where do those souls go? Why, they build up in the Beyond of course! Maybe someday human society will have progressed to a point where people transcend when they die, but obviously they have a long way to go.
Not a single time was Joshua's "solution" called a temporary fix or did anyone call attention to the fact that the problem still exists. Everyone was too busy living happily ever after.
And the author really ham-handedly dealt with Joshua's new "powers"... by not dealing with them at all. He hands this character god-like powers, spends about twenty pages on them, and then just completely forgets about them.
Anyways, I could go on. I was massively dissatisfied with this ending. I thought it was absolute garbage and I'm embarassed to have spent a week or two reading these books.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 25, 2009
The Night's Dawn Trilogy is my second experience with Hamilton's writing. A couple of years ago, I read Pandora's Star, and immediately decided to own that book. Now, understand that as an employee of a public library, book purchases don't happen frequently, so. . . but I digress.
The Reality Dysfunction was my least favorite of the three. It takes a while to get into the actual meat of the story, and a lot of it is honestly kind of smutty. By the end of the book though, I was completely hooked. Once the plot is underway, it's completely nonstop. " There's ultimately little development in the majority of the characters, and only a small percentage successfully can be described as sympathetic. However, this is offset by sheer quantity of players. There are a lot of characters and subplots keeping the story fresh, though it can be confusing to try to keep track of everyone. Hamilton more or less ties everything together in the end; I think the Deus Ex Machina ending actually fits due to the overwhelming despair and hopelessness portrayed in the books. I found myself thinking time and again, "Can something good please happen now? Look, those people are already doomed, didja really have to throw something new on top of their troubles??"
These books should hold great appeal to F/SF readers looking for something substantial. While Hamilton gives the impression of knowing his science, you'll still want to check your disbelief at the door and just sit back and enjoy a great ride -er, read.
-Brian
The Reality Dysfunction was my least favorite of the three. It takes a while to get into the actual meat of the story, and a lot of it is honestly kind of smutty. By the end of the book though, I was completely hooked. Once the plot is underway, it's completely nonstop. " There's ultimately little development in the majority of the characters, and only a small percentage successfully can be described as sympathetic. However, this is offset by sheer quantity of players. There are a lot of characters and subplots keeping the story fresh, though it can be confusing to try to keep track of everyone. Hamilton more or less ties everything together in the end; I think the Deus Ex Machina ending actually fits due to the overwhelming despair and hopelessness portrayed in the books. I found myself thinking time and again, "Can something good please happen now? Look, those people are already doomed, didja really have to throw something new on top of their troubles??"
These books should hold great appeal to F/SF readers looking for something substantial. While Hamilton gives the impression of knowing his science, you'll still want to check your disbelief at the door and just sit back and enjoy a great ride -er, read.
-Brian
October 31, 2023
More to come but wow what a journey and experience reading this series has been.
March 3, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in March 2007.
Night's Dawn may well be the longest work ever published as a trilogy. Each volume is as long, if not longer, than many trios of science fiction novels - the classic Foundation Trilogy is less than half the length of The Naked God. With that length (which is the most obvious distinguishing feature of the series), there is a concomitant vastness of scale: hundreds of characters, spanning several universes and thousands of light years. The subject matter is weighty, too: an invasion of human occupied planets not by aliens but by people possessed by the spirits of the dead; a huge scale zombie attack with semi-serious philosophy behind it. The series is about what might happen to us after death, how we might be able to return to a kind of life, what a spirit or soul might be, all dressed up as exciting space opera.
To summarise a plot of such scope in a few words is hard; indeed, several attempts to review earlier novels of the trilogy foundered on this rock. There are various groups of humans seeking, in various ways, to contain or counter the threat of the possessed; at the same time, the reader begins to see the possessed as people in their own right, with differing motives and interests (though they continue to include the psychotic Quinn Dexter) rather than as evil monsters with strange powers. The important thing is not the details of the plot, but that Hamilton makes it work. The reader does get pulled in, and cares about the characters even if they are somewhat sketchily depicted.
