5 Super big starsA new favorite read of mine. This massive tome has everything that a sci-fi lover would ever want...Review to comeWhat a total waste...I never came back and wrote a review for this book which is now among my very favorite novels. This is probably the longest novel that I have ever read, but I never felt it. Hamilton creates a massive cast, places them in an epic adventure, and has it cover vast distances of space. This is truly space opera at its finest.I wish that I had taken t...

90% of Pandora's Star irked the crap out of me. First, it just goes on and on and on. It's seems like a bunch of stories pieced together with no real connection. Many of the storylines never even go anywhere. Hamilton does a phenomenal job of over-describing everything. It gets mind-numbing.Second, the sexism really annoyed the heck out of me. I'm not usually one to scream "sexism", but Hamilton can't resist talking about any female character's looks and about how some male character would like

6.0 stars. This one may make it onto my list of "All Time Favorites" but I am going to wait until I finish Judas Unchained as the two books should really be treated as one VERY LONG novel. This was an amazing read filled with mind blowing ideas and superb (and I really mean superb) world-building. Do not let the length of the book keep you from giving it a try. It is incredibly well-written throughout and I think the length is warranted given how much is going on. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

Some time in the not far future humanity suddenly decided it is more fun to go to Mars than have endless wars in the Middle East (hard to believe this sudden break of a common sense, is not it?) In any way NASA got enough funding to organize a flight to the Red Planet. After a long flight with a trained crew everything was ready for landing with all the appropriate fanfares and direct video translation to Earth. The moment US flag was about to be proudly planted in Martian soil something very co...

From the other ratings, there are lots of people who like this a lot, so it may be unfair to review this book in comparison with the best "hard science fiction." Thus, this is a warning for the other people who don't know what "space opera" is and are looking for the next Asimov or OS Card. He's not here.Space opera. According to Wikipedia, "New space opera proponents claim that the genre centers on character development, fine writing, high literary standards, verisimilitude, and a moral explora...

This book was my first forray into the work of Hamilton, a very well-established Science Fiction writer. Sadly, although I think some of Hamilton's ideas are super interesting and would make for a hugely complex and exciting Universe, these good ideas are so few and far between in amongst the 1,000+ page length that with the time it took to get to the next 'moment' I had already lost my excitement for the last one. I am definitely not afraid of a big book, in fact big books are some of my favour...

This is up there with the best of the best for sci-fi space opera extravaganzas. It’s got world-building par excellance, brilliant projections of technology, and a great cast of characters. Set in 2380, Hamilton poses for us a Commonwealth of hundreds of planets colonized by different styles of humanity, made possible by wormhole technology. Immortalizing rejuvenation, artificial intelligence, and computer storage of human memories are standard fare woven into the saga in fresh ways. The few ali...

Welcome to the future.Old age, true death, and lack of space are things of the past. Wormholes have given us new worlds, peace, and prosperity.Through a grand cast of characters, side stories and back stories, Peter Hamilton makes you a resident of the Commonwealth. Nine hundred pages of investment before the nuke hits the mountain and your gut clenches. I downloaded the kindle and audiobook to Judas Unchained before writing this review.

Better don´t try to find out how to deactivate that space megastructure.The überbeing Morning Light Mountain and the idea of a collective intelligence hive mind exponentially growing kind of insect like other kind of intelligence than humans thing, that is similar to a virus gone meta, is one of the most fascinating alien intelligence descriptions ever. Ever ever until it comes and exterminates your race. It´s not directly evil, it just hasn´t the intellectual need or interest to grasp that conc...

This book is fat!That was my first thought upon picking up this book. Still with all the recommendations I have been getting from the good people at Reddit's science fiction books community ("r/Print SF") and other reviews I wanted to give it a go. With a book this long I would end up either rating it one star for wasting so many hours of my time or five stars for entertaining me for those many hours. I think I'll be magnanimous once again and go for the 5 stars option! This is not to say the bo...

