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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
Fair to middling space opera, some great sections covered up with a lot of bloat. Only a few characters I'd actually care to read more about, but I'll probably read the sequel just to find out how the situation is resolved. I ended up just feeling sort of ambiguous about the whole thing.
this book takes a bit long to get going and isn't as densely packed with ideas as something by pk dick or harlan ellision. on the other hand i can wholeheartedly say that your patience will be rewarded with some big ideas and grand space opera that is well worth the wait. it's been a while since i read a book this long and for me the biggest adjustment was getting used to the pacing and once i realized it was more akin an epic saga by michener i enjoyed it much more.
i'm really looking forward to the rest of the books.
i'm really looking forward to the rest of the books.
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Great world building and cool aliens. Could have been a good book, but:
1. Too many unnecessary details. I just started skipping pages since they had no content at all.
2. Sexism. Was this written by a horny 16 year old? Worst female characters I have seen in a long time. Some parts just read like pure porn.
3. Technology could have been described in more detail.
4. The ending is a cliffhanger. I did not expect a complete ending, since it is a series. But ending on a unnecessary cliff hanger just annoyed me a lot.
Just a real pity. The plot had a lot of potential, it is just too badly implemented. I will not continue the series.
1. Too many unnecessary details. I just started skipping pages since they had no content at all.
2. Sexism. Was this written by a horny 16 year old? Worst female characters I have seen in a long time. Some parts just read like pure porn.
3. Technology could have been described in more detail.
4. The ending is a cliffhanger. I did not expect a complete ending, since it is a series. But ending on a unnecessary cliff hanger just annoyed me a lot.
Just a real pity. The plot had a lot of potential, it is just too badly implemented. I will not continue the series.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism
This one started off poorly for me, and after about a hundred pages I worried I wouldn't even finish it. It had a lot of characters and was told in a voice that didn't seem appealing to me. But the complex story began to become clearer after that and I began to enjoy it more and more. By the end I really wanted to see what happened next. I'll certainly be continuing on. The writer may have a style that doesn't fully work for me, but he sure is imaginative and able to pull together a super-complex and interesting tale.
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Pandora's Star is a very interesting book. I found a lot of the characters and plot quite entertaining, but the writing was overly detailed and I struggled with the pacing.
At the end of the book, I struggled with whether to move onto "Judas Unchained", but ultimately I felt I had to continue with the series to get any resolution of the storylines from Pandora's Star.
At the end of the book, I struggled with whether to move onto "Judas Unchained", but ultimately I felt I had to continue with the series to get any resolution of the storylines from Pandora's Star.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Broad, epic science fiction from the great Peter F. Hamilton. Pandora's Star opens the Commonwealth Saga with an excellent start, pulling you into a wonderfully detailed story that really shines in terms of world building and character development. The storyline is great too, and this is another winner from Hamilton for me as far as I'm concerned. His approach to hard sci-fi may not always be accessible for some, but his grand scheme and vision is one that is very much realised here. There are few better sci-fi writers in the game.
The concepts that Hamilton uses here are fantastic. The amount of planning that must have gone into the worldbuilding alone shows the thought and care that has put into something like this. The cover art too of the book is amazing, but then that's something that most of Hamilton's novels have in common so this is nothing new. There's a lot of characters in this book and even more are added a good way through so you're going to have to pay attention to what's going on otherwise you'll be quickly lost. But it's defiently worth paying attention to, as this isn't one of those books that takes a character and introduces them and the reader to the universe at the same time. It plunges you headfirst into a fully realised universe that takes a while to adjust to, but the end result is a fantastic experience that is something that I should have read a lot sooner.
It's 4 stars for now, but I'll probably end up bumping it up to 5 if I revisit it in the near future. I already have Judas Unchained on my Kindle and I just know it won't be long before I get stuck into that one as well. If you're a sci-fi fan who hasn't read any Hamilton yet, you're really missing out.
