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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
I enjoyed this much more than I expected. I can't remember when or why I picked this up, and for ages it's been sitting on my shelf with me telling myself I should really get round to reading it, then not reading it because the danger of a 1000 page + space-based sci-fi if being boring and dry seemed to high. I am glad to report that my far was utterly misplaced. The story never wasted time on the kind of pseudo science drivel that drives me mad in these things - it told a story, and used just enough science-sounding words to sound plausible if you know very little about physics - just how I like it! The characters were interesting and diverse. I don't mean diverse in a race/gender sort of way - a vast majority of the characters were white men and women who sit a little bit to close to certain stereo types, but diverse in the sense of having wildly different motivations and character traits. The world building was impressive, and the way politics and culture develops in tandem with the imagined technological advancements is interesting. I will set about acquiring the next book.
This is the second book I read from Peter Hamilton. I gave the first one I read, fallen dragon, also 4 stars but that book was a little bit better than this one. And mainly because that was about 800 pages and the story had a conclussion, while this book has almost a 1000 pages and has no ending. The whole book feels like a setup for the next book.
Don't get me wrong. It was still a very good read, with lots of interesting characters, thrilling actionscenes and very entertaining futuretech. The story opens with the marslanding that is disturbed by two students who invented some machine to use wormholes to travel through space. And the story meanders from there. It involves mysterious aliens, police investigations lasting over 100 years etc...
One of the great things in this book is the alieness of the aliens. When you're looking through their eyes you get a very non human logic.
I would say try this out but remember that this is only half a story and the next novel has an even bigger pagecount
Don't get me wrong. It was still a very good read, with lots of interesting characters, thrilling actionscenes and very entertaining futuretech. The story opens with the marslanding that is disturbed by two students who invented some machine to use wormholes to travel through space. And the story meanders from there. It involves mysterious aliens, police investigations lasting over 100 years etc...
One of the great things in this book is the alieness of the aliens. When you're looking through their eyes you get a very non human logic.
I would say try this out but remember that this is only half a story and the next novel has an even bigger pagecount
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Pandora's Star marks my foray into the space opera genre. I must say, I've been expecting something else - more like Star Trek, I guess (space voyages and adventures). Nonetheless, Peter F. Hamilton delivered a solid read with a very interesting vision of humanity's future - that is plausible and seems very real.
We already work on genetics, can produce artificial organs and even clone whole animals (say hello to Mary the sheep), if we could just go one step further and clone man, we would only need one more thing - memory crystals, where everyone dumps their memories and feelings - think of them as your file backup in the cloud. Without them, even being fully genetically compatible, a clone is just a heap of meat that looks and works like you, but doesn't behave like you and certainly isn't you. But if we could dump our memories to an external storage device and then clone our body and download the memories to it... It would virtually mean immortality, something that humans have been seeking forever - be it literal or written in letters (poetry).
The inhabitants of Hamilton's universe (our universe projected a few hundred years forward) have achieved exactly that - there is no final death - if your body dies, you go for a re-life procedure and end up in a clone with all your memories. If you don't die, you can still rejuvenate your body every few decades and stay forever young and strong.
Living like that re-calibrated human brains, we've become more peaceful and warfares just died out. But there is another threat, a threat that only the Guardians of Selfhood - a terrorist group lead by a raving lunatic - Bradley Johansson - believes, a fairy tale they claim is real and dangerous - the Starflyer. The Starflyer is not real, it's a conspiracy theory which says that there's some alien working inside the human Commonwealth and its only goal is to bring peril to us. It doesn't help that believers turn to terrorist methods that we know all too well from 20th and 21st century. No one has seen it, no one has heard it, there is only the word of one men who claims he's been enslaved by it and used by it and then fortunately the Silfen (another alien race) freed him. Now he smuggles weapons and performs the acts of terror killing innocent people - all that to save the human race. Er, yeah, right...
