The Evolutionary Void (with bonus short story If At First...) (Commonwealth - The Void Trilogy Book 3)

Peter F. Hamilton's The Evolutionary Void is the third (and final) book in the British science fiction grandmaster's Void Trilogy which started with The Dreaming Void and The Temporal Void. I was looking forward to reading this book very much and even purchased the hard copy on Amazon.com months prior to its official publication.Hamilton is well-known for his long, intricately plotted, hard sci-fi space operas which are peopled with a dizzying number of characters. The Evolutionary Void is no exception, and it is even more complicated than his other books because it is not only the culminating work in the Void Trilogy, it also follows his earlier Commonwealth Saga books Judas Unchained and Pandora's Star.The Evolutionary Void picks up exactly where The Temporal Void concluded. There are multiple storylines which are instantaneously resumed which requires the reader to get up to speed very quickly. In fact, it is probably impossible to read and enjoy this book without reading the first two books (The Temporal Void and The Dreaming Void) first, and relatively recently.The main story lines are bifurcated into action that takes place either inside or outside the Void, a spatial anomaly which can potentially expand to eliminate the known Galaxy. Inside the Void, the main character is Edeard the Waterwalker who lives in the curiously exogenous city-state of Makkathran which possesses a pseudo-feudal political structure with very limited technology but is populated with humans having telekinetic and telepathic powers. Outside the Void, 1200 years have passed since the exciting events depicted in Hamilton's Judas Unchained and Pandora's Star. Many of the main characters from those books (Paula Myo, Ozzie Isaacs, Nigel Sheldon, Gore and Justine Burnelli and Oscar Monroe come to mind) are still around, and if you haven't read the previous duology then the reader will miss some nuances of these characters' interactions. The people outside the Void know about the goings on inside through Dreams which are shared in the gaiasphere, a galactic-wide network where properly equipped humans can share their emotional states (invented by Ozzie, of course!) with everyone. Only two people have ever been able to dream about events happening (or that have happened?) within the Void: Inigo (The First Dreamer, around whom a powerful religion called Living Dream has been formed) and the unknown Second Dreamer, who is only identified (and publicly exposed after a multi-planet manhunt) as an average Commonwealth citizen named Araminta. Araminta is a great creation, again demonstrating Hamilton's deft approach with female characters; just as Paula was the heroine of the first series, Araminta is the heroine of the second.For someone whose reputation is built (deservingly so) on his depiction of action-packed, explosion-filled space battles and mind-blowing, futuristic technology, Hamilton does a surprisingly compelling job of telling what is essentially a fantasy tale inside the Void involving Edeard. The fantasy bits are the best part of the Void books, in my opinion. Hamilton's actually used this device of interlaced chapters of fantasy and hard science fiction before, in Fallen Dragon, and it works very very well. In fact, when the fantasy section becomes somewhat irrelevant due to an ill-chosen plot device I will not give away here, the science fiction story did not hold my attention nearly as well as my previous interest in Edeard's story and as a result I lost interest in The Evolutionary Void. This really surprised me, but it's undeniable that at some point I was just simply confused and slogging through the out-of-the-Void story, anxiously looking forward to catching up on Edeard's story inside-the-Void. When all I could look forward to was whatever Paula, Araminta, Oscar or Inigo would do next, my attention and interest flagged.This is not to say that The Evolutionary Void is a bad book; Hamilton is an incredibly ambitious author and I think he just tried to do too much in one ridiculously large novel. (Really, the three Void books are clearly just one gigantic tale that due to the constraints of the publishing industry had to be released as three separate volumes.) This is also not surprising because Hamilton's masterwork, The Night's Dawn Trilogy, which is hands-down the best science-fiction trilogy ever written, was released as no less than 6 different books when really it is one gargantuan tale. I have to confess even reading that work one can get lost, but there the problem was that one had too many plot threads and characters one cared about. Reading the Void trilogy we have precisely the inverse problem: too few characters we care about--even characters that we had previously cared about quite a bit in the earlier duology. Of the new characters, only Araminta and Inigo are really fully drawn, with the primary villain of the piece recycled from the earlier series (The Cat). I think there was just one more hook (mystery, romance, comedy, horror) which if it had been included would have greatly strengthened my overall evaluation of this final book, and by extension the entire series. I have read both The Night's Dawn trilogy and Judas Unchained & Pandora's Star twice in their entirety; I believe I would rather re-read those than the Void trilogy (although I will probably give The Evolutionary Void another read, just for completeness).There is still a lot of science fiction out there I have not read, such as Hamilton's own Misspent Youth, which is a standalone novel set around 1500 years before The Void Trilogy. If any of it is as creative and compelling as this sub-par (by his superlative standards!) Hamilton novel, I will be happy indeed.Author: Peter F. Hamilton.Title: The Evolutionary VoidHardcover: 704 pages.Publisher: Del Rey.Date: August 24, 2010.PLOT: A-.IMAGERY: A-.IMPACT: B+.WRITING: A-.OVERALL GRADE: (3.583/4.00) B+/A-.