The general success of the series, and of this novel within the series, doesn't mean that it is flawless. The length is clearly going to be a problem for many readers, who will be unwilling to put aside the time to read almost four thousand pages - a recent survey showed that the first lengthy Harry Potter novel, the Goblet of Fire, was among the books most likely to be left unfinished by British readers. A certain familiarity with the common ideas of the science fiction genre is assumed, as is often the case with more recent works in the genre. These ideas, such as faster than light travel, are more or less taken for granted, and are not treated in a particular imaginative way; writers in the genre have spent many years mining the nuances of these ideas, and Hamilton has other concerns. This is something that may be off-putting for this who are not fans of the genre, but, as I have mentioned, Hamilton is hardly unique in this respect.
A more serious flaw is the evenness of the tone of the writing, which dilutes the potential of certain events; some very nasty things happen, but they have little emotional impact on the reader. Perhaps having so much to say encourages levelheaded exposition rather than visceral storytelling, but this detached style is something I have found in other stories by Hamilton. The story is interesting enough to keep me going to the end, at least, but a bit more excitement might be nice.
The Naked God is of course space opera, part of that subgenre's re-emergence over the last decade or so. Hamilton's ideas and big canvas generally seem to go back to earlier writers such as Isaac Asimov, while many of his contrmporaries (such as Alastair Reynolds) concentrate on smaller details - how cosmic events affect small groups of individuals rather than tackling the cosmos as a whole. So the trilogy could be considered old fashioned, and not particularly innovative; but it is very well done for any reader willing to put in the time required to read such a long story.
Night's Dawn may well be the longest work ever published as a trilogy. Each volume is as long, if not longer, than many trios of science fiction novels - the classic Foundation Trilogy is less than half the length of The Naked God. With that length (which is the most obvious distinguishing feature of the series), there is a concomitant vastness of scale: hundreds of characters, spanning several universes and thousands of light years. The subject matter is weighty, too: an invasion of human occupied planets not by aliens but by people possessed by the spirits of the dead; a huge scale zombie attack with semi-serious philosophy behind it. The series is about what might happen to us after death, how we might be able to return to a kind of life, what a spirit or soul might be, all dressed up as exciting space opera.
To summarise a plot of such scope in a few words is hard; indeed, several attempts to review earlier novels of the trilogy foundered on this rock. There are various groups of humans seeking, in various ways, to contain or counter the threat of the possessed; at the same time, the reader begins to see the possessed as people in their own right, with differing motives and interests (though they continue to include the psychotic Quinn Dexter) rather than as evil monsters with strange powers. The important thing is not the details of the plot, but that Hamilton makes it work. The reader does get pulled in, and cares about the characters even if they are somewhat sketchily depicted.
The general success of the series, and of this novel within the series, doesn't mean that it is flawless. The length is clearly going to be a problem for many readers, who will be unwilling to put aside the time to read almost four thousand pages - a recent survey showed that the first lengthy Harry Potter novel, the Goblet of Fire, was among the books most likely to be left unfinished by British readers. A certain familiarity with the common ideas of the science fiction genre is assumed, as is often the case with more recent works in the genre. These ideas, such as faster than light travel, are more or less taken for granted, and are not treated in a particular imaginative way; writers in the genre have spent many years mining the nuances of these ideas, and Hamilton has other concerns. This is something that may be off-putting for this who are not fans of the genre, but, as I have mentioned, Hamilton is hardly unique in this respect.
A more serious flaw is the evenness of the tone of the writing, which dilutes the potential of certain events; some very nasty things happen, but they have little emotional impact on the reader. Perhaps having so much to say encourages levelheaded exposition rather than visceral storytelling, but this detached style is something I have found in other stories by Hamilton. The story is interesting enough to keep me going to the end, at least, but a bit more excitement might be nice.
The Naked God is of course space opera, part of that subgenre's re-emergence over the last decade or so. Hamilton's ideas and big canvas generally seem to go back to earlier writers such as Isaac Asimov, while many of his contrmporaries (such as Alastair Reynolds) concentrate on smaller details - how cosmic events affect small groups of individuals rather than tackling the cosmos as a whole. So the trilogy could be considered old fashioned, and not particularly innovative; but it is very well done for any reader willing to put in the time required to read such a long story.
