speljamr reviewed Great north road by Peter F. Hamilton
Review of 'Great north road' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
Police drama, mystery, military action, aliens, and expansive world building, all packed together in a 900+ page science fiction epic. Peter F. Hamilton just can't do small! And I'm all the happier for it.
This is a must read book if you are a fan of science fiction and Peter F. Hamilton proves again why he is among the top ranked current sci-fi writers. As usual, Hamilton goes to great lengths to build a unique world/universe and populate it with aliens very different from the typical sci-fi genre space dwellers. This is a very difficult task, because in reality any aliens we are likely to meet in the real world would have developed along completely independent evolutionary lines and are not going to be like us at all. And to create this in science fiction, to develop something that doesn't even think like humans, is a very hard task indeed. …
Police drama, mystery, military action, aliens, and expansive world building, all packed together in a 900+ page science fiction epic. Peter F. Hamilton just can't do small! And I'm all the happier for it.
This is a must read book if you are a fan of science fiction and Peter F. Hamilton proves again why he is among the top ranked current sci-fi writers. As usual, Hamilton goes to great lengths to build a unique world/universe and populate it with aliens very different from the typical sci-fi genre space dwellers. This is a very difficult task, because in reality any aliens we are likely to meet in the real world would have developed along completely independent evolutionary lines and are not going to be like us at all. And to create this in science fiction, to develop something that doesn't even think like humans, is a very hard task indeed. Mr. Hamilton does it better than most, at least for what can be expected from a human brain.
I also found the near future police detective work to be absolutely fascinating. It was a real exploration of what it might be like to investigate a crime in a world filled with fancy surveillance equipment and tools, many of which were things that are just now making an appearance in our real world, for example, smart dust. It also explored the possible ways to counter such surveillance as the bad guys sure didn't make it easy for our detectives. And over-all, it was neat to see how this was then worked into the larger story and the military expedition to find an alien who may was implicated in the crime the detectives were investigating.
The are several characters to follow in this one and the back-story of many of them is intertwined throughout the book. There was at least one character that I felt was not really necessary to the story, but it didn't hurt anything to include; just seemed a little useless, like it was a character who was underdeveloped, started but never really finished being fleshed out. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one.
The ending: it was expansive enough to allow Mr. Hamilton to return to this universe again is he chooses to do so, but final enough that this book can stand on it's own without any further follow-up.
I strongly recommend this one and felt it was well worth the time invested; I'm still feeling the after shock of finishing a book where you can't stop feeling like your still in that world.
