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The Naked God Part 1 : Flight

The Naked God Part 1 : Flight

List Price: $6.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fulfilling Finale!
Review: Anyone who has read the complete 'Nights Dawn' series by Hamilton will only be able to say 'Wow!' The scope of the series, in terms of number of characters and storylines, can only be described as awe inspiring. That Hamilton manages to contain all these threads in a coherent overall story is astonishing. 'The Naked God' is everything the final act of a series should be: it pushes the speed and tension up a notch, introduces even more characters and races towards the ending at breakneck speed. Some reviewers have complained about the sci-fi staple ending, that is the deus ex machina. But I feel there is no surprise here. The title of this volume gives it away from the start and right from the very first volume the reader knows there is something out 'there' that can help mankind solve the possession problem.

'The Naked God' is science fiction on a grand scale and should not be missed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Astounding
Review: I haven't even gotten a third of the way through the book yet and I am astounded. Having read the 5 other books in this series I was greatly anticipating The Naked God, and so far I have not been let down. My jaw dropped as some of the different plotlines from the rest of the series started to unfold in TNG in ways I never would have expected. The scale of the events in this series is enormous. Mr. Hamilton has come up with future tech that is brilliant. Well written space battles, and multiple interconnected plotlines are some of this book's advantages. One of the best, if not the best sci fi series I have ever read is looking like the final book will be quite a show stopper. I have recommended this series to all of my sfi fi fan friends.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: fun, fun, fun
Review: Loads of fun and a good ending for a great trilogy. can't put it down

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Starship Theatre, Pt.V
Review: For hard core Sci-Fi, the "Night's Dawn" Trilogy has it ALL!!!He-Man heroes, classy heroines, nasty bad guys (not to Even forget THE DEAD RETURNING!!!) New Worlds and Old;Aliens, space battles, suspense, intergalactic conflict and politics; who could ask for MORE? Starships, living space habitats, Biotech, Neurotech, Cyborgs, Genetic Engineering; it's all here; just be prepared to read nothing else for the next couple of MONTHS, 'cause this one is IT!! I originally was hooked into this Epic in the Hardcover Sci-Fi Book Club Edition, buying "The Neutronium Alchemist" first (somehow, I missed "The Reality Disfunction" when first offered; then had to wait another two weeks for that delivery rather than read the story out of sequence. THEN was forced to go through several cowhides, chewing leather and making a complete nuisance of myself until "The Naked God" was finally published and released in Nov. '99. BOTTOM LINE: If you're going to dive into this Epic, Buy the complete Trilogy as a complete set and be prepared to be enthralled by a whole new universe of the caliber of Heinlein, Asimov, or Clarke (and to stay for awhile!!!)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Easily one of the greatest of epics.
Review: In case you don't already know, this is book five (or if you want to be technical, the first half of Book 3) in what is now published as a six book series.

In the Naked God you can see the need for splitting it into two books. It really is a monster. But not a bad monster, a great one, a really juicy piece of reading.

If you haven't read the earlier books, the rest of this review will make no sense. But I wholeheartedly recommend this series to any fan of hard sci-fi or of space opera. Even fantasy readers are delighted by the broad canvas and the exploration of the lines between life and afterlife, finity and eternity.

If you have been following the story so far, this volume concentrates on five main story threads.

Dexter Quinn is travelling, in Odysseus-like fashion, to a reunion with the Enigmatic Banneth on Earth. Along the way he is trailed by the strange and powerful force that obstructed him on Norfolk. Is this a manifestation of Laton? Or is there some other answer?

Following the same route, but on a voyage of personal growth and discovery is Louise Kavanagh, who is trying to fulfill a promise to warn Banneth and thwart the evil plans of Quinn. Through her travels we learn the details of earth and near-earth society, and the machinations of the Archology Dictators who control all that happens on the future Earth.

Across the Universe we continue to follow the adventures of the Sinbad/Lancelot like Joshua Calvert in his quest for the Holy Grail that is the Tyrathca Sleeping God, and in the process we learn some home truths about the Tyrathca and Kiint races.

Outside of our continuum we follow events on the Valisk habitat and on Norfolk, where things are not going how the possessed thought they would.

Finally, we continue to follow the fortunes of the possessed within our universe on Mortonridge and on New California. In this book we follow the fortunes of the military campaign on Mortonridge lead by Ralph Hiltch.

