Peter F. Hamilton

"Eat Reecebread" (with Graham Joyce) © Interzone, Aug 1994 --short list : 1995 Tiptree --fiction : 1995 Interzone Poll W --/ cool sf story "Escape Route" (Night's Dawn) © Interzone, July 1997 A Second Chance at Eden, 1998 --novelette : 1998 Locus /10 --fiction : 1998 Interzone Poll /3 --/ fourth place space sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award ---------------------------------------------- "The Reality Dysfunction - Emergence" (nv) (Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 1, Part 1) © 1996, Warner / McMillan --sf novel : 1998 Locus /11 --/ fourth place space sf novel --/ wonder award --/ idea award --/ awesome scale "The Reality Dysfunction - Expansion" (nv) (Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 1, Part 2) © 1996, Warner / McMillan --sf novel : 1998 Locus /11 --/ cool space sf novel --/ wonder award --/ awesome scale Here is an epic which is almost too big for its own good. Yes, I enjoyed the occasional "sense-of-wonder" brilliantly-written episodes, and a general sense of a "great wide yonder", but in the end I got entirely tangled up (not in a good way) in endless wanderings of multiple character, many without any sense or purpose... It's almost like reading an unedited record of somebody's life - rough chunks of minute happenings.. various talks... whatever. Not to be too harsh, though, there is a wonderful creepiness and a thick desperate gloom hanging over the whole trilogy's setup: swarms of pretty much invincible dead creatures - zombies - come to life and threaten survival of every living thing in the Universe. This is a horror movie set to the grand scale of classic space opera, and I certainly enjoyed this aspect of it (for example, some atmosphere and echoes of Colin Wilson's writings there, and even Lovecraft's). There are also great depictions of a colony on a forested planet (and its pioneer lifestyle), wonderful glimpses of biological spaceships and organic technology, sweeping views of mining asteroids and cities in space - all this is nifty stuff, for sure. But, I as said, I got mired in this book's overblown narrative, and - seriously - I'm not even sure if I can ever finish it. So this review currently covers only about first two books out of the six-books series. Oh, well... review: 09-Jul-06 (read in 2005) ----------------------------------------------

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