Rating: Summary: Interesting, thought provoking, energetic story with a twist Review: I tend to shun away from science fiction. This read seamless with reality with out spend boring paging explaining how the technology that doesn't exist works. The story has a few ends to keep track of then.. it takes a quantum adjustment from reality as we know it. While leaving major questions to be answered the book ends with you wildly glancing around looking for the sequel.
Rating: Summary: A 1997 "Recommended Read" Review: Locus Magazine, the Publisher's Weekly of the SF/fantasy field, has just named THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION to its 1997 Recommended Reading list.
Rating: Summary: Intensely Disappointing Review: A for effort, E for execution. The come on of the novel is the grand cosmic scope, yet it takes more than 200 pages to get past the scene-setting, which is far overdone. Perhaps if the characters were anything other than cardboard, and if there was a sense of forward movement or even the slightest intimations of suspense . . . The imaginative detail quickly changes from rich to atrociously overwritten. Don't believe the hype!
Rating: Summary: Sequel goes on sale early March '98! Review: For those of you desperately awaiting THE NEUTRONIUM ALCHEMIST, which continues the story begun in THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION Parts 1 and 2, go to your bookstore first week in March to find Part 1, CONSOLIDATION. Part 2 will follow a month later, on sale early April. Though I warn you, it ends with The Mother of All Cliff-Hangers.....
Rating: Summary: Alien attack from beyond sense and reason! Review: A great book about people who generally discount the invisible, only to fall prey to an enemy attacking from beyond sense and reason. I think it ironic that even now we generally tend to laugh at the concepts of angels and demons, when much of our own reality would be so well explained by their presence. So this is a book about people in the future who thought they were winning "the game" of life, only to find that they didn't even begin to understand the rules. Their enemies are not flesh and blood but the rulers and principalities. The battle is within the heart and mind. Their technology has failed, as has their government and culture. All they trust comes to nothing. All that stands between them and the abyss is the ability to recognize and defeat the evil within. So far they aren't doing very well.
Rating: Summary: A page-crunching horror space soap opera? Review: How more verbose can you get? Just the first two books come to about 1000 pages, with 900+ for the sequel. Many different trails lead you to many different stories, if you don't like one, don't worry, you'll soon be reading about another one. The characters are interesting, the use of science theories is amazing (so many ideas!) and the underlining thread (yes, there is an afterlife and it has come to get the universe) is a refreshing idea in the world of hard SF. All in all a great read along with its sequel "The Neutronium Alchemist". Cannot wait until the third book!
Rating: Summary: Fantastic story! Review: I love this series!! because it's in the future but still refers to some past events in Earth. Just like the Dune Books.
Rating: Summary: A potentially great series is lost in the details Review: This was a recommendation for me by Amazon.com, and it wasn't as good as I expected, but not terrible, either. The setting is well-thought-out and the characters are well presented, but there are too many of them, the plot(s) swirl(s) around too much, and there is just too much going on without the proper development at the appropriate time. I really wanted to enjoy these books (referring to both volumes) but couldn't. I think that Hamilton has great potential as a writer but needs to focus his creative energies a bit. In my opinion, these books wanted to be a "Dune" or a "Foundation" but rambled too much to hang together cohesively. This doesn't mean I will abandon Amazon.com's recommendations any time soon, but I may be a bit more selective.
Rating: Summary: Space opera Review: Don't even think about reading this book without committing to reading the second, and the next, etc. I like the stories, but like a soap opera, none of them end satisfactorily. Reading the book reminds me of watch a soap opera, in which I used to be hooked. A multitude of characters subtlety intertwined with multiple stories lines crossing paths. Like the end of a daily soap opera, each story ends with the frustrating question, "What happens next!?" I dislike this, but like the soap operas, I'm hooked again. One other frustrating point is Hamilton likes to use flowery Sci-Fi langauge. A computer with organic components becomes a 'protoplasmic neuron transponder'. Until you get the definitions down, it is slow reading.
Rating: Summary: This one will make you sweat. Review: Remeber watching the first episode of Moonlighting? When you expected a mediocre buddy-cop show, and instead were treated to an insanely funny and smart story? I picked up this book thinking it would be a passable SF read from a relatively new novelist. I was surprised. 300+ pages into it, what I thought was a moderately-paced space saga was actually a setup: when the "reality dysfunction" occurs, you, the reader, are not only taken by surprise, but painfully aware of how devastating it will be to the entirety of the universe you have been introduced to. The remainder of the book allows you to watch in desperate frustration as our friends, the main characters (and there are a few), come dangerously close to the impending disaster even as they slowly discover it. This is a wonderfully constructed story, as the author is very good at building suspense with a narrative style reminiscent of the best of Clancy (multiple viewpoints and stories that break at the most inconvenient places) and Stephen King (making utter chaos utterly provocative). Mix in some of the most creative and believable extrapolation of modern science, the human constants of religion and politics on a galactic scale, and realistic military action and heroism, and the result is extremely engaging and addictive. The only problem is, the remainder of the story is yet to be published, so you will have to chew your lip for a while. Buy this with the second part, or you will curse every minute you have to go without it.
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