The 'Void' trilogy as it's called is actually five books. The first two take place about twelve hundred years prior to the Void Trilogy but while not required, will add much more to the overall story. The story is magnificent. It's magnificent in the Clarke's upbeat, positive sense rather than magnificent in the "My mind is blown but I want to cry" Stephen Baxter sense (I'm a fan of both types).The events take place in a society called the 'Commonwealth'. It's basically the whole of human civilization, which by this time consists of hundreds of words and trillions of human beings. There are also many alien civilizations to contend with. The two books before the Void Trilogy, 1200 years ago, deal with an anomaly witnessed by one of the outer worlds in the commonwealth and the resulting investigation and conflict with the new race of aliens called the 'Primes'. One thing that I should mention is that the universe does allow for relatively easy alien-to-human communications (aided by technology of course), and allows for FTL travel, which may be slightly annoying to traditional hard sci-fi fans.The trilogy itself takes place 1200 years after that conflict, when humans have become one of the most dominant species in the galaxy and consist of many factions. The civilization is nominally democratic, but each of the factions vie for control, hoping to push the humanity in the direction they wish.The maneuvering of the factions and their agents is essential, but the central theme of the books is The Void. The black hole in the middle of the milky way is actually something created billions of years ago by the First Lifes, and it's threatening to swallow the whole galaxy because some humans have formed a religion around what's inside, and want to feed it by making pilgrimage there, which will in essence cause it to expand and destroy the galaxy. As you can imagine, the rest of the galaxy wants to pass on that idea since it will result in their destruction. What's inside the Void, why it was created, why people want to go there, and how the galaxy and the races deal with that is what the book is about. The last book is probably the best of the lot - there is no sense of the author just milking the franchise. It is clear the book was designed as a trilogy from the beginning. The loose ends are tied up satisfactorily and you can see the story arc progressing very smoothly between the three novels.The book is probably 60-40 in terms of events outside the Void with the events inside the void. The story is extremely character driven, and has a large cast of characters, whose backstories are fleshed out in enough details so that you actually care what happens to them, and their actions actually make sense considering their background and psyche. This is perhaps unique in hard-scifi, and Hamilton and Reynolds are probably unique in managing to pull that off. If you're a fan of scifi, you'll enjoy the story, but if you've never really read hard-scifi before or are intimidated, this is a fantastic series to start with. It's easy to get into, extremely fun, and highlights much of what is so great about the genre.The biggest compliment I can give the series, and the last book in particular, is that despite me being a cynical scifi reader, the twists and revelations were completely logical and yet were utterly shocking and surprising. That is hard to pull off in hard-scifi, especially when you've read pretty much every novel that comes out in the genre. I was not exactly sure what to expect, but this book was the best in the series and was a fantastic read from the first page to the last. I planned to read it over the course of a week, but I finished it at 6AM the next morning after starting it the night before. I think that alone should tell you everything you need to know about the novel.

Well that trilogy was very time consuming, there were moments I literally had to force myself to read every word instead of scanning through a lot of incidental information. It's a great series again but as before bogged down with masses of unnecessary stuff and characters. It was further exacerbated in this particular series because the whole commonwealth aspect was eclipsed by Edard's story, I found myself at times ploughing through to get to Indigo's next dream.I would recommend the series to most sci-fi fans, it's very much in the classic Asmiov, Heinlien vein. But be prepared for sensory and information overload. To summarise, if I ever met Peter the in the flesh I would refrain vigorously from asking him for directions if I were lost.

Peter Hamilton is a great sci-fi writer .. but seems to be a bit under the radar .After reading sci-fi for over 4 decades I was thinking I'd read all the greatest writers .. and although I initially thought some of peter Hamiltons books a bit weird at the start they have always come good once I've got the context .As someone who loved Ian m banks .. and loves William Gibson I would highly recommend all of Peter f Hamiltons books .. and Blimey you get a lot of book for your money.!

I'll confess that I approached this final book in the Void trilogy with a little trepidation. The cause was my previous experience with the Night's Dawn trilogy - which was a fantastic read, but the ending fell a little flat for me. There was no need, this was a fantastic conclusion to the story. For me this has everything I look for in great sci-fi. There's some fascinating concepts here, mixed with good plot and characters. And for those who enjoy exotic weaponry, some well drawn fights.The weakness of the story remains Edeard, and the dream within the void. Although these now fit into the wider plot more smoothly than for the previous books. It was also interesting to see how much of the conclusion was telegraphed from Inigo's dreams. It was also from these I caught a glimpse of where the story was heading.Other aspects came as a surprise, and ratcheted up the tension of unfolding events. The pace of which far exceeded the previous books and really got things moving. In the previous books the number of different threads for the characters seemed excessive, but everything came together, without tripping over each other.Carrying it all is the authors quality of writing. It's an accessible style which works when describing complex ideas, or mundane interactions between characters, and even arcane ship combat. He also creates a vivid world, with a complex set of ideas. I love a good story with aspects that are worth thinking about separately from the story, and in this, the book more than delivers.