The concepts that Hamilton uses here are fantastic. The amount of planning that must have gone into the worldbuilding alone shows the thought and care that has put into something like this. The cover art too of the book is amazing, but then that's something that most of Hamilton's novels have in common so this is nothing new. There's a lot of characters in this book and even more are added a good way through so you're going to have to pay attention to what's going on otherwise you'll be quickly lost. But it's defiently worth paying attention to, as this isn't one of those books that takes a character and introduces them and the reader to the universe at the same time. It plunges you headfirst into a fully realised universe that takes a while to adjust to, but the end result is a fantastic experience that is something that I should have read a lot sooner.
It's 4 stars for now, but I'll probably end up bumping it up to 5 if I revisit it in the near future. I already have Judas Unchained on my Kindle and I just know it won't be long before I get stuck into that one as well. If you're a sci-fi fan who hasn't read any Hamilton yet, you're really missing out.
This book was my first forray into the work of Hamilton, a very well-established Science Fiction writer. Sadly, although I think some of Hamilton's ideas are super interesting and would make for a hugely complex and exciting Universe, these good ideas are so few and far between in amongst the 1,000+ page length that with the time it took to get to the next 'moment' I had already lost my excitement for the last one. I am definitely not afraid of a big book, in fact big books are some of my favourite ones and so I had truly hoped to love this. Sadly, I just think that this style of Sci-Fi isn't my personal taste and reading an epic tome with a huge cast, a lot of complex technology, and a setting that spans Galaxies, I just couldn't wrap my head around it all. I know a lot of people say that the Malazan series by Erikson is hard to get to grips with, for me, this was a hell of a lot harder to get excited by and even when I was excited, that tension was soon lost by the sheer page length.
This story has a huge amount of characters and I couldn't begin to list them all here but I will discuss some of the more important ones and those who I followed with interest. The first two characters, Ozzie and Orion, are my favourite from the entire book. These two become part of a big adventure following the 'paths' (an alien pathway between worlds and no-one really knows where they lead to). I genuinely found the mentor/mentee relationship here to be interesting and I liked the dynamic that the two of them found as the story went on and they found their rhythm. I also felt as though there was actually stuff happening in their story every time I was a part of it, and throughout the whole book their story was the only one which I consistently tuned into and found cool.
The next character I liked was MorningLightMountain and I will admit this is largely due to the name. MorningLightMountain is a being of enormous power and intellect who exists in the far regions of deep space, away from where the Commonwealth (a selection of planets inhabited by Humans and Aliens in harmony) is situated. This being and the way they interpreted the actions of humans fascinated me, and I do think there were some genuinely vibrant moments in this plot, however, it just didn't make up for the over-complication of some of the scenes.
We also have Kime who is a Captain from many generations past. Kime is enlisted on a mission to go to a far off barrier which has been discovered in Space and see if he and his team are able to find out what is behind this barrier. Little does he or the team know that there may be far more than they bargained on hidden away, and it may be hidden for a reason (this is the major thread of the story which most of the characters connect to).
We also have Paula, a detective on the hunt for a long-time offender who is repeatedly escaping her clutches and foiling her attempts to capture him. Her story had a few ups, but was mostly dead boring for me sadly.
Melanie and Justine are two of the other female characters we meet and I have to say I found both to be non-genuine and irritating at different times (particularly Melanie who was just a complete annoyance to me).
We have various other people who have important status too and some of the aliens we meet caused me great amusement becuase of how they functioned, but I just couldn't tell you everyone or we would be here forever.
There were a few good things and one of these which I did like was the modification ideas and rejuvenation. Within this Commonwealth people have the ability to live forever and become re-born every few decades if they have the money to pay for it. They upload their memories so that their newly made bodies can keep the memories, and they start living their life again maybe in a new job, area or with new friends, lovers etc. This idea was cool to me and made for some really old cool characters who had a wealth of knowledge.
We also have things like the Alien races who definitely interested me a lot.
Sadly the good was far outweighed by overly-complex Space tech mumbo-jumbo which I didn't either care about or didn't understand. I appreciate you don't have to 'get' everything in a SF book as it's supposed to be fictional, but I like when I can comprehend how things work and why they work that way and what their use is, and I felt that often things weren't explained to a level where this worked for me.
