One for a reader who loves very long novels (Peter F. Hamilton in general)

Member Name: darren55

Product:	Peter F. Hamilton in general
Date:	05/11/09 (15 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intelligent and resourceful novels

Disadvantages: Very long novels

Peter F Hamilton is an English science fiction writer who tends to be labelled as the best Englsih sci fi writer around at the moment, he's best known for his Nights Dawns Trilogy trilogy.

his writing is one for the person who likes incredibly long novels in which everything moves at a slow pace, his Nights Dawn trilogy was a trilogy in which each novel came in at over 1000 pages each. He has the habit of writing each chapter from a one person perspective and tends to have around 6-8 main characters in each novel, these characters tend to be seperate for large chunks through out the novels but do sometimes meet up.

Hamilton as with many writers tends to have a bit of a hang up over bofy image, nearly all his characters tend to be young, good looking and think at least in parts with their sex drive. That includes the female characters, in fact they tend to be more explicit than their male versions, the depictions of sex in the novels can be pretty explicit.

So his novels are hugely long, they tend to be very complicated and unlike many authors each trilogy is three interwoven novels rather than three stand alone novels. His themes in his novels tend to be complexcity of space flight, the confusion of religion in a many world universe and the fluidity between the real and the unreal. Many of his novels look at the mix between space and a type of magic this is especially prevalent in his Nights Dawn novels which have huge tracks of virtual world and transposition of one world over another, an example is in the Nights trilogy whose central point is the transposition of the dead minds over real bodies. One of the main characters is Al Capone returned to the 24th century.

The novels tend to get a little darker with each release, the themes more extreme and have more of an attack on perceived religion and in some ways look at the classic views on space travel from a classical literature view. One criticism is that the novels are too long and the characters therefore too spread out to keep in contact with their stories, also he tends to loose characters for 100's of pages and then reintroduces them, by then you've forgotten what their contribution to the novel is.

He also tends to introduce characters in one trilogy and not use them until future books, one example in the Dreaming void novels is a character who we meet at the very start and only reenters the stories about mid way through the third novel. I'd say that was around 2000 pages later and only the most dedicated can remember a characters role over that length of time. He also tends to write very complicated endings, which are very hard to follow and require re-reading but the endings are by no means short so the re-reading can take days.

Peter F Hamilton is clearly an intelligent composed writer, writing thoughtful articulate stories but sometimes I wish he's add a bit more adventure and be brave enough to have a bit of an edit to improve the pace of the stories.

Summary: Hard to follow at times but a decent novelist