I’ve read thousands of pages written by Peter Hamilton, many thousands, usually in the form of voluminous trilogies (Night’s Dawn, Void, Salvation) or other collections (Commonwealth Saga, Mandel Files) in addition to single volume works such as Great North Road and Fallen Dragon. Hamilton is a brilliant writer of hard science fiction.

This is the second collection of his short stories that I have read, following right on the heels of his collection, Manhattan in Reverse. As is the case with his other work, the hard science fiction in these stories is excellent. There is one novella length work (the title piece) and six other shorter tales, most of which are set in the Night’s Dawn universe.

If you like hard science fiction, you’ll enjoy this collection. If you like the style, there are many thousands of pages of similar work available to you. ( )

This collection of stories, one of which is a novel by 1960-1970s standards, is set in the universe of the bizarrely popular Night's Dawn Trilogy. All of the stories here are better than any of or all of the volumes in that trilogy. The novel is a murder-mystery, something that Hamilton does well. One of the stories features the crew of the Lady MacBeth,, familiar to all Night's Dawn readers. Other stories have disparate settings and themes and that is what makes this book much better than most of Hamilton's other works; some of these stories are actually about something more than either space operatic adventure or whodunnit. Some of them have a classic sting-in-the-tail SF short story construction. If you liked any Hamilton at all, you should enjoy this collection. ( )

A series of short stories in the Night's Dawn Universe. They are all well done and show different aspects of his world as he developed the ideas. I really enjoyed it. ( )

This second "taste" of Peter F. Hamilton's short works was even more intriguing than the first, and since it introduces many of the elements of his massive novels - in particular the Night's Dawn trilogy - it encouraged me even more to take the jump or, as some of my fellow bloggers defined it, to overcome author intimidation.

A Second Chance at Eden is a collection of short stories, but the one that truly fascinated me is the one from which the book draws its title: once more I encountered a murder mystery, as was the case with Watching Trees Grow, but it was completely different, starting with the background in which the investigation takes place.

Full review at SPACE AND SORCERY BLOG ( )

Personally, I'd recommend you read this after the Night's Dawn trilogy, but you could read them in either order, or indeed, read one without the other.

There's nothing here which matches Night's Dawn for greatness but it does lack most of the grammatical problems which plague the novel.

The best is the title story. The slightly noirish tone is well done and all the Biblical references work. I wrongly guessed the murderer, but wasn't far off when you take the twist into account ( )