April 21, 2014
At over 1,300 pages this is the most beastly of the three beastly tomes that make up The Night's Dawn Trilogy. As I noted in my review for The Neutronium Alchemist, I had serious reservations about the trilogy in the first book (The Reality Dysfunction), but there was enough cool stuff to keep me going until I learned to stop worrying and love the trilogy in the second book.
How's this one? Like the first two, there's some good and some bad.
First, the bad. This is even more mind-numbingly long than the other books. There are about a dozen independent plot threads, some of which don't receive much time, most of which receive far too much. Again, the "Cast of Characters" in the back of the book came in handy, but even with that it was almost impossible to keep track of it all, which in turn often makes it hard to care. I seriously contemplated skipping over some of the threads (like the group of possessed with Cochrane, the hippie guy). The section of the book roughly halfway to two-thirds through gets especially bogged down. The series would have been just as cool with a few less plot threads and a few hundred less pages. Some of the bad people (especially Quinn Dexter) are just as inexplicably obnoxious as they were in the earlier books. While some characters get meaningful development (Joshua, Louise, even Al Capone), Dexter just seems to get more annoying. He's still a stupid Satanist through it all (sigh).
Luckily, the good stuff outweighs all this. Hamilton got me hooked in the first book and kept me interested enough to see it through, which is saying something for a trilogy that's sprawls to about 3,500 pages. I was really happy to learn more about the alien species and even to meet a few new ones. I always want more Edenists, but I suppose Hamilton felt they're not as relatable or dramatic (and he'd have a point there). The character development is satisfying for the most part, although I'd like to hear a little more about why Joshua changes his ways. The "big picture" stuff is there in an even bigger way in this one. We're talking Arthur C. Clarke-worthy big picture stuff. Also, there are some attempts to give natural explanations for all the seemingly supernatural stuff like souls, the beyond, etc. The explanations aren't particularly thorough, but they are there, which pulls this back into science fiction territory despite what initially look like supernatural horror elements.
As much as other reviewers are whining about the ending, let me say that I actually liked it quite a bit and thought it was a fitting end to the series. In fact, the ending assuaged many of my initially negative reactions about Hamilton's vision of human social conditions in the future. Despite initial appearances to the contrary, I think the series has an important message worth our consideration (to avoid spoilers, I'll leave it at that).
So, all in all, the trilogy will take some endurance and patience to get through. But if you can make it, you'll be rewarded with an epic that yields some delightful feats of imagination and plenty to think about, not to mention as much entertainment as three or four normal-sized trilogies.
How's this one? Like the first two, there's some good and some bad.
First, the bad. This is even more mind-numbingly long than the other books. There are about a dozen independent plot threads, some of which don't receive much time, most of which receive far too much. Again, the "Cast of Characters" in the back of the book came in handy, but even with that it was almost impossible to keep track of it all, which in turn often makes it hard to care. I seriously contemplated skipping over some of the threads (like the group of possessed with Cochrane, the hippie guy). The section of the book roughly halfway to two-thirds through gets especially bogged down. The series would have been just as cool with a few less plot threads and a few hundred less pages. Some of the bad people (especially Quinn Dexter) are just as inexplicably obnoxious as they were in the earlier books. While some characters get meaningful development (Joshua, Louise, even Al Capone), Dexter just seems to get more annoying. He's still a stupid Satanist through it all (sigh).
Luckily, the good stuff outweighs all this. Hamilton got me hooked in the first book and kept me interested enough to see it through, which is saying something for a trilogy that's sprawls to about 3,500 pages. I was really happy to learn more about the alien species and even to meet a few new ones. I always want more Edenists, but I suppose Hamilton felt they're not as relatable or dramatic (and he'd have a point there). The character development is satisfying for the most part, although I'd like to hear a little more about why Joshua changes his ways. The "big picture" stuff is there in an even bigger way in this one. We're talking Arthur C. Clarke-worthy big picture stuff. Also, there are some attempts to give natural explanations for all the seemingly supernatural stuff like souls, the beyond, etc. The explanations aren't particularly thorough, but they are there, which pulls this back into science fiction territory despite what initially look like supernatural horror elements.
As much as other reviewers are whining about the ending, let me say that I actually liked it quite a bit and thought it was a fitting end to the series. In fact, the ending assuaged many of my initially negative reactions about Hamilton's vision of human social conditions in the future. Despite initial appearances to the contrary, I think the series has an important message worth our consideration (to avoid spoilers, I'll leave it at that).
