Judas Unchained - Peter Hamilton

[Chimeco]

*****SPOILER TALK

Anyone read it yet? LOVED it, up until halfway into to the book after the commonwealth get's attacked again. What a letdown. I was SURE the commonwealth would be destroyed and they'd have to flee to the far off reaches of the galaxy and rebuild their civilizations, and in due course setting up a spectacular 3rd novel. But no, Peter wimped out and I sorely wanted to throttle the man for going the direction he did. Anti-climatic to say the least, after that attack. Ozzies journey was superb also, until the end. He meets 1 silfen adult and then goes home.. WHAT??!? A 3 year hike for that? It would have been better for him to have come back to an utterly destroyed commonwealth and then bring together the new mankind civilizations that sprout from it's destruction years later, and show them the way to rid the galaxy of 'ol morningLightMountain once an for all in book 3. Sadly, there will be no such thing now.


*******

I do have to say that the characters were superb, with all the transparent flaws there that we all love in good character building. The technology was dreamy, perhaps not as established as hard sci-fi writers are wont to do but easily believable ulnless you're a physics or math major. Not having any sort of military organization until the navy gets established was sort of hard to buy from the outset -but with a little effort i bought that too. The aliens kicked butt. I personally thought that if the situation would have been real, we'd have gotten our arses kicked. The rate that the humans put out new technology was a bit ludicrous too but oh well; 'ol Peter wanted us to win again I guess. Again, the last 300ish pages was very anti-climactic. The first half was a complete rush. All n all, a very good book. Good job Petey.

 

[Rane Longfox]

aus, and it was too big to bring with me, so I may have to start it all over again when I get home, but what I had read was great stuff. Absolutely loved Pandora's Star too. This duo, along with Night's Dawn, make Hamilton probably the best sci-fi writer around at the moment, which is quite a position to fill...

 

[purple_kathryn]

I have the hardback book sitting, ready for me to read - I keep getting lent books though which I feel obliged to read first to return to their owner

 

[creslin_black]

Well, I haven't had the occasion to read Judas Unchained yet, but I'm waiting for it to be released in paperback form. I read Pandora's Star and thought it was very good, if a bit shallow in some areas. For one thing, character development is fairly well written in some areas and non-existent in others. I liked Ozzie's journey through the Silfen portals to the series of extreme worlds, as it gave that section of the book this weird, ethereal quality, them wandering along the Silfen paths. But other parts weren't sufficiently explained, such as just what the Starflyer is although that may be explained in Judas Unchained.

 

[Werthead]

The Starflyer is explained in PS, you just have to piece it together. PFH comes straight out and tells you what it is in JU though.

Judas Unchained is a great book, a good ending to the series (and it only ever was supposed to be a two-volume story). However, I felt that the MorningLightMountain plot, which I thought was the central storyline, got short thrift compared to the Far Away/Starflyer plot.

Overall, The Commonwealth Saga was a good read, but was not as good as the superior Night's Dawn Trilogy, which remains PFH's defining work.

Btw, Judas Unchained is available now in the UK in mass-market paperback. PFH is currently writing The Void Trilogy, which will be set in the Commonwealth universe 1,000 years after Judas Unchained. It will revolve around a threat to the safety of the Galaxy, apparently unleashed by humanity itself, and will reveal the secrets of the High Angel (among other things left unexplained by PS & JU). The first book is due out about a year from now.

 

[creslin_black]

The one thing about this series, in particular the Prime race, is that it is a bit of a stereotypical alien race. I know that there has to be an enemy, but I actually think that aliens such as those from Nimrod Hunt (re-issued as The Mind Pool in 1993) are most interesting because of their truly alien outlook. The Prime race is analagous to the monster from every 50's and 60's B movie which simply stalks around and looks menacing, with no apparent complexity of character.

 

[Werthead]

Indeed. I think that was the point though: the Prime was never the real enemy. Both humanity and MorningLightMountain were being manipulated by the Starflyer, the true enemy of the books. Of course this doesn't work either: we at least get to see MLM's thought processes and motivations, whilst we don't even get to see the Starflyer properly.

Also, there is a school of criticisism that slammed Night's Dawn for having such a metaphysical thread and thought it would have been better with a 'proper' evil alien race as the opponents. So I think PFH wanted to give that to the critics, with his trademark twist of course.

 

[creslin_black]

What I think would be interesting for a novel is a war which the human race either loses partially, or loses to the point of extermination. There's almost a taboo against the human race ever losing in the end of books, and especially movies. We seem to need to feel that we're immortal, and in the end, undefeatable. I feel that, in a real-life situation, humanity would not necessarily always come out on top. It's depressing, but it's most likely true.

