My first experience of Peter F. Hamilton’s work was the opening volume of The Nights Dawn trilogy. I was a few hundred pages into this huge space opera work when it was revealed what was happening to characters. Don’t want to outline it here as it will be a spoiler for anyone who comes to read the series later. For my part I hated the idea and didn’t finish the first volume. I was really disappointed as the book up to that point had been excellent. I recently got rid of them during a clear out.
I was in Waterstone’s in Belfast a few weeks ago and noticed a new book by Hamilton called Judas Unchained. This was billed as the second book in The Commonwealth Saga. The first book in the saga is Pandora’s Star which they also had in stock. Reading a bit of it in the store it looked really interesting. Galaxy spanning space opera. I love space opera that is huge in scope.
I’ve just finished Judas Unchained. I have to say that this has lived up to my hopes. The two books, Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained, are really a single long book that just happens to have been published as two volumes. It’s about 1800 pages long and is huge in scope. The characters are believable, the future galactic colonisation is really well described and the aliens are probably the best I’ve read about in any fiction.
This is a keeper. I’ll be reading it again very soon just for the sheer pleasure and to pick up on anything I’ve missed first time. I can see this book, treating the two volumes as a single entity, joining the list of my favourite books.
There is a description of The Commonwealth Saga here. It has Spoilers!!