Its almost 4 years to the day that I wrote my review of  The Dreaming Void (Void Trilogy 1) , awarded it four stars and declared it a highly promising start to a new trilogy. I did however, add that "the book's real worth will depend on the strength of the next volumes", and whilst  The Temporal Void (Void Trilogy 2)  was also worthy of 4 stars in its own right I have to confess that I found volume 3, The Evolutionary Void, to be something of a slog that reduced the appeal of the series overall.Now partly this was my fault for leaving it a whole year since its original publication in hardback to pick-up the Evolutionary Void. Having read the Temporal Void way back in 2008 the three year gap between volumes meant my memory of the trilogy's numerous plot strands was pretty sketchy, so it took quite an effort to reconnect with the story. (Not helped by once again there being no recap to preface this volume).One critical problem however, is that I found The Evolutionary Void rather boring. Whilst there were bursts of action and incident there's also far too much inactivity and padding. As a couple of other reviews have noted this feels very much like the consequence of Hamilton taking two volumes worth of story and stretching it out to fill three. The result are narratives threads that meander or stall until a sudden burst of activity during the final quarter of the book.I will also confess that I found that after a three year break since reading The Temporal Void I found Hamilton's style of writing less appealing than I used to. I don't read much Sci-fi but in the past few years I've discovered the works of John Scalzi and Chris Wooding and by comparison to these two I found Hamilton's lacking a real human scale. I found I could only really relate to the character of Araminta, and even she less-so as the story progressed towards its conclusion. The constant melodrama and the bombastic style where stars were forever being destroyed, thousands of people killed in an instant and characters seemed to be permanently in conflict with each other or themselves just became rather wearying by the end. As for some of the concepts he deployed, especially those related to space-time and similar ideas, I just found them baffling. At this point I'm still not really clear what the hell happened at the end.I still think he's a talented writer and I will continue to read his books in the future. In this case however, he strayed to far away from the 'science' and into the realms of wild fantasy for my taste. I also firmly believe that that he needs the hand of a far stricter editor steering him. For me his best works remain the Greg Mandel Series,  Fallen Dragon , Pandora's Star (Commonwealth Saga)  and  Judas Unchained (Commonwealth Saga) . In all these cases he offers tighter stories on a more human scale that are consquently far more enjoyable.I am pleased that I managed to finish the Void trilogy for the sake of completeness if nothing else. I just wish it hadn't felt so much of a slog to get there. The Dreaming Void (Void Trilogy 1)The Temporal Void (Void Trilogy 2)Fallen DragonPandora's Star (Commonwealth Saga)Judas Unchained (Commonwealth Saga)

Somehow managing, as he always seems to do, to choreograph a vast cast of characters, Hamilton brings his latest trilogy to a conclusion. Various factions, agents, police operatives, religious lunatics and alien war fleets are racing toward the Void boundary to either cross over into the Void or prevent those that want to from doing so.My disappointment with this trilogy is that, as I have no doubt said before, Inigo's dreams of Edeard are ditchwater dull. Mercifully, Edeard's story ends quite quickly and the tedium is over, almost. There is a final dream that Inigo never revealed to anyone.Another downside to reading these novels is that since the trilogy is, in many ways, a sequel to the Pandora's Star books, it is often difficult to remember characters from the first books, given that each novel is released on an annual basis.Thus we have original characters such as Oscar Monroe, Paula Myo and Justine Burnelli. Then we have their descendants, such as Araminta, Troblum, Inigo, Aaron and Edeard.Bradley Johanssen and the Silfen return. Ozzie is rediscovered, as is Mellanie. Qatux of the Raiel makes an appearance, as does the SI, and The Cat is returned to the universe to do little more than indulge in sadosexual mind-games with young men.There are, in fact, a surfeit of old characters. I can see that Hamilton hates to retire or kill off his children, even to the point of bringing some people back from the dead following the admittedly exciting denouement.Interestingly, a theme that runs through Hamilton's later work is that of the survival or continuation of the personality. The duality of the concept was explored in the Night's Dawn Trilogy where one's personality and memories could be uploaded into living ships or structures, contrasted with the terrifying fact that souls did survive death and were now returning via The Reality Dysfunction to possess the living.Here we have factions of enhanced humans, some of whom have transferred their personalities into ANA, while in the Void `souls' are taken to the Heart to join with it once they are fulfilled.One could argue that, as in the Night's Dawn Trilogy, Hamilton has opted for a Deus Ex Machina rescue at the final moment, since the Void turns out to be something very similar. The denouement, as I have said, is exciting, but has its own problems since Hamilton needed to tie up many loose ends, some of which didn't really need tying.It's a trilogy which holds its head up over much of the `New Space Opera' that's around, but it may be a bit of a wake-up call for Hamilton who may have repeated himself a little too often with a number of characters who overstayed their welcome after the first time out.There's a new Void trilogy planned. Please please please Mr Hamilton, can you programme your laptop to erase any mystical Malkathran cod-fantasy third hand maudlin medieval nonsense before the manuscript gets teleported to the publishers via your private t-sphere?