Lightstorm (1998)

I stopped reading Peter F. Hamilton after trying to finish "Judas Unchained". Suffice to say I couldn't do it. When Peter F. Hamilton is on form, his work is wonderful — accessible, inventive, evocative and unbelievably daring. Sadly, getting to that stage tends to take Hamilton an eternity, and there's more roaming in his novels than in anything I've ever read.
Lightstorm is another disappointment. Mainly because it just doesn't hang together: it's too wordy, too slow and ultimately fails to convince. In fact, the whole scenario depicted in the novel isn't particularly convincing: a bit of localised pollution isn't exactly the worst thing a corporation has ever done. Another main grippe I had was with the boundaries between the real and the virtual worlds. The central question for me was, when Aynsley was confronted by Web-formed enemies, why didn't he just disconnected and concentrated on his real world problems? I know this was a YA novel, but even so Hamilton should avoid these kind of pitfalls.
On top of that the his usual world building comes again in the flavour of info dumps...
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