📝Book Thoughts: Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained by Peter F Hamilton

One of my core comfort genres is schlocky, boring and needlessly verbose science fiction. And Mr Hamilton delivers that in abundance in this two part series.

The books have a good hook, two distant stars are instantaneously surrounded by Dyson Spheres locking out all light and access.

This is the inciting incident that begins to wake up the slumbering human race. The future here is not one of spaceships but one of wormholes. People sauntering from planet to planet like stepping in and out of buildings. Massive train networks connect worlds across the commonwealth.

People live for many life times and rejuvenate themselves. Broadly life’s pretty groovy in the commonwealth. There’s no big alien war or conflict. There’s no real loss of life or struggle for the humans.

At least, not at first.

The book is really about how this culture of luxurious and lazy humans have to grapple with the crisis of exploration and war in space. Think the folks from Wall-E suddenly have fend off an invasion force of Jem’Hadar.

Many people will find these books slow. Many people will find these books boring. And these people are not incorrect. What some writers can tell in a sentence, Hamilton will tell in several chapters. And while this really kills any kind of plot rhythm in the books, it does a great job at immersing you in this world. The commonwealth feels like a real place, you understand the daily struggles of the people in it. So when it’s way of life is threatened it hits that much harder.

The real standout from this series is a chapter in the first book, that is entirely told from an alien’s perspective of their first contact with humans. It is unique. Thought provoking. And blood curdlingly horrific. 10/10 would Morning-Light-Mountain again.

To be honest I am struggling to remember a lot of the characters now being a few months out from reading it. Like any good space spanning saga there’s lots of flabby needless stuff in here, but its all interesting. The whole subplot of the second richest man in the universe going looking for space fairies doesn’t impact the plot much, but its cool man.

There is alas, like a lot of scifi, needless weird sex stuff. The kind of stuff that doesn’t really add anything, just takes me out of the experience and feels like I’m just humouring the authors personal fantasies. And if I wanted that, there’s plenty of places to find better written equivalents.

The series is also a sort of detective story. There’s a rumour and an identity thats kept a secret through most of the story. And there are a few twists and turns with it, or at least theres one too few. For a lot of the second book I was like “Oh answer A is the obvious one, clearly there’s gonna be some clever rug pull that its acutally answer X or something” but alas, it was just answer A.

One quirk of the early 2000s ness of the whole afair is how no one has personal computers or personal phones but instead “E-butlers”. Its very quaint.

Overall, if you are a scifi nerd who has an appreciation for dull epic space operas that are honestly a bit of a slog then you’ll eat well here.