|
Fallom posted:They absolutely are. In the book I'm reading right now, killing someone or dying is no problem because "they'll just get re-lifed anyway." I don't really understand the problem: they've had several centuries to get used to this concept, so of course they're more comfortable with it than we are. Plus, I can't recall any specific instances of people saying "gently caress it, I'll do this crazy thing because who cares I'll just get relifed anyway," just lots of times where people get into dangerous situations and view that as a silver lining. All of the characters do their best to minimize risk and avoid dying, so I think you're misreading it. Unless there's a specific example you want to point to, which I certainly could be misremembering. In any event, yeah, I'd agree that his Commonwealth books are somewhat better than Night's Dawn, but for a fan of space opera like the OP, Night's Dawn is absolutely great up until the ending. And I didn't mind the ending either, since a) it was, as has been said, telegraphed, and b) TBB routinely made it seem far more awful than it actually was, so lowered expectations worked for me. I got to the end and thought "THAT'S what everybody is saying was the worst atrocity in the history of the written word?" In any event, OP, read the Night's Dawn trilogy and then move to Pandora's Star and its progeny - giant epic space opera about which you can form your own opinions.
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2009 15:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:50 |
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:I quite like Moonfall. At least, I should say I liked it maybe 10 years ago, I read it when it first came out and haven't really read it since. It's funny, I actually just got it out from the library today to re-read it, logged on, and saw your post. Anyways hopefully I'll get around to reading it again and it won't be absolutely terrible this time. Some of it I remember as being somewhat stilted, but having some pretty good Deep Impact-type scenes, nuclear rockets flying around, moonbase evacuations, jerry-rigged space suits, and other such genre staples done relatively well. I'll second this - Moonfall is silly and written at a McDevitt level, but it's good fun. It certainly delivers what it promises.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2009 15:24
|
|
|
Magnificent Quiver posted:They feature very prominently Although there are some big dogs that haven't yet barked, so I know I'm wondering when they'll show up, not if. I suppose we'll see. The divide into a new trilogy is a bit artificial - it's essentially a direct continuation of the series, just with a gap (a BIG gap) of time between Judas Unchained and The Dreaming Void.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2009 23:57
|
|
|
Aussie Crawl posted:The multi-body guy doesn't really serve any purpose to the story, he's introduced solely so that Hamilton can explain the multi-life concept, and that never pops up anywhere else in the narrative, so the only reason he seems to exist is that Are you still in the first book? If so, I don't want to spoil anything, but I think that this may prove (in the third) to be more important than it seemed, given who the girl turns out to be. (It also might just turn out to be wank material after all, but he spends enough time on the multi-life concept in the first book that I have to think it's going to be of some importance later. Time will tell, I guess.)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2009 21:49
|
|
|
Aussie Crawl posted:I'm not saying that Araminta is pointless, her plotline is clearly going somewhere, i meant the whole Mr Bowvey "Here are my 20 penises". He's there so Araminta can find out she loves a good gangbang and then she runs off to keep him out of danger at the start of the second Well, that's what I'm saying - I think maybe he'll come back for some reason in the third. At least I hope so, because you're absolutely right that so far it doesn't seem to have served any purpose other than titillation. Though I think that the main part of Hamilton's strength is coming up with interesting future human societies, and certainly that would include advances in sex. But that aspect does seem to be a bit more fully fleshed out (engorged, if you will) than it needs to be.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2009 22:18
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:And I've figured out how to kill Michael Bay: hand him the Neutronium Alchemist series and a budget. He'll stroke out trying to figure out how to get all that amazing poo poo filmed. Ha, as long as he directs and doesn't write the screenplay, that'd be fun. quote:Hamilton writes pulp page-turners, but very few people can conceive and write set pice action sequences like he can. Or cliffhangers. I'm patiently waiting for him to finish the Dreaming Void trilogy before starting it; after he sends a couple of characters off a waterfall and into motherfucking space in the last series, I liked that because it was a literal cliffhanger.  The Void trilogy's cliffhangers so far have not been nearly as cliffhangery as that one was, but they're certainly there. But I unabashedly love everything I've read of his (except Misspent Youth - what the hell was the point of that), so I'm not being objective or anything. I don't even mind the end of the Night's Dawn trilogy at all, because when a bunch of characters spend the last third of the trilogy searching for God, it's not a total deus ex machina when they succeed in finding it. The only big thing that I actually found I didn't like about the trilogy when I went through it a second time is that the whole thing with the Neutronium Alchemist didn't actually matter at all. They spend two books looking for it, find it, use it, it doesn't make any difference to the larger plot or conflict, and it's never mentioned again. And if having Mzu along when they went looking for the Naked God had been important, I'd look past it, but she was just kind of there. Honestly, I'll bet that you could edit out that entire subplot and the character of Mzu and the series as a whole wouldn't suffer for it, and would get quite a bit shorter and more accessible. Aside from that, though, I have no complaints about it at all.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2009 16:38
|
|
|
Magnificent Quiver posted:Can someone remind me of what the Neutronium Alchemist actually did? I recall getting to the end of the series and thinking "Wait, did they do something with that? I don't even remember" It blew up a gas giant or something and the fireball took out the zombie ships that were pursuing Joshua's ship. That's it. It did something cool with physics but was nothing more than a MacGuffin for the first two books that wasn't necessary. (edit: now if it had been used to kill a star or something more important to the plot, it could have been cool, but it was basically a big dead end as it was.)
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2009 23:29
|
|
|
Comstar posted:The impression I got was the rich elites dominated anyone else because they were rich and elite and only rich and elite people are elite enough to be rich enough to be just that much better than anyone else. Exactly. Look at your home "theater" system, and then look at Paul Allen's. Now fast-forward 1500 years.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 1, 2010 03:33
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:50 |
|
|
Hung Yuri posted:I recently got Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained, and The Temporal Void (for later). I'm halfway through chapter 1 of Pandora's Star and currently he's putting me to sleep, though I think this is how it was until about 200 pages into The Dreaming Void, so I'll stick with it. Stick with it - the first 200 pages of Pandora's Star become a shitload more interesting after you've finished the book. When you go back and look at how everything got set up, it becomes pretty loving awesome.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2010 23:50
|
|