Rating: Summary: Brilliant end to a brilliant series. Review: If you got this far that means you are already hooked on this series. And what a great series it is.Finishing off something of this scale is always a daunting task. One the one hand there is the danger of leaving lots of loose ends dangling, which annoys some readers and leaves you wondering if there will be further sequels. On the other hand there is a danger in trying to tie up every loose end. Hamilton falls somewhere in-between on this one. He solves the immediate problem in a rather neat way, that puts the loose ends on a long finger, beyong the scope of any immediate sequel. Not everyone will love the end, but for me, it works!
Rating: Summary: Hamilton Saved the Best for Last Review: In this second half of the final part of "The Night's Dawn," Hamilton introduces his most interesting xenoc species, the Mosdva, as well as his Deus ex Machina, the "Naked God." (What A Luxury God Should Be) A very satisfying finale to a very long book, which could have benefitted by judicious cutting of about a thousand pages (out of about 4,200). Hamilton calls this "The Night's Dawn Trilogy," but it should really be regarded as one long novel. A good one, but not great. I wish I could see what Isaac Asimov or Lois Bujold would have done with this.
Rating: Summary: All's well that ends well Review: It's going to be hard talking about this without revealing plot points but I'm going to do my best. If you're reading this you're either reading because you want to see if someone agreed with your opinion or you're curious about the series and want to see if it's worth it. The former folks I can't do anything about but to the latter I can definitely say it's worth the trip. The last book in the series mostly wraps up the myriad of major plots, granted they converge in a way never thought possible but at the same time it was fairly exciting how they all suddenly merged. The action is as rapid as ever and Hamilton deftly keeps things moving to the point where you're literally flipping through pages because the pace is just that rapid. The characters are . . . well, toward the end they start falling into the traps of their own stereotypes, Quinn Dexter was never the most three dimensional of people but he gets tiresomely predictable as the book winds to a close, while even the good characters tend to start wallowing in their own goodness. Still it's a classic good versus evil fight with some wacky philosophy thrown in and generally that requires its character to be living embodiments of goodness or vile evil, Hamilton normally handles it well but sometimes you just want to roll your eyes. The ending isn't as much abrupt as really "deux es machina" but if you can figure out a way to wrap all that up without writing an entirely new book, I'd like to see folks try. It wasn't the perfect ending that I was hoping for but at the same time it didn't ruin the book for me like others are claiming. All in all the entire series is a very satisfying experience, it's sort of sad to finish it since if you've been following this since the beginning it's been nearly three years and over three thousand pages, this people good or bad start to become sort of like part of your family. Hamilton should be praised for making one of the best future histories to come along for a long time, it's detailed and more importantly it's a place (well before that whole possession thing) that I wouldn't mind living in, full of action and adventure and political intrigue, he could theoretically mine the setting for stories for years. I don't think since Larry Niven's Known Space series have we seen that. Is the series perfect? No, it's not, but there isn't any single problem that I could see that made the books less worthy or anything that made want to stop reading. There was something for everyone here and what we got was one of the greatest SF epics of the last ten or so years that raised a bunch of interesting concepts (and distilled a bunch more, Hamilton wasn't utterly original but it's what you do with the concepts that counts), was vastly entertaining and entirely readable (except when you skip a few years in between reading, don't make that mistake) and it's a series who's reputation will only grow in the years to come.
Rating: Summary: Not what I thought it was Review: Let me first say that this is an excellent book and an excellent series, BUT: The review written by Kevin James is partially correct. The Naked God complete version was/is available in the US. What I didn't realize, because I have already read The Naked God, is that this is not part 2 to that book, but part 2 to The Naked God : Flight Part 1. After reading a couple of pages I knew that it sounded familiar. If you have already read The Naked God, not The Naked God : Flight, then don't buy this book because you've already read it.
Rating: Summary: Series Potential Review: Now that I have completed all 6 books I am feeling a great emptiness. I have become so attached to these characters. What imagination!!!! The movie/TV studios are really missing out on a wonderful idea here. Can't you just see these in a TV series running on for years like Babylon 5 or Startreks.? Please someone, make these books into a series.
Rating: Summary: The ending fit the series Review: Peter Hamilton created a universe filled with wonders, such as the Edenist culture. Throughout every word of this series, I was struck by the wonderful job he did in making the outgrowth of our society today work in painting a realistic picture of our culture in several hundred years. The technology fit well with the view he painted. It was neither too wondrous nor too annoying. Everything he wrote fit within his sense of our future history. This book finally wraps up the entire series, revealing previous hidden secrets that tantalized you throughout the earlier books. The ending, which many people appear to rant about, wrapped up the series quite well in my opinion. Not to spoil the book, but it wrapped up the possession problem in the only way that really could have solved it in any respectable time or way. It also leaves the struggle for humanity's resolution of the problem of the beyond wide open. Humanity must still deal with the fact that when they die they will enter the beyond. People throughout the human race must still be taught to believe in themselves. What happened to all of the human stars is a thing of wonder, and still makes me smile. All in all, this is a wonderful series, that is concluded in a wonderful way. It makes me respect Peter Hamilton as much as I respect many other Sci-Fi gods.