So, all in all, the trilogy will take some endurance and patience to get through. But if you can make it, you'll be rewarded with an epic that yields some delightful feats of imagination and plenty to think about, not to mention as much entertainment as three or four normal-sized trilogies.
September 8, 2017
Awful conclusion to a brilliant first book that showed so much promise. Yes the ending was foreshadowed but it feels like a cop out and it ruins the whole meaning of the saga. We were supposed to solve this moral and philosophical crisis of souls. Not a god in the machine.
November 6, 2022
The ending was not very satisfying, and the last chapter felt so rushed to tie the unnecessarily large number of plot threads together that it felt like a big tangle rather than a clean knot. I enjoyed the journey, but if you're not a hardcore fan of sci-fi and fantasy (because this is basically space fantasy), I don't think the 3,700 page commitment is worth it.
March 1, 2014
FINALLY. The first half of the end of this trilogy flew by quickly. Then the second half spun its wheels in what seemed like an attempt to fill enough pages to match the size of the other two volumes. Luckily, once the conclusion started (approximately 75-100 pages from the end) everything started to fall into place very quickly. I found the end very satisfying - not always an easy feat in a long-running story.
June 15, 2024
Not as good as the first two to me but it might because I waited too long to finish the series. I definitely will need to reread this one day because the amount of story I missed because idk what’s going on is a lot. This book was at least 500 pages too long as well. Still a great series with cool ideas though.
June 2, 2019
*Need to Think
This may be the worst ending to a trilogy I have ever read. I'm not even sure if I want to give it 3 stars.
This may be the worst ending to a trilogy I have ever read. I'm not even sure if I want to give it 3 stars.
May 20, 2024
This was my first dive into Hamilton's doorstopper universe as I concluded the Night's Dawn trilogy. I gave it 4* because of the consistency of his kaleidoscopic universe with 100s of characters across a dozen worlds and a dizzying amount of technology. His Adamist vs Edenist split reminded me of the Demarchist vs Conjoiner split in the Reynold's Revelation Space universe and the Union vs Alliance split in the Cherryh universe of the same name. I was a bit fed up with Quinn and the religious overtones in that part of the plot. You have to buy-in to an idea of an eternal soul to be able to suspend disbelief and read this 3000+ page saga to the end, and I found that a stretch at times. I also was mystified by the two "nowheres" that the possessed habitat and planet surface fucked off to for about half the book. There was also the deux ex machine ending where, like Jane in the last 3 Ender novels, Joshua suddenly could transport himself and anyone else like wherever. I found that a bit of a stretch too. If there was a 3.5 rating, I'd have gone with that, but GR only gives us integers to deal with and this was a bit better than a so-so 3* read, thus the 4* review.
Cool stuff: voidhawks, habitats, Edenist ideals (again close to those of the Conjoiners in Reynolds)
Annoying stuff: the possessed, sexist dialogs and one-dimensional female characters (including cringey youthful females)
One glaring inconsistency is that (and maybe I missed something out of pure exhaustion after 1200 pages of this one), we hardly talk about Louise's pregnancy and loads of things happen to her that put the foetus in great danger, but this goes (as far as I recall) unmentioned in her Earthside adventures.
I'll give Hamilton the benefit of the doubt and read at least the Commonwealth duology, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained before giving up on this verbose author. I think he is on the conservative side of science fiction with Heinlein as opposed to the libertarian side with Poul Anderson, the anarchist side with Iain Banks, or the leftist side with Reynolds.
Cool stuff: voidhawks, habitats, Edenist ideals (again close to those of the Conjoiners in Reynolds)
Annoying stuff: the possessed, sexist dialogs and one-dimensional female characters (including cringey youthful females)
One glaring inconsistency is that (and maybe I missed something out of pure exhaustion after 1200 pages of this one), we hardly talk about Louise's pregnancy and loads of things happen to her that put the foetus in great danger, but this goes (as far as I recall) unmentioned in her Earthside adventures.
I'll give Hamilton the benefit of the doubt and read at least the Commonwealth duology, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained before giving up on this verbose author. I think he is on the conservative side of science fiction with Heinlein as opposed to the libertarian side with Poul Anderson, the anarchist side with Iain Banks, or the leftist side with Reynolds.
