adamgeorgandis 's review for:

Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton
3.0

Pandora's Star was the second book I read as part of the monthly No Elves! group. The first book I read for the group was Connie Willis's Doomsday Book, an all-time favorite. That selection, plus a glance at the list of books the group read before I joined, gave me the confidence I needed to begin Pandora's Star, a cinderblock of a book that checks in at just over 1,000 pages. I made it to the end of the book, but I did so with sharply decreasing satisfaction. Pandora's Star might be just the thing for some readers - author Peter F. Hamilton's success makes that seem very likely - but it was not at all for me.

The book's shifting points-of-view, a device I have enjoyed in many other books, was off-putting in Pandora's Star. Hamilton's cast of characters is vast, and I found myself genuinely interested in only a small handful of significant figures. When these characters took center stage, I was all in, but I found this happened much too rarely. I found the book a real chore when lengthy chapters focused on characters who interested me only a little.

Strangely, perhaps, I finished the book with a desire to read at least one more of Hamilton's novels. I have yet to do that, but I hope to do a bit of research online sometime soon, then choose a book that will give me a second look at Hamilton's work.