Rating: Summary: The Naked God...Odd title Review: So this is the climax to the "Nights Dawn " trilogy - A "deus ex machina" indeed! Gripping to the finish, but ultimately disappointing. A rollicking yarn of around 3600 pages all wrapped up in the last 10 or so-puh-lease! The first two books in this series were so gripping that I had to force myself to go to work in the mornings and not just stay in bed reading all day. The sense of expectation, all the exciting plotlines rushing towards some enormous and totally inevitable conclusion was so tremendous that you really needed a majestic ending to it all, not some fairy tale thing, over so quickly that you had to read it again to notice that it had happened at all. The overall impression I gained from this book is that the author, having developed all these marvellous storylines in the earlier novels, ran out of steam when it came to "closure". All the problems, the inexorable spreading of the posessed, Quinn Dexter, Joshua's love life etc. had to be solved and it really looked like he had bitten off more than he could chew. I think he had to end it quickly before he ran out of motivation. Having been very critical up to this point, it is still a very enjoyable book and I found it most refreshing to read an English SF space opera by an English author, full of obscure English cultural references. A planet called Norfolk with a capital called Norwich for Gods sake!! Populated by a landowning pastoral society! I hope my fellow East Anglians arent too upset by all the stereotyping - personally I found it hilarious. And there are so many little gems to be found - my favourite being a very brief cameo of ex PM Maggie Thatcher appearing as one of the posessed - in an "antique blue suit!" Get her into that Zero tau pod QUICK! Priceless.
Rating: Summary: The Naked God...Odd title Review: So this is the climax to the "Nights Dawn " trilogy - A "deus ex machina" indeed! Gripping to the finish, but ultimately disappointing. A rollicking yarn of around 3600 pages all wrapped up in the last 10 or so-puh-lease! The first two books in this series were so gripping that I had to force myself to go to work in the mornings and not just stay in bed reading all day. The sense of expectation, all the exciting plotlines rushing towards some enormous and totally inevitable conclusion was so tremendous that you really needed a majestic ending to it all, not some fairy tale thing, over so quickly that you had to read it again to notice that it had happened at all. The overall impression I gained from this book is that the author, having developed all these marvellous storylines in the earlier novels, ran out of steam when it came to "closure". All the problems, the inexorable spreading of the posessed, Quinn Dexter, Joshua's love life etc. had to be solved and it really looked like he had bitten off more than he could chew. I think he had to end it quickly before he ran out of motivation. Having been very critical up to this point, it is still a very enjoyable book and I found it most refreshing to read an English SF space opera by an English author, full of obscure English cultural references. A planet called Norfolk with a capital called Norwich for Gods sake!! Populated by a landowning pastoral society! I hope my fellow East Anglians arent too upset by all the stereotyping - personally I found it hilarious. And there are so many little gems to be found - my favourite being a very brief cameo of ex PM Maggie Thatcher appearing as one of the posessed - in an "antique blue suit!" Get her into that Zero tau pod QUICK! Priceless.
Rating: Summary: Disappointing conclusion to a magnificent space opera Review: The climax of the "Night's Dawn" trilogy reminds me of the cartoon where one scientist is explaining to another a complex formula written on a blackboard. The first scientist is pointing at a rectangle labeled "A Miracle Happens Here." The second scientist says, "A good start, but this part needs more work."
Similarly, as other reviewers have noted, Hamilton ends his series with a technological magic wand. In so doing, his protagonist ends the crisis of humanity without resolving the underlying problem, guaranteeing that the disturbed dead will pile up again, just waiting for that crack between realities to come pouring in.
Given that lack of resolution, I was flabbergasted that older and wiser Kiint race would rush to help in the aftermath of the war with the possessed. It seemed far-fetched that a race advanced enough to have a governing cooperating race intelligence (the Corpus) would fail to recognize that the human race had merely dodged the bullet, not unloaded the gun.
Hamilton created a completely involving universe with the "Night's Dawn" trilogy. The characters were little more than stereotypes (though wonderfully odd at times), but the scope and details of his universe seduced me. Providing such a swift and shallow end to his tale was like ending a wonderfully romantic evening by having your date tell you that s/he had a lovely time, but s/he has to go home to pack, because s/he's moving out of town tomorrow.
Rating: Summary: More LIke "Naked Ending" Review: The first book of the series got me interested enough to read the rest, and although I had problems with many aspects of the story, I kept reading, hoping that the ending would make it worthwhile. I was warned about the ending by a cousin, but I kept on, hoping that he was just being too critical. He was not. The bad guys were really bad, which is good, but the good guys were not particularly good. It was very difficult to like any character much past his or her introduction, as they all tended to shed any morals they had at the first opportunity. The expectation was that the ending would point them in the right direction, but instead we got the wave of a magic wand, and everything's okay, even though no one deserves it. The shame of it is that the effort, the scope, and many of the ideas were impressive. A touch of decency would have gone a long way.
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