Totally gripping

I loved this story, though you will of had to of finished the first part to follow and the performance if first rate. The only shortcoming is it leaves so much in finished at the end. I guess I have to see if there's a final part.

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Hard Going But That Just COuld Be Me

This is the middle act of the Night's Dawn trilogy of books from Peter F
Hamilton and picks up from where the Reality Dysfunction left off. I really
enjoyed the first part of this trilogy despite the large cast of characters
which I found a little confusing at times. However, as much as I didn't
expect this to be the case, I have to say that I found The Neutronium
Alchemist quite hard going. Now, this might well be down to the fact that I
read this book in many more smaller pieces than the Reality Dysfunction and
this might have contributed to my difficulty staying focused in this massive
piece of writing. The first book in this series hooked me with the primary
thread which was the Lalonde colony story. A significant number of connected
characters were part of this story thread which made for a much more
manageable read. In The Neutronium Alchemist we perhaps have an even
larger number of characters and to make things a little harder to follow
this expanded cast is spread over more threads or so it certainly felt to
me. However, as mentioned, this might just be my perception due to not being
able to take this book in with longer chunks of reading. Perhaps the start
stop 15 minutes here or 30 minutes there that was how I tackled the
consumption of this story was the real problem in which case, my suggestion
to potential readers could well be to try and devour larger chunks of this
book in single sittings to help keep events, names and places fresh in the
mind.

At one point I was finding that place names and character names were
confused until I would hear mention that what I thought of as
a person was in fact the name of an asteroid settlement! For me, without
having a primary thread focus such as the plight of the colonists on Lalonde
in the first book, I found it harder going to stay focused as we bounced
around. Of course, Hamilton keeps things together and there is connection
there but I feel that in this era of his career that his biggest oversight
was the sheer number of characters. I can appreciate why he chose to do this
as his books are so huge and epic and he no doubt wanted to bring real scope
to the plot but I just think that it is somewhat overdone. As mentioned in
my review of the first part of this trilogy, I think Hamilton has since
refined his art and by the time he writes the excellent Commonwealth
series of books he has cut down on cast size and kept them more consolidated
and easier to manage from the reader's point of view.

Hamilton has clearly put a massive amount of work into this huge trilogy.
However, his ambition to pen something of truly epic proportions has made it
less digestible. The story is a good one but it just doesn't seem to be as
cohesive as the first in this trilogy.

The Neutronium Alchemist is still a worthwhile read and a must if you have
read the first part of this series of stories. We are left at a cliff hanger
so it's on to the last in the trilogy now so I'll see how that goes ...

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Wow

What a story. Can be confusing in parts. Needed to rewind a couple of times due to complexity of the story line. However I could not stop listening. Narration was ok. Needed to put in more breaks so you can keep up with the story. Can’t wait for more from this author

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loved it.

listening to this makes me want to live in the future...!
I get annoyed when I can't listen.

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Book 2 Well you have 2

Well it seems fairly pointless as there would be no point in not listening to this after being hooked on book 1 then you are into the 100+ hrs of this epic tri ology. Sometime a little wordy but still escape to another universe and consider the message what and how do you consider the party that humans will take in the universe

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Just one small flaw

I am massive fan of Peter Hamilton's work and this trilogy is stunning in its imagination and scope so five stars for the story. The narration is also great for the most part with one irritant which is more to do with the editing; there are no pauses between the sub sections of paragraphs so when the story switches (as it does quite a bit in Hamilton's work) between the major story lines, you need to double take to make sure you've not missed anything. This may sound trivial but by the end of this book (second of the series) it has become a real issue for me. It's a shame because otherwise this is a fantastic production. I would recommend it of course, despite this flaw and hopefully the publisher can take note for future offerings.

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2 people found this helpful

brilliant story

love this series well read, skipped at the end of a couple of chapters but thoroughly enjoyed it.

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excptional

fantastic as always from Peter. The whole saga has had me enthralled. if you need a starter read great north road

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Best space opera ever.

The night's dawn trilogy is one of the most involved and well paced stories ever, despite the length I never felt like I wished the story would hurry up. John Lee does an excellent job too. A zombie apocalypse (sort of) on a universal scale what's not to love.

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Another great book from Mr Hamilton & Mr Lee

What can i say I'm enjoying the series massively, and the author and voice actor works well. now on to the next book

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1 person found this helpful