Peter F Hamilton help!

giftgrub

Right...i just started the new Hamilton slugfest "Judas Unchained"

The only thing is that its been so long since i read Pandora's Star that i've forgotten a lot of what happened in the first book, meaning i'm a little lost in book 2.

Ive tried googling a synopsis but so far have had no joy.

If anyone knows where i'd find one it would be much appreciated.

Fenster

PM me. I'd be fed to the Starflyer if I went blabbing spoilers here.

I also finished Judas Unchained, fantastic book.

Jimboo_Jones

450 pages in ---- ohhh the starflyer has to pay!!!!!!

Manach

Just finished Pandora's Star yesterday. Cliffhanger endings; don't you just love 'em.
Just to confirm, that this is a 2 book series?

Vokes

Yes. The 2nd book is now on hardback.

qwertz

Hardback (standard (~€25?) and collectors edition (~€36)) in Waterstones and large format paperback for €14 as a special value offer in Hodges Figgis.

I just started Pandoras Star and really like it.

CiDeRmAn

What on earth is a collectors edition? Is the typeface posher? Does it exude some smell of incense and wisdom? Include a vial of the sweat of Peter F Hamiltons brow? Or is it a cynical ploy by a publisher to make people pay even more money when all you really want is the written text between the book covers?

bonkey

Wow. It was released on Hardback and Trade Paperback on the same day over here in Switz.....which seemed to be about a week before the UK release date

Cracking read, I must say.

As for a summery of Pandora's.....

Re-read the book.

No, seriously. If you can't remember, pick it back up, and do the pair back-to-back. You won't regret it.

jc

AnCapaillMor

Got about 80 pages to go in it. Cracking book so far, i want to marry that mellanie bird.

Ping Chow Chi

AnCapaillMor wrote:

Got about 80 pages to go in it. Cracking book so far, i want to marry that mellanie bird.

he always does have some knock out stunner in his books

Just finished it and it was great. Hopefully someday he will do another book in the same universe.

AnCapaillMor

Ping Chow Chi wrote:

he always does have some knock out stunner in his books

Just finished it and it was great. Hopefully someday he will do another book in the same universe.

finished it anyway, t'was good, but dunno like the nights dawn trilogy, i felt it ended quickly.

Yeah i reckon he's a bit of a perve, they were banging each other constantly in the nights dawn trilogy.

Raptor

Just finished Pandoras Star (had it for ages, but only started it when I found out that Judas Unchained was coming out!) Well worth the read at all, tbh perferred the Nights Dawn Trilogy but PS really got going towards the end so fingers crossed for the second book

Btw, on his site it says that his next work will be the "Void Trilogy", set in the same universe as these two books 1000 years later.

ixoy

I've just finished PS there two minutes ago. Really enjoyed it and got through it pretty quickly despite its skull-cracking weight. It's good to know that any time anything goes wrong now, I'll be blaming the Starflyer! Damned thing was behind everything bad in my life...

Some great pyrotechnics in this book, as in in all his books. How can you not be endeared to a book that has

23 planets being effectively nuked?

Go on the mountain!

Is "Judas Unchained" a worthy followup? And does it end more satisfingly than the Deus-Ex Machina way of Night's Dawn trilogy?

bonkey

Ping Chow Chi wrote:

Hopefully someday he will do another book in the same universe.

You do know that Misspent Youth is in the same universe? Its kindof a prequel.

jc

BossArky

I'm on page 68 of Pandora's Star, just getting into it and really looking forward to the next few days/weeks reading it!

ixoy

Just finished "Judas Unchained" yesterday - 949 pages of pure sci-fi goodness. It featured one of my favourite ever 1-on-1 battles with

Gore Burnelli vs Bruce McForester

and, importantly, it ends satisfyingly. Unlike with "Night's Dawn" where he appeared to write himself into a corner, it seems he had this one well planned out. These were the best two books I read in 2006. Full marks.

BossArky

ixoy wrote:

These were the best two books I read in 2006. Full marks.

You read both PS and JU already in 2006? :eek:

ixoy

BossArky wrote:

You read both PS and JU already in 2006? :eek:

I read them in Jan/Feb of this year and then use a CST wormhole to double-back and post about them tonight. That or a typo

CiDeRmAn

Read Judas Unchained in Nov and have to say, it sucked.
Its all a bit to soapy for my liking, story didn't grab me at all like the Nights Dawn trilogy did, and believe me I love the guys work, just seemed like an awful lot of padding.
Puts me in mind of the very overextended Foundation series, should have ended after the first 3 books, not including the Prelude book.
The thing about Judas was the number of coincidences yoy have to swallow about the number of characters that seem to save the world, they keep bumping into each other, get jobs in just the right places etc.
Don't get me wrong its still an enjoyable book, but nowhere near as good as his best.
Reading, and almost finished, the Richard Morgan book Woken Furies.
Thats a truely great read, aside from his ocassional lapse into writing pornographic love scenes.

ixoy

CiDeRmAn wrote:

The thing about Judas was the number of coincidences yoy have to swallow about the number of characters that seem to save the world, they keep bumping into each other, get jobs in just the right places etc.
Don't get me wrong its still an enjoyable book, but nowhere near as good as his best.