Add in the storylines about Kiera and her Hellhawks, Al and Jezibella, the real Kiint Homeworlds and their human spies, disappearing habitats, hellish energy draining monsters and you begin to touch the complexity that is the universe created by Hamilton.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Sprawling, Astonishing, and well worth it.
Review: This gigantic (970-page) book is an intimidating read. With two equally large volumes of backstory, more characters and plot threads than you can keep track of without taking notes, and an admittedly hard-to-describe premise (merely saying that "the dead are coming back and posessing the living" sounds dumb), The Naked God is not at first glance an easy book.

But what a story. Hopping between the main protagonist's voyage into uncharted space looking for the Tyrathca god of the title, the posessed-ravaged Earth, the bitek habitats, the Kiint homeworld, the military campaigns agaist the posessed, and even entire other universes, the tale flies along at a breakneck pace. It's nearly impossible to expect all the plot twists and intruigues, and many of the climactic scenes have an edge-of-your-seat intensity. It's unapologetic space opera, yes, but it's absorbing in the complexity of the worlds and characters created.

The ending is a bit sudden, as is often the case with grand series like this...there's no way to do complete justice to such a grand tale with a few chapters of denoument (I personally was left thinking "alright, more! What happens next?" much as I was at the end of the Dune series). Admittedly, the solution to the posessed and the Beyond is a bit of a Deus ex Machina, and has a twinge of hokey sentimentality. That should not deter one from delving into this series - the solutions to the problem are less important to the story of the problem itslef and it's effects on the main characters. "The Naked God" examines the tales from so many angles and viewpoints - political, social, spiritual, economic, technological and ethical - that it is a deeply engrossing tale. The characters are believable, some likable, some despicable, some worthy of pity, others of redemption. It's very rare to find fully multi-dimensional characterizations in scifi, especially scifi on the scope of this trilogy.

The "Night's Dawn" trilogy deserves to become a classic on par with Simmons's "Hyperion Cantos" and Herbert's "Dune."

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very Good Reading, but not 5-star worthy
Review: I would loved to have given The Naked God 5-stars, but to me, the ending was kind of disappointing. It was good, but it definitely didn't match the writing from the rest of this excellent series. Perhaps, a few loose strings should have been left untied, questions unanswered, etc.

The book is very entertaining, but not too high-minded. I read it until 3:30am last night just to finish it, but as others have noted, the ending just leaves something to be desired. That said, it's a must read for anyone who has read the previous 4 US books(or 2 books as printed in the UK), and the series is a must read for everyone else. Overall, I'd give the series 5 stars without hesitation.

Personally, I find this series more entertaining than Azimov's Foundation series. Foundation seemed too predictable to me...not that this one isn't, but for a series considered a classic, Foundation didn't entertain me as much as this Reality Dysfunction series did. Still I must agree with the reader below, Dune is still my favorite science fiction series.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A miracle happens here
Review: The finale of this space opera reminds me of the cartoon where one scientist shows another a diagram of some horrendously technial process. The last box on the diagram has the label "A miracle happens here." The second scientist says, "I think we need to get a little more specific."

Resolving humanity's situation with the possessed by resorting to a magical technology takes care of the immediate crisis without solving the underlying problem of people's fear of death. By contrast, when the older, more advanced Kiint faced the problem of the possessed, they resolved it in a way that enlightened the entire species.

Without reducing humanity's fear of death, their possession problem will likely occur again. This is a very unsatisfying resolution to an otherwise awesome series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Incredible
Review: When I read the other books in this series I thought that Peter Hamilton could go no further. This book proved me wrong. Despite parts that are a bit too trite for the overall theme (Al Capone? Give me a break) this book was fanntastic. All the way through I was thinking, 'there is no way that this can be ended satisfactorily'. With a hundred pages to go and still six or seven highly disparate story threads going on I was completely expecting a massive let down. This did not come. This book wraps up the entire trilogy brilliantly and I can only say, read it and see.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great until this book was released.
Review: I loved his writing up until the end here. Of course if you have read the other books in the series there is no need not to finish the epic. I would read the whole series also knowing the ending would be anti-climatic. Some of the long plots end very well, not justice for all of the characters, but most of their ending plot is not to bad. Much of it however just does not follow the other books in just intense reading, there were a few times I just skipped pages to get through the insanely mundane parts of the book. Up and down like a roller coaster. And some rather surprising moments that left me wondering what "What the hell does that have to do with it?" New characters that just make no sense what so ever to an already long read, and seem there just to fill up some more pages. The end, the very end the part that was suppose to blow us away, well it just did not happen, left me rather confused and sad that it ended so silly. All the complications and search for knowledge ends in 1 page of explanation...

He could have done better from what I seen of his older books, this one just seemed to be rushed to get it finished.


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