July 10, 2019
Well, it's over. This final book attempted to conclude all the stories begun in the other two, but then seemed to get sidetracked introducing new aliens and their worlds. It reminded me of episodes of the original Star Trek, boldly going...etc. The conclusion seemed a bit unbelievable. Still like Peter F. Hamilton, tho and will read more of his books.
March 17, 2023
Dans cette suite directe de Neutronium Alchemist, nous voyons la Confédération au bord du gouffre, les possédés sous le joug de Quinn arrivant sur Terre et d’autres colonies. Louise le traque et acquiert dans la foulée des alliés aussi étranges que puissants, et Joshua et Syrinx, sur les conseils des Kiints, parent à la recherche du Dieu Endormi (? Sleeping God en VO), potentiellement capable de comprendre et détruire les possédés.
…
Etrangement, meh ?
Je veux dire, c’est une conclusion plus que satisfaisante qui met un point final apprécié et cohérent à la trilogie, mais, excusez-moi de poser la question : est-ce que ça avait besoin d’être aussi long ? Je veux dire, tout aussi captivante soit l’idée de base (et elle l’est), est-ce que trois livres de quasi 1300 pages chacuns étaient nécessaires ? J’ai trouvé le temps long sur plusieurs parties dans ce dernier tome - particulièrement tout ce qui touche à Al ou Mortonridge, c’est très répétitif dans l’ensemble, alors que les parties Louise/Joshua/Jay font un effort réel pour avancer l’histoire, créer/développer le lore, et travailler la conclusion (qui arrive paradoxalement SUPER rapidement, et un peu en deus ex machina quand même). Ca reste d’extrêmement bonne qualité, ça va sans dire.
…
Etrangement, meh ?
Je veux dire, c’est une conclusion plus que satisfaisante qui met un point final apprécié et cohérent à la trilogie, mais, excusez-moi de poser la question : est-ce que ça avait besoin d’être aussi long ? Je veux dire, tout aussi captivante soit l’idée de base (et elle l’est), est-ce que trois livres de quasi 1300 pages chacuns étaient nécessaires ? J’ai trouvé le temps long sur plusieurs parties dans ce dernier tome - particulièrement tout ce qui touche à Al ou Mortonridge, c’est très répétitif dans l’ensemble, alors que les parties Louise/Joshua/Jay font un effort réel pour avancer l’histoire, créer/développer le lore, et travailler la conclusion (qui arrive paradoxalement SUPER rapidement, et un peu en deus ex machina quand même). Ca reste d’extrêmement bonne qualité, ça va sans dire.
April 11, 2017
tl;dr: This is literally the worst book I have ever read. It ought to be called "Nudus Deus Ex Machina."
I read it because I wanted to know what happened. Waste of time. The author spent thousands of pages setting up a totally unsolvable problem, and then solved it with a wave of his hand. This book asks the question, "What if an upper–middle class white dude in the future ?"
The author would have done well to take a page from Brandon Sanderson's book, so to speak. I don't always love Sanderson, because he returns over and over again to the theme of balance between creation and destruction. But what Sanderson understands is that to construct a universe where events can actually surprise the reader, there needs to be a set of axiomatic physical rules. Hamilton's book is nothing but one deus-ex-machina event after another.
Do not start this series. The only benefit was the number of hours of listening time I got per Audible credit (and the guy who read it, John Lee, actually did a fantastic job).
I read it because I wanted to know what happened. Waste of time. The author spent thousands of pages setting up a totally unsolvable problem, and then solved it with a wave of his hand. This book asks the question, "What if an upper–middle class white dude in the future ?"
The author would have done well to take a page from Brandon Sanderson's book, so to speak. I don't always love Sanderson, because he returns over and over again to the theme of balance between creation and destruction. But what Sanderson understands is that to construct a universe where events can actually surprise the reader, there needs to be a set of axiomatic physical rules. Hamilton's book is nothing but one deus-ex-machina event after another.
Do not start this series. The only benefit was the number of hours of listening time I got per Audible credit (and the guy who read it, John Lee, actually did a fantastic job).
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