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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
An extraordinarily long book with a lot of great world building and characters. Always new and interesting ideas like aliens addicted to experiencing human lives and using trains since wormholes give instant access to other worlds. It deals with the acceptance people easily give to "normal" life and how defensive we get when the norms are questioned. It also really brings home the concept of alien life. This is no Star Trek where most aliens are humanoids with prosthesis. No, these creatures have motives that are not remotely in human realms of concepts, with motives that are either indecipherable or irrational. The book is a slow build to an exciting end that is really a "to be continued".
The book meanders quite a bit, but it pays off in connecting most of the dots to one another by linking the most obscure characters and bringing forward less important characters in the end. Reading such a long book feels like a journey and I feel more involved in the end.
The book meanders quite a bit, but it pays off in connecting most of the dots to one another by linking the most obscure characters and bringing forward less important characters in the end. Reading such a long book feels like a journey and I feel more involved in the end.
Told from a wide variety of perspectives, Pandora's Star manages to tie together a space opera, a detective story, a political and business story, an adventure tale and soap opera-esque human drama into a fairly neat package.
I'm enjoying this book, but it does require a bit of dedication to keep on reading, as it lapses into a lot of details that seem unnecessary, but usually interesting. I think perhaps they are there to help see the overall picture of what the world is all about. There are a lot of characters to keep up with, and since most people live for a very long time, the relationships become complicated, especially due to the dynasties that rise up out of the long lives. People go for rejuvenation therapy, and come back as whatever age they choose. Some come back pretty young, and then spend the next several years reenjoying sex in their young bodies, and others choose a more mature age to give them more respect.
The main story so far is the discovery of a planet that had been mysteriously enclosed in some sort of force field by an unknown race. Turns out there may have been a good reason for this, because when they are inadvertently released, it's like when you kick an anthill and the ants start coming out like crazy, except in this case, each ant has a fair amount of intelligence, and can connect with all other ants somewhat like distributed computing. So all together, they have capabilities that far surpass those of us lonely humans. Oh, yeah, and their main goal in life seems to be to kill all other races so there will be no competition for them, although their goals are unclear, and seem to be about equal to the ant's.
There's a bit of everything in this book - super AIs, strange aliens, unknown subversives, sex, etc. It's all lots of fun, but it ends right in the middle, so it's obvious that you need to keep reading the next installment, which I've already started.
The main story so far is the discovery of a planet that had been mysteriously enclosed in some sort of force field by an unknown race. Turns out there may have been a good reason for this, because when they are inadvertently released, it's like when you kick an anthill and the ants start coming out like crazy, except in this case, each ant has a fair amount of intelligence, and can connect with all other ants somewhat like distributed computing. So all together, they have capabilities that far surpass those of us lonely humans. Oh, yeah, and their main goal in life seems to be to kill all other races so there will be no competition for them, although their goals are unclear, and seem to be about equal to the ant's.
There's a bit of everything in this book - super AIs, strange aliens, unknown subversives, sex, etc. It's all lots of fun, but it ends right in the middle, so it's obvious that you need to keep reading the next installment, which I've already started.
It's a great story and I'm reading the next one, eventually, but I do not care for the way this author writes certain women. He oversexualizes and it's annoying. Honestly a lot of the characters are very one dimensional, especially the female ones...which is probably why it took me over a year to get to a point where the story actually picked up and I wanted to read it for longer than 5 minutes at a time.
I almost didn't finish it until my brother in law convinced me it was worth it but after these two books I definitely won't be reading another Peter F. Hamilton series. I think I'll stick to James S. A. Corey and the rest of the people who write more realistic traits into their female characters.
I almost didn't finish it until my brother in law convinced me it was worth it but after these two books I definitely won't be reading another Peter F. Hamilton series. I think I'll stick to James S. A. Corey and the rest of the people who write more realistic traits into their female characters.
Audiobook didn’t work for me. May pick it up in the future in print.
adventurous
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Peter F. Hamilton's "Pandora's Star" is a crazy-huge-scope space opera with a wide variety of very interesting and unique alien varieties. It is one of the only Sci-Fi stories I've read where there were aliens that were comprehensible but very different from humans in psychology. There are a wide variety of characters all over the moral/pragmatic spectrum, and many of them act as the protagonist for a while without the author clearly endorsing or condemning their choices.
This is my first Peter Hamilton book, and I actually read it as an audio book. I enjoyed the book; it was fast-paced and well written. I think I may read it in print at some point, because there are a lot of points of view that change rapidly; I may have missed some details because I missed a change while listening.
The book starts out with the discovery of an odd occurence in a star system 750 light years away from the Commonwealth: two neighboring stars simultaneously disappear. A starship is sent out to investigate the incident, and to determine if the aliens responsible might pose a threat to the Commonwealth. And so the space opera begins...
The book is filled with aliens, elves, intergalactic politics, conspiracy theories...all in all a great space romp. And the ending is, of course, a cliff hanger; the story continues in Judas Contained>.
The book starts out with the discovery of an odd occurence in a star system 750 light years away from the Commonwealth: two neighboring stars simultaneously disappear. A starship is sent out to investigate the incident, and to determine if the aliens responsible might pose a threat to the Commonwealth. And so the space opera begins...
The book is filled with aliens, elves, intergalactic politics, conspiracy theories...all in all a great space romp. And the ending is, of course, a cliff hanger; the story continues in Judas Contained>.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Despite the fact that it took me longer to read this than anticipated I did enjoy my time in this world. The vast majority of this book is world building and a large cast of characters that initially seem irrelevant to one another but slowly as you get deeper more and more connections are made. I think the fact that there is about 850 pages of set up before you get to the main conflict of the book could be seen as a weakness but it really made what happens more meaningful to me in the long run. The end was a bit of a cliffhanger and I'm intrigued enough to read on but I think I need something a little less daunting in between because two chunksters back to back can be exhausting.