How is it even possible to review a book jammed with a future galactic civilization getting invaded by the dead of all history?Succinctly, I suppose. ;)... unlike the first and second books in the series, at 1000 pages for the first and just under 1,300 pages for the second and an even bigger page count for the third. Ah, well, at least the book is epic as hell. The invasion goes from one world to a vast swath of the galaxy. Just how often do we get epic space operas with living spaceships, high...

Another decent novel, however a bit long-winding to my personal taste. I could not get rit of the idea that some character arcs could have been somewhat shorter than they were. The overall plot remains definitely interesting though. I am probably not going to purchase the last book of the trilogy, however I do think I will check out "A Second Chance at Eden", the short story collection set in the same universe.

I read the The Reality Dysfunction, the first book of the Night's Dawn Trilogy in August 2012, I just finished this second volume The Neutronium Alchemist on December 13, 2013. So more than one year has elapsed since reading the first one. With a leaky memory like mine a lot of details have fallen by the wayside during the intervening period. Going back to reread the 1000+ pages of The Reality Dysfunction is out of the question. I considered reading up summaries in Wikipedia or some other web s...

The only book I have finished between the Canada marathon and now is The Neutronium Alchemist, the sequel to The Reality Dysfunction. The main reason I kept reading is that the price/time ratio of these books can’t be beat--they cost the same as a mass market paperback and each one kept me busy for weeks. That said, the entertainment value is debatable. The second volume of the series had all the problems of the first, but it lacked the novelty of introducing new worlds and technologies. Some of...

I like Peter Hamilton's stuff, I really do. I didn't like The Neutronium Alchemist. It wasn't terrible...merely 'okay'. Which is terrible for a 1200 page book. Plus I felt I only picked up a few important developments in the storyline during the 2 months it took me to read it. After such a deathmarch, I retain only a sense of personal accomplishment, not admiration for the author. [Deep breath]. Okay, I feel better. Looking ahead, there is a very good story cooking in the Night's Dawn series. I

...Hamilton raises the stakes in The Neutronium Alchemist, as a middle book is supposed to do. It does more or less suffer from the same problems as the previous novel though. Bloated, repetitive and not very demanding. Although Hamilton tries to make it a multi-faceted conflict, he avoids the really big issue in the story in favour of politics and battles. That might be fine with some readers. I would have liked a little more from this novel but after The Reality Dysfunction, that was hardly wh...

No, your eyes are not deceiving you: I gave this mammoth of a book 5 stars. Yes, I think my rating is entirely justified. Details follow.There is absolutely nothing I can say that would not be a spoiler at this point; even if I mention a character it means the person in question survived the events of the first book - yet another spoiler. Anyhow all of the interesting people left alive at the end of Reality Dysfunction are back with the vengeance; no exception. Even some occasional people one mi...

Mini-Review:Excellent Narration by John Lee!Overall, I love the variety of characters, social structures & main plot lines that come together. Solid storytelling! Some of the phrasing comes off as dated but it's not enough of a detraction to shoo me off of the story.I feel like the series was the end product of a fun thought experiment with a lot of moving parts. =)

I only finished this book because I took it on a s personal challenge having invested 1500+ pages into the series. I'm willing to put up with the extremely slow world building of book 1 if it pays off in books 2 and 3, but based on 2 I doubt that the conclusion will be satisfying. This book is a very slog. It's way too much soap opera. I started reading Hamilton with the Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained followed by The Void trilogy. If I had started with the Night's Dawn I doubt I'd have stuck...

Zombies in space! This is ridiculous but I'm still reading. One more to go.

I think I'm going to have to do a more thorough review later. At this point, I'm just going to focus on mechanics.I like this book. And this series. Honestly, I do. However, I'm at the point where I really think that the whole Night's Dawn series was actually written as one big tome of an epic, and the publishers decided to break it into three (or six, as you decided to buy them) novels just for the sake of the spine. And geez, what a doorstopper a 3500 page book would be anyway. There are just

Man... I love this series. It's what got me into Sci-Fi, and Space Opera in the first place, and I am very happy to conclude that all my good memories have been vindicated and even improved upon. I'm sure this series isn't for everyone, and if I had come across it today and read the synopsis I'd have been very skeptical, but damn. It's such a entertaining adventure across space. I am hooked, and loving it

After seeing this novel impressively attracting attention in most libraries and the impressive array of praise in the the first few pages, I read the preceding volume "The Reality Dysfunction" and was looking forward to finding out what happened after all the work that was put into creating the characters and the universe this series was set on."The Neutronium Alchemist" starts off more or less where "The Reality Dysfunction" ended with the spirits of long dead people rampantly seeking out livin...

Unity infected them with strengthThe Night’s Dawn trilogy is enormously ambitious. It’s a brobdingnagian story, to be sure, and the very fact that Hamilton even comes close to pulling it off is very, very impressive. I still have to read the final installment, but things look right cozy from here. On the other hand, I don’t care a whole lot for the way he holds his readers hostage: was that a cliffhanger or what?Thematically, the story does strike a few weird chords, but it’s all cool. The dead

“There is more to death than the beyond”. The dead are back and they’re pissed off. Book 2 of Peter F. Hamilton’s shelf-breaking Night’s Dawn trilogy and it must count for something that after 2,000 pages I am already itching for more. “Alchemist” delivers on all the juicy ideas of “The Reality Dysfunction”, seeds tantalising new elements no doubt to be pursued in Book 3 and serves up huge wodges of crazy-mad SF action to boot. This is SF as pure Saturday night entertainment written by a writer

So what are the secret ingredients and, even more important, the recipe Hamilton is using to create those amazing worlds? Ready to cook, let´s roll.Worldbuilding in a new, not too hard sci-fi, but still complex enough dimension and with extreme detail: I keep referring to Brandersons´ law of magic a lot nowadays and it could be called Hamiltons´ law instead too.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_an...From time to time, there might be the rare case of character exposition without something relate...

Too long, too slow, too many characters: There was just enough additional mystery added for me to want to read the final volume.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the TrilogyI had some misgiving about the first book, The Reality Dysfunction, especially concerning the sexual politics in what was supposed to be, in some sense, utopian science fiction (see my review ).Happily, a lot of the stuff I didn't like about the first one is absent or at least toned down a lot in the second one. I learned to accept that this universe isn't supposed to be utopian, and I've been much happier for it. Maybe that was more a marketin...

My laundry list:1. This 2nd book (©1997) of the Nights Dawn trilogy suffers badly in it's first 1/4 by repeats of "fantasy" battles between humans and the magically-overpowered Possessed on the ground. (I do not like magic and fantasy mixed into my Sci-Fi at all)2. The choice of the author to resurrect historical villains (and even heroes) of the past was a very bad one: Al Capone, Christian Fletcher, etc, are comedically overwritten and are simply slaps in the face of serious sci-fi readers. I

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...