I also felt that this book was way too huge for what actually happened. Maybe this is supposed to focus on the technology and characters more than the plot, I don't know, but for me it took a long time to even set up a plot and settle into it, and when it did it was so fragmented with all the povs that I still couldn't connect to it.
I read this with a few other friends and a few of them read 100ish pages and then dropped out. I finished this, and yet I do wish I had dropped out at pg 100ish as for me it just did not come together in a satisfying way and everything that did happen wasn't enough to make up for the amount of dead-weight pages which bored me. Sadly, I won't be investing in or reading any more Peter F Hamilton in the future unless it's novella length as this one was just way too intense for not enough return. 2*s overall and that's only for the few cool elements which I did like.
This story has a huge amount of characters and I couldn't begin to list them all here but I will discuss some of the more important ones and those who I followed with interest. The first two characters, Ozzie and Orion, are my favourite from the entire book. These two become part of a big adventure following the 'paths' (an alien pathway between worlds and no-one really knows where they lead to). I genuinely found the mentor/mentee relationship here to be interesting and I liked the dynamic that the two of them found as the story went on and they found their rhythm. I also felt as though there was actually stuff happening in their story every time I was a part of it, and throughout the whole book their story was the only one which I consistently tuned into and found cool.
The next character I liked was MorningLightMountain and I will admit this is largely due to the name. MorningLightMountain is a being of enormous power and intellect who exists in the far regions of deep space, away from where the Commonwealth (a selection of planets inhabited by Humans and Aliens in harmony) is situated. This being and the way they interpreted the actions of humans fascinated me, and I do think there were some genuinely vibrant moments in this plot, however, it just didn't make up for the over-complication of some of the scenes.
We also have Kime who is a Captain from many generations past. Kime is enlisted on a mission to go to a far off barrier which has been discovered in Space and see if he and his team are able to find out what is behind this barrier. Little does he or the team know that there may be far more than they bargained on hidden away, and it may be hidden for a reason (this is the major thread of the story which most of the characters connect to).
We also have Paula, a detective on the hunt for a long-time offender who is repeatedly escaping her clutches and foiling her attempts to capture him. Her story had a few ups, but was mostly dead boring for me sadly.
Melanie and Justine are two of the other female characters we meet and I have to say I found both to be non-genuine and irritating at different times (particularly Melanie who was just a complete annoyance to me).
We have various other people who have important status too and some of the aliens we meet caused me great amusement becuase of how they functioned, but I just couldn't tell you everyone or we would be here forever.
There were a few good things and one of these which I did like was the modification ideas and rejuvenation. Within this Commonwealth people have the ability to live forever and become re-born every few decades if they have the money to pay for it. They upload their memories so that their newly made bodies can keep the memories, and they start living their life again maybe in a new job, area or with new friends, lovers etc. This idea was cool to me and made for some really old cool characters who had a wealth of knowledge.
We also have things like the Alien races who definitely interested me a lot.
Sadly the good was far outweighed by overly-complex Space tech mumbo-jumbo which I didn't either care about or didn't understand. I appreciate you don't have to 'get' everything in a SF book as it's supposed to be fictional, but I like when I can comprehend how things work and why they work that way and what their use is, and I felt that often things weren't explained to a level where this worked for me.
I also felt that this book was way too huge for what actually happened. Maybe this is supposed to focus on the technology and characters more than the plot, I don't know, but for me it took a long time to even set up a plot and settle into it, and when it did it was so fragmented with all the povs that I still couldn't connect to it.
I read this with a few other friends and a few of them read 100ish pages and then dropped out. I finished this, and yet I do wish I had dropped out at pg 100ish as for me it just did not come together in a satisfying way and everything that did happen wasn't enough to make up for the amount of dead-weight pages which bored me. Sadly, I won't be investing in or reading any more Peter F Hamilton in the future unless it's novella length as this one was just way too intense for not enough return. 2*s overall and that's only for the few cool elements which I did like.