You'll find a bit of detective story, some action (but I wouldn't say the book is action packed), adventure / other worlds and a very realistic image of ourselves in the future. All in all, Pandora's Star has been a great read and I'm looking forward to the second tome. It is a hefty one, counting almost 1000 pages (in print), but it's nowhere close to dull and it certainly doesn't feel too long. I think it should appeal to every hard sci-fi fan, even if this would be the first book of the genre that you read - if you like sci-fi movies, games, anime, whatever, you're gonna like Pandora's Star.
We already work on genetics, can produce artificial organs and even clone whole animals (say hello to Mary the sheep), if we could just go one step further and clone man, we would only need one more thing - memory crystals, where everyone dumps their memories and feelings - think of them as your file backup in the cloud. Without them, even being fully genetically compatible, a clone is just a heap of meat that looks and works like you, but doesn't behave like you and certainly isn't you. But if we could dump our memories to an external storage device and then clone our body and download the memories to it... It would virtually mean immortality, something that humans have been seeking forever - be it literal or written in letters (poetry).
The inhabitants of Hamilton's universe (our universe projected a few hundred years forward) have achieved exactly that - there is no final death - if your body dies, you go for a re-life procedure and end up in a clone with all your memories. If you don't die, you can still rejuvenate your body every few decades and stay forever young and strong.
Living like that re-calibrated human brains, we've become more peaceful and warfares just died out. But there is another threat, a threat that only the Guardians of Selfhood - a terrorist group lead by a raving lunatic - Bradley Johansson - believes, a fairy tale they claim is real and dangerous - the Starflyer. The Starflyer is not real, it's a conspiracy theory which says that there's some alien working inside the human Commonwealth and its only goal is to bring peril to us. It doesn't help that believers turn to terrorist methods that we know all too well from 20th and 21st century. No one has seen it, no one has heard it, there is only the word of one men who claims he's been enslaved by it and used by it and then fortunately the Silfen (another alien race) freed him. Now he smuggles weapons and performs the acts of terror killing innocent people - all that to save the human race. Er, yeah, right...
You'll find a bit of detective story, some action (but I wouldn't say the book is action packed), adventure / other worlds and a very realistic image of ourselves in the future. All in all, Pandora's Star has been a great read and I'm looking forward to the second tome. It is a hefty one, counting almost 1000 pages (in print), but it's nowhere close to dull and it certainly doesn't feel too long. I think it should appeal to every hard sci-fi fan, even if this would be the first book of the genre that you read - if you like sci-fi movies, games, anime, whatever, you're gonna like Pandora's Star.
I would have liked this book a lot better if I knew exactly what I was getting into. Let me be clear. This is not a book. This is half a book. Absolutely nothing is resolved in this book at the end. Nothing. Not a single story line has any closure. If I had known that, I'm not sure I would have started reading, since this means it's a 2,000 page book. It also doesn't need to be that long. The author is incredibly detailed. You will get history on every single world that a character goes to. You will get a lot of history on every single character (they can be hundreds of years old, so this is a lot of history). There were chapters and pieces that were really interesting, but overall, I can't say I'm glad I read this book, so it gets a 1 star rating.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Starts off very slow paced. The story and characters pull you along. My only gripe is it takes 500-600 pages to finally get to the point. It's worth pushing through. The ending is pretty great
One of my favourite books of all time. Peter has an excellent view of a future I'd like to live in (without the war of course!).
Entertaining space opera. Doesn't really end and has sequel.
What an incredible SF novel! It's a doorstopper, but such an intricate story that kept me turning pages. The author reveals his future world of Human society in a galactic age in a totally natural way, without it seeming like a lecture or an artificial "how we got here" story. The science was intriguing, and the characters (of which there are hundreds) compelling. There's also an intriguing at the heart of the book about an alien star system that had been enveloped in a force field. Who built the barrier? Why? And what's going to happen after the human's unwittingly let the aliens out? Reader beware, though, as the book ends on such an intriguing cliffhanger that you wont be able to wait to read the sequel.