 

[Werthead]

Hmm. I believe Walter Jon Williams' Dread Empire's Fall Trilogy is in that vein (mankind is conquered by an alien empire that later collapses and humanity and the other servitor races have to battle their way to freedom). David Brin's Uplift books are also notable for featuring humanity as very minor player in galactic affairs.

 

[creslin_black]

I have read most of the Uplift Trilogy, and I thought it was very good. As for Dread Empire, I've heard of it but have never occasioned to read it. It sounds like it could be good though.

 

[Werthead]

Trilogy? You did know there are six Uplift books (altough the first one, Sundiver, is more of a prologue to the rest than part of the same story)? David Brin, btw, is returning the Uplift universe for his next project. Should be interesting.

 

[creslin_black]

Ah, sorry, did know that. I didn't know that he was planning to write his next book, nevermind that it would be in the Uplift universe. You're right, it should be interesting.

 

[Werthead]

I'm not sure the reason for Brin's long absence. He finished his latest novel, Kil'n Time, ages ago but it's only being published at the end of the year. He's also done an illustrated guide to the alien races of the Uplift Universe, but the illustrations were terrible. He's also done two new Uplift short stories on his website which apparently will relate to the new Uplift novels. However, given that one of those short stories shows one of the very first Uplift experiments in progress, I do worry that his new novels will be prequels rather than sequels. I still want to to know if the ships the Streaker found were the Progenitors' or not!

 

[creslin_black]

Well, the illustrations weren't terrible, but they could have been better. As for your question about the moon-sized ships that Streaker found in, what was it, the galactic halo of Gal 2?; anyway I assume that they were progenitor starships since from what I've gathered most races in the Uplift universe, even more powerful clans such as the Thennanin or Jophur, either don't have the capacity or the technology to build such titanic ships. It's odd that for how advanced the myriad races of the 5 galaxies are in that series, in many ways they can't hold a candle to the technology possessed by the Golden Oecumene in John C. Wright's The Golden Age, The Phoenix Exultant, and The Golden Transcendance.

 

[Werthead]

Not a series I am familiar with.

Oh yeah, if his next books are set after Heaven's Reach, I'm guessing they'll now be called the Civilisation of the Four Galaxies.

 

[creslin_black]

True, true. You really should read that series by John C. Wright. It really is very good, and it deals not just with advanced hard sci-fi concepts, but also with morality. It challenges your perceptions about what exactly constitutes a Utopia. In the series, set 10 millenia in the future, mankind has colonized the solar system (although mainly the inner system and Jupiter) and made astonishing advancements in nanotechnology, computational capacity, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics. In fact, the advancement has occurred to such a degree, particularly in cybernetics, that individuals can change their perception of reality by re-ordering the structure of the brain, as well as the rest of the body to immediately suit his/her whim. But yet, despite an unimaginable knowledge of these things, the Golden Oecumene (as the governing body is called) and its populace tends toward isolationism. They have not developed any means of interstellar travel, because there has been no motivation to. Humanity has become insular, and wary of expansion out to the stars (this societal convention is only shared by members of the densely populated inner system, not the members of the more sparsely populated outer system). Anyway, the series is very good, and is a must read. As for the now 4 galaxies, that is one of the few characteristics of the Uplift universe which I dislike. It is, however, very realistic, as it follows the Hubble principle.

 

[Robinali]

Not sure if I missed something.. But the Marie celeste on Far Away did not have ftl when it left the Dyson pair after barriers went up. Far Away is about 400 lighr years from Dyson pair and yet Dudley Bose witnessed the barriers going up in real time from his relative position. Yet the Marie celeste had already crash landed on Far Away many years previously... How is that possible? Am I missing something?

 

[Danny McG]

Hello and welcome to SFF Chronicles
Good question but it'll take a lot of digging through my copies of the duology to find out.
I think I'll leave it for someone else to answer!

Come to think of it I'm about due for a reread as the nights darken in.. Pandora's Star November coming up.

 

[Bagpuss]

The thing you're missing is where Bose is standing when he first observes the barriers going up. He's on a planet called Gralmond, which is 1,240 light years from Dyson Alpha. At the start of Pandora's Star the year is 2380. The light from the envelopment event is just reaching Gralmond. However, the actual envelopment event happened 1,240 years prior to the start of the book. And that's basically the explanation for it. Slightly later in Pandora's Star when they're discussing Bose's findings, Nigel says that CST opened a wormhole into deep space beyond the Commonwealth worlds to confirm Bose's discovery.

The barriers actually went up around the year 1140 and, from memory, the arkship crashed on Far Away some time in the 16th century.