Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Judas Unchained
Book Review: Outstanding Book(s)
Summary: 5 Stars
Having grown up reading Niven and Pournelle this was a story to treasure. Niven doesn't write quite as well as he used to, you know...
So I stumbled onto Pandora's Star and was immediately reminded of Mote In God's Eye and Ringworld both in the scope and complexity of the tale. Anyway, a truly good read...I really enjoyed it.
A previous reviewer mentioned that there were parallels to Dracula. Maybe, but the Primes (and the Starflyer agents) reminded me of the Islamic extremists and their sleeper cells in our midst. Every bit as scary if you think about it.
Only thing that was a negative for me was the over-frequent use of the word "judder" and "juddering." Seemed like it was appearing every twenty-five to thirty pages or so and, since it is not commonly used in the USA, it stuck out rather oddly. A petty and minor grievance, I admit.
An outstanding read, though. Well worth the investment of time.
Book Review: Potentially Good, But Overlong, Unfocused, Cardboard Characters
Summary: 2 Stars
First off: I'd like it better if we had 1/2-star options. Judas Unchained really doesn't deserve a 2, more a 2-1/2 or 2-3/4.
I have a love/hate relationship with Peter Hamilton's books. He's very adept at introducing interesting technology and making a faster-than-light society plausible but, as with a lot of these hard-science, libertarian SF authors, he badly needs an editor. I was skipping over multiple pages of irrelevance in both this book and its prequel, Pandora's Star. He also has far too many "main characters" who (despite 800+ pages) never seem to come alive. They all speak with essentially the same voice. And when he tries to individualize someone they come off as badly stereotyped '60s era hippies -- come on, does anyone seriously say "dude" in the real world much less the imagined future of the 24th century?
And why is Hamilton so obsessed with sex with young (or rejuvenated) women?
Hamilton's treatment of virtual immortality is hit and miss at best. On the one hand, the innate conservatism of an immortal civilization is well developed, represented and believable. On the other hand, the dynamics of the relationship between "old timers" and "first lifers" is unsatisfactory. In four centuries, for example, NO ONE has even attempted to unseat Nigel Sheldon from his position as head of the Sheldon dynasty? Perhaps the Commonwealth's continual expansion is the safety valve but even here, the government (controlled the eternal heads of these dynasties) controls it. Another point that is brought up briefly is why would anyone want to live forever if their life didn't change -- I mean the characters of a novel (almost by definition) are dynamic, go-get-'em types but most people just plod through their lives and then die. Why would anyone want to do that for lifetime after lifetime?
The aliens are OK. The problem with them (and this is true of nearly every SF story) is that they tend to be one dimensional -- they're all of a singular type and all too often they really do just act like human beings with weird make up. (This is a problem in fantasy stories, too.) On the plus side, I do tip my hat to Hamilton for not allowing the humans to save themselves with an alien "deus ex machina." Ozzie's adventures in "Wonderland" (i.e., the silfen paths) do bring him to the adult silfen and he does find out the origins of the Dyson barriers but the knowledge doesn't really help anyone defeat the Primes.
Overall, if you started with Pandora's Star, you probably should finish the journey with Judas Unchained. If you haven't started down this "silfen path," I recommend Alistair Reynolds, Tony Daniel or Iain Banks. They write similarly grand space opera but are better at it than Hamilton has proven himself to be to date.
Book Review: Pretty decent
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the second half of "Pandora's Star" (where did they get these awful titles from?). This book doesn't stand alone by itself, you need to read the other one first or it'll make no sense.
That said, this is pretty good stuff, decent traditional sci-fi. The ending is a bit disappointing though - not a big surprise after the Night's Dawn series. Not as bad as that ending though.
Book Review: Professionnal and quite good
Summary: 4 Stars
Indeed it is very good .
Consistent , precise , believable , imaginative .
Everything nicely follows the course set in Pandora Star and finds a satisfactory conclusion .
It is HUGE yet the tension is kept up and the reader enjoys the ride without boredom or irritation .
Almost .
I had 3 gripes that were not big enough to bother but annoying enough to be mentioned .
1)
The last odd 200 pages are strangely anti-climatic .
Everything has been already solved - the war is won , we know who the Starflyer is , the traitors have been discovered and Ozzie is back from Silfens' paths .
I went on reading through inertia but couldn't find much interest in guys on horses (real !) hunting a convoy proteted by the biggest force fields this side of galaxy .
2)
I positively hated this Orion character and that is an understatement .
Why waste pages on a child's sexual obsessions and horrible behaviour ?
He didn't serve any plot and filled no visible litterary necessity .
While we're at it the Supermelanie sleeping with everybody and anybody was not a top character either .
3)
This whole "Barrier" story felt artificial and not very convincing .
Apparently about anybody could switch it off or on as long as he/she/it had the necessary technology .
As the humans and the Starflyer had it , MorningStarMountain had it too or was about to have it .
Well half of the Galaxy had it or was about to have it .
This fact leads to another and that is that the rather superficial debate about "genocide" was largely meaningless .
Indeed here we have an allien whose genetically preset behaviour pattern is the one of an extremely deadly virus .
It kills anything it meets and it can't help doing so because that is what a virus does - multiply and by multiplying kill the host (host = any life form of the galaxy) .
Eventually it dies itself because there are no more ressources (hosts) to enable further growth .
The fact that it is an intelligent virus doesn't make it less deadly .
Now you don't try to put a deadly virus in a box , especially then not when you know that it will get out sooner or later and kill you .
If you have the power to do so , you eradicate it utterly as fast as possible .
Book Review: Puzzling conclusion to good setup
Summary: 3 Stars
Hamilton concludes his massive two-part series with this book. While much of the book is intriguing, and even humorous (check out Ozzie's interaction with a hotel clerk), it doesn't seem the best-plotted book.
Look, in view of the fact that the alien, MorningLightMountain has destroyed dozens of human worlds, it is amazing how little attention (it seems only an afterthought) is given to the quest to neutralize it. And the discussions of the moral questions about how best to do it seem very slanted towards one side. It just doesn't seem that convincing. And short shrift is given to the fact that MorningLightMountain has been sending expeditions all over the place to avoid neutralization.
Much of the rest of the book is devoted to the pursuit of another alien, who has destroyed a grand total of zero human worlds. Even though (as another reviewer has pointed out) Hamilton is retelling the Dracula story, it is hard to get that excited about this pursuit of this enemy.
Storylines which gained major attention in the first book almost fizzle in the second. One wonders if Hamilton really plotted out the entire series before beginning writing. As it proved in some of his other books, endings are not his strong point. He's good at getting Humanity in a tremendous pickle, not so good at getting it out in a convincing fashion.
Still, worth reading just so you know how it came out!