Ya see, I thought there was something behind that. At one point,

Morton comments on how it's an odd coincidence that he ended up in Randtown where Mellanie got her break interviewing Mark. I took it to assume that Hamilton is plotting something at this point, although he didn't appear to explain it. I figured it was the Starflyer but, since that went away, maybe the SI?

Maybe I'm giving him too much credit in thinking there's a new layer underneath this all but I definetely feel there's a lot more untapped with the SI so far and High Angel, both of whose storylines seemed to vanish quite quickly.

As for the soap opera elements, I forgave it. Sci-fi is one of the worst genres for the likes of dialogue and Hamilton does write space-opera rather than more hardcore stuff. I pretty much got exactly what I expected.

pH

Half way through Judas Unchained, cos I got both books for xmas. There are spoilers on the back of Judas Unchained which I'd shouldn't have read before starting Pandora's Star ... grrrrr.

Overall 2 fun books, though what's with his obsession to give us a model number for every train in the Galaxy?

I really hope the plot makes sense in the end, like really good sense or I'm gonna be annoyed!

BossArky

Beware, potential spolier below for Pandora's Star:

I have been reading Pandora's Star now for approximately 8 days (2 hours travelling to and from work each day gives lots of reading time) and on about plage 800-ish. The past 50 to 70 pages have been boring the cr@p out of me. First of all the political weekend getaway for all the big wigs in Seattle at Justine's, followed by Ozzie and Orions long long time on the ice planet.

I was enjoying the book up until these two sections... hopefully they will be over and done with soon and we'll be back into space or something more interesting.

BossArky

pH wrote:

There are spoilers on the back of Judas Unchained which I'd shouldn't have read before starting Pandora's Star ... grrrrr.

After reading your post I went and looked at the back of Judas Unchained which I got for Xmas but still have to read... you are right... it does tell you more or less what happened in Pandora's Star. I only read the first paragraph of the summary but forced myself to put it down least I ruin Pandora's star ending.

Vokes

Didn't think I was gonna buy this book for a while because its in hardback with a price north of €20. But found a trade paperback version this morning for €13.

Looking forward to getting stuck into it later

flinx11

Someone was asking is he doing anything else connected to the Commenwealth Series. He is at present writing a new trilogy based in the Commenwealth called the Void Trilogy.

No word as to plot but he expects to have the first book completed by this summer & published by winter this year.

flinx11

Sorry.
The only thing thats known is its set 1000 years after Judas unchained.

BossArky

I'm half way through Judas Unchained and you just ruined it on me. If the next one is set 1000 years in the future I presume humanity survive! :rolleyes:

flinx11

Whos to say its not about the primes setting up shop in Dublin!!!!!

The Silfin learn to wear pants.

CiDeRmAn

I'm just hoping that he creates somthing on par with the Nights Dawn Trilogy, as I have said before I found the 2nd book really disappointing overall, then read Woken Furies afterwards and it just compounded the feeling of disapproval, showed what an author can really do in this field.

BossArky

CiDeRmAn wrote:

What on earth is a collectors edition? Is the typeface posher? Does it exude some smell of incense and wisdom? Include a vial of the sweat of Peter F Hamiltons brow? Or is it a cynical ploy by a publisher to make people pay even more money when all you really want is the written text between the book covers?

I got Judas Unchained for xmas, it was all sealed up so that I didn't actually realise it was a signed copy, one of the limited edition apparently... its number 417 or 1000 according to the page where Peter F.Hamilton signed it.

On about page 730 now, and must say I was fairly dissapointed with it. Lots of long drawn out scenes with characters who have minor parts in the whole scheme. The MorningLightMountain sections and conflict scenes are great, but the rest was just mildly interesting enough to keep me turning the pages. I hope the last 200 have got some major action in there or I will be annoyed.

CiDeRmAn

Well, how did you get on? Nothing in the final section of the book made up for the tedium of the bulk of the rest of the novel. Too many happy coincidences, too few people in a society of billions keep falling into situations with each other for no apparent reason.
Sorry but massive space battle porn is not enough for me anymore, anyway, Iain M Banks writes it much much better!