3.5 *In a lot of ways, this ambitious novel, like all of the Peter F. Hamilton novels I can think of, should be put on a higher rung than all the other SF out there. Why? Because it's LONG.Throw in an enormous cast of characters who won't die because they can be uploaded and put back in new bodies, complete with full rejuvenation treatments that sometimes go wrong, space travel, wormhole technologies, and a huge Commonwealth of systems fully colonized.Add characters of all stripes: from reporter...

Science-fiction's answer to The Malazan Book of the Fallen? It does come quite close in many ways.To begin with a complaint, I am somewhat astounded by the effort-to-gain ratio expected from the reader here. It is apparently impossible to tie up a single plot thread in this book despite its modest length of 1144 pages. It reads like the first half of a book that Hamilton was simply not allowed to publish as one single 2500-page volume. Everything that happens could easily be squeezed into half t...

First of all, let's get all the bad things about this book out of the way. Um... let's see. It's really, really thick. Oh, and it has a cliffhanger ending, because of the sequel. Um... surely there must be something else I can come up with? Now, the good: and, boy, there is a lot of that. This novel reads like a greatest hits of everything that is cool about science fiction. Yes, it is a massive book, but that's because it's filled with all kinds of goodies. You want it? It's probably here. It a...

We begin at the beginning, because the beginning is awesome and foreshadows the epic quality of Pandora's Star, as well as the sense of humour, levity, and gravity that Peter F. Hamilton uses to create an incredibly compelling and vast narrative.Wilson Kime is the pilot of the first manned Mars lander. The mission crew steps onto the surface and raises the United States flag, only to be interrupted by a stranger in a home-made space suit. That suit is attached to a pressure hose providing a brea...

Awesome book. This moves to the top of my favorites. I enjoyed all aspects of this book, including the characters, story and technology. I am very much looking forward to starting the second book.On reread, I agree with my original assessment that this was very good! It presents a fascinating idea of what our future could be if certain breakthroughs in wormhole technology really could be harnessed, and how that would allow human expansion into our galaxy. I listened to the audiobook version this...

I have very mixed feelings about this book, and of the experience of having read it. As a result, I'm not sure I can say that I truly 'enjoyed' it; it's well-crafted, overall, but at the same time not without its frustrations.First, the good stuff: there's a hugely epic plot here, ultimately concerned with ensuring the continued survival of the human race; bold, three-dimensional characters who are intriguing, and draw you into their story; plot twists that you truly never see coming, and which

What a mediocre attempt. I somehow managed to slog through all 989 pages of this, and it never completely lost its narrative thread, in spite of an astonishing redundancy in unnecessary description. It is also significantly hampered by a lack of imagination; my suspension of disbelief cannot withstand the idea of the year 2380 basically looking *just like* the year 2010, only with extra planets, and a small handful of cool new tech. By the end of this tome, Hamilton has *almost* managed to put t...

It’s been a while since I’ve read Sci fi this good. I’ve probably been making poor reading choices in this genre for a bit. But finally, I’ve hit pay dirt with an author who has hit the sweet spot with great concepts, epic landscape/world building, excellent plot, AND , very importantly, excellent CHARACTERISATION. The story is set some 300 years in the future where wormhole technology has allowed humanity to spread out to begin colonising other star systems.This was a big book and a lot denser

Superb, Awesome! The first-half of The Commonwealth Saga is 988 pages. The second half "Judas Unchained" is 1,236 pages and completes the "2,200 page single book". Don't be scared off! This is an incredible value!This is Very Good, hard sci-fi, many many characters, so it takes a while to get into the book. When I started the first book, I felt there were far too many, too wordy descriptions of the local scene. Creative often, but perhaps the whole saga could lose 100 pages.The evolution of the

3.5 stars, rounding upQuick pros: complex story, huge cast of characters, and it was cool to see how people crossed paths. I love that it's very, very hard SF. With huge stakes!It's easier to spew about the cons than pros with this one, honestly. I just really enjoyed the story and the worldbuilding and really need to know how it ends!Quick cons: Um. The sexism. Yeah. Paula is the only main female character who doesn't get a sex kitten moment. Probably because she's written as a man. And just -