The Evolutionary Void

Yay! I finally made it through one of these giant book series. This actually was pretty interesting. Far, far, far too long but interesting nonetheless. #gettothepoint ( )

While the whole series was good, I wouldn't put those books on the same level as the original series in this universe. But I applaud the author for creating a very plausible future in e same universe. ( )

Having waited what feels like eternity to get a mass market paperback edition of this, the final volume in the Void trilogy, I went back and re-read the first two volumes in order to remind myself what was going on.

Those previous volumes did not withstand a second reading very well; their primary plus points were the new SF ideas and of course, they aren't new second time around. So...1400p to remind myself of the backstory, then onwards!

The final volume suffers problems similar to those of Hamilton's two previous multi-volume space opera sagas, namely; plot points seen hundreds of pages in advance, too many disparate characters leading me to always be thinking, what's going on with...whomever...and characters that are too similar to characters in other books (even the ones that don't actually appear in earlier books in the timeline.) There is also something of E.E. Doc. Smith threat/technology-inflation.

This series is set hundreds of years after the closure of Judas Unchained in which an inter-stellar scale war is fought with weapons that can destroy stars, create blackholes, turn humans into walking battle tanks etc. But now we're in the future and technology has to have moved on...where? Hamilton strains to make believable advances on people who are immortal except for accident or deliberate violence that can already make stars go nova. The threat, which was last time genocide of all of humanity is this time genocide of the whole galaxy...

All that said, these faults are not as severe as in the previous efforts; I couldn't foresee every major plot point well in advance (although I felt I should have guessed more) and there are some surprises at the denouement. Which leaves the ending(s): Books that bring disparate characters across a galaxy in to play in critical events can't just end. They have to ends multiple times over in order to close all of the characters. This usually detracts even when the denouement was great.

There is a short story at the end of this volume, promoting a forthcoming collection of such by Hamilton. It is less than 20p long and superior to the 2000 p saga preceding it. All of Hamilton's best works have been completely self-contained and the longest of them approximately the size of any one volume in this series. I don't think I'll be reading any more multi-volume space operas by Hamilton but I will pick up that short story collection and any stand-alone novel he might release in the future.

Post scriptum: Reading Dan's review reminded me of some things I forgot to say: This volume appears to have some (not very subtle) sub-text. For instance, Utopia is bad because boring, humans need to struggle in order to have fulfilling lives, cultural imperialism is bad. People need to be allowed to evolve in seperate ways as long as no coercion is involved. This is all positive stuff, in that any sort of subtext seems absent from most of Hamilton's novels. (Fallen Dragon is an exception.) Most of these ideas are in fact SF staples and unfortunately done better elsewhere. In particular, the ideas of humans physically as well as culturally evolving in muliple directions were dealt with much better in Dan Simmons' at least equally gigantic Hyperion Cantos. ( )

A pretty good end to the Void trilogy, wrapping up both Edeard's personal journey within the Void and the widespread shenanigans going on outside. Alas, the book does seem to stall a little compared to its two antecedents. There are quite a lot of characters just waiting in the wings doing a great deal of nothing during the book; a fact highlighted when the characters we do follow say "This task I'm doing will take three days," and then on the next line they're done, merely flagging the fact that all the character's we've not heard from recently must've been sitting around for the previous three days scratching themselves.

The trilogy's ending (by which I mean the end of this book, not just the book itself) isn't perhaps the rousing finish such a vast set of tomes deserves, rather the human antagonist and protagonists meet up in the centre of the book's real threat—the Void—and then have a quick philosophical chinwag to sort everything out. But then the Night's Dawn trilogy, for all its awesomeness, also suffered with its lacklustre finish. That being said, it's not the destination but the journey that matters, and despite its flaws this closing book of the trilogy does deliver a fun old trip. ( )

A pretty good end to the Void trilogy, wrapping up both Edeard's personal journey within the Void and the widespread shenanigans going on outside. Alas, the book does seem to stall a little compared to its two antecedents. There are quite a lot of characters just waiting in the wings doing a great deal of nothing during the book; a fact highlighted when the characters we do follow say "This task I'm doing will take three days," and then on the next line they're done, merely flagging the fact that all the character's we've not heard from recently must've been sitting around for the previous three days scratching themselves.

The trilogy's ending (by which I mean the end of this book, not just the book itself) isn't perhaps the rousing finish such a vast set of tomes deserves, rather the human antagonist and protagonists meet up in the centre of the book's real threat—the Void—and then have a quick philosophical chinwag to sort everything out. But then the Night's Dawn trilogy, for all its awesomeness, also suffered with its lacklustre finish. That being said, it's not the destination but the journey that matters, and despite its flaws this closing book of the trilogy does deliver a fun old trip. ( )