Based on positive reviews, I started reading Peter Hamilton’s “Reality Dysfunction” series. The books are somewhat tedious; a little violent for my tastes; and kinda campy (the living dead?!?).
I finally gave up towards the beginning of “Neutronium Alchemist” when Hamilton decides to borrow from Star Trek’s “A Piece of the Action.”
But I’m still curious to find out what happens in the remaining books. Anyone care to share?
Thanks.
NOTE: I read these relatively long ago, and my comments are drawn from my notoriously unreliable memory.
After a lot of running around and a few too many subplots, the good guys win.
The zombification/possession causes cancer, so there is a medical logistical nightmare after a method is found of expelling the invaders (electric shocks?). Earth gets off relatively unharmed.
There is some general rapproachment among the various political powers and elements.
We find out about a super-advanced alliance of aliens that is observing the human civilization, but they refuse to help out and want to remain invisible.
The ending details are kinda fuzzy, but the humans get help from a “Naked God”, some superpowerful deux ex machina alien entity that another alien group had run into centuries before.
I think the books are worth reading, but I can see how they can become a bit of a chore.
The first book is good.
The second is OK.
The third is awful (with some interesting elements, nanonics anyone?)
The series has possibly the worst ending I’ve ever read, certainly for such a lengthy trilogy.
Apart from all the Naked God stuff the main character acts totally out of…umm…character, basically he gives up the vessel and space faring lifestyle he fought so hard for and settles down with his rural bride…nfw…didn’t ring true at all.
(btw anyone else notice how the quality of writing degrades over the course of the novels? though this isn’t confined to just Hamilton)
BTTW The series has bonus points for mentioning Ballymena and Northern Ireland in the context of a 500 hundred years in the future set sci-fi novel, now thats something I thought I’d never read (Ballymena is the nearest town to where I live) 
However Hamilton blows it by his patronising description of the Irish planet in the next book…
Thanks. Whatever happens to Dr. Alkad Mzu - the person who invented a super weapon of mass destruction and later escapes from Tranquility?
Someone described the series brilliantly as “A well-thought out sci-fi utopia invaded my mosters from another genre.”
I’ll try to summarise a couple of plot threads, there were too many for me to remember. Alkad Mzu escaped from Tranqulity in a voidhawk that swallowed into the habitat; left a small Alchemist on it destroying it as it was one of the ships involved in the war in her home planet; nearly got to destroy the sun of her planet’s old enemies forcing them to scatter away from their planet, but Sequestration got there first and she gave up and iirc got caught by and tagged along with Joshua.
Louise and Genevieve follow Quinn Dexter to earth, accompanied by some benign possessed, get involved with a secret conspiracy running Earth, which chases Quinn around a lot, while he turns into superman and get support from the devil worshippers. He summons some demons, but mistakenly gets a couple of characters from another plotline I’ve forgotten about.
Someone else take over now…
Well I liked it slightly more than it sounds you did, I didn’t personally think it went downhill quite so much. I read each book with as much enthusiasm as the last. Though I think the plot regarding Earth and the possessed seemed to go nowhere, other than to show us how Earth worked.
And I remember the possessed Irishman in the first book on Lalonde, was that the fella from Ballymena, hanged for some crime? The Irish planet (Kerry?) was so incredibly patronising. IIRC it was characterised by strict Catholicism and a lazy work ethic wasn’t it :rolleyes:
I think my disappointment with the ending of the series coloured my view of the trilogy as a whole, its just as if the author ran out of ideas and couldn’t think of a way to finish it off correctly. It was all building up to a truly spectactular showdown but then just…ends…“Whoo, we found this artefact that solves everything” 
Aye, that was him, I liked the laid-back sarcastic wit “Your gentlemen and their big, big guns” and thought he was an interesting (and totally unexpected) character.
My respect for Hamilton took a nose-dive with his description of Kerry (I think you’re right), simply trotted out every negative Irish stereotype in the book :rolleyes:
Y’know, I read the first book once, but don’t remember a bleeping thing about it, other than it seemed obtuse as heck at the time.
Reading this thread makes me glad I didn’t bother with the other books.
Yeah, me too. I picked up the first one a while back after hearing all kinds of praises for the series here and never managed to finish it. I was a few hundred pages in and he was still introducing characters and background with no sign of a plot anywhere to be seen.
Don’t get me wrong, I think his characters and background were interesting; I just wish they were doing something interesting as well.
By the way, if I could be so bold as to hijack my own thread, let me mention that I really enjoy sci-fi with swashbuckling heros who defeat the bad guy; save the universe; and get the girl. However, I do not enjoy page after page of detailed descriptions of torture, murder, rape and other cruelty.
Thus, I enjoyed the “Josh” sections of the series, and not much else.
Would anyone care to recommend a sci-fi book or two for me?
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE WHOLE SERIES
I think he wrote himself into a corner by the end of the second (or fourth) novel when he introduced the idea that curing people of the possession caused massive and life-threatening tumors, anorexia, and a host of other ailments. He now had an enemy that was unstoppable:
He probably realized that he had an unwinnable situation. (Well, at least unwinnable in just one book). He had a novel where the normal restoration of the status quo wasn’t going to be possible, so he cheated: he turned the novels into a wimpy critique of Confederation society (pretty much the same critique found in Simmons’ Hyperion: that human society has too much poverty, is too bland and homogenic (sp?), is too attached to the chasing of material things while not seeing the “true” nature of the society they live in), and he had a literal deus ex machina that Joshua Calvert (Get it? Yuck, yuck) turned to in order to relieve him of his cross of pain… which Satan, er, the Naked God does.
He introduces another non-human civilization who’s acquisitive and aggressive nature will make for a very interesting group of competing aliens if Hamilton decides to further develop the Nights Dawn Series. I was kind of surprised how he ended it in a Dune-esque scenario: the Son of, er, Joshua is now the planetary overlord of the Confederacy’s #1 drug dealing planet. All he needs to do is figure out galactic transportation and prescience through the use of Norfolk Tears and Joshua has it made.
All in all I liked the books (regardless of how silly they could get) and have read everything that Peter Hamilton has put out, except his very latest.
Well, don’t read the Gap series by SR Donaldson! :eek:
You might want to try A Mote in Gods Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Might I suggest “Brightness Reef” and “The Uplift War” by David Brin? These both have imaginitive endings, are very engaging, and are well-regarded.
If you’re looking for something even deeper and lengthier, I suggest “A Fire Upon The Deep” and “A Deepness In The Sky” by Vernor Vinge. These are epic, thoughtful, and also highly-regarded.
(I know. Book titles are supposed to be underlined, but I’m being lazy.)