Rating: 
Summary: THE ULTIMATE SPACE-OPERA
Review: What a marvel! 1240 fast paced pages (Volume I and II) sucking you into the void within.
This book is second only to Dan Simmon's Hyperion-trilogy and can be compared with good German bread.
Rating:
Summary: A fat book of the leanest, hardest coolest sf.
Review: refers to both volumes as I read it as a 1000+
page hardback)
As has been noted by many a reviewer this book is big. This unusually isn't because the author has padded the plot with unecessary drivel , but with a multitude of different themes .
Ranging from future war with exosuits and BIG GUNS to the nature of sentience, concepts of good and evil, life after death and the redeemption of one's sins. Hamilton pulls off the grandeur if his scope with verve and flambouyance.
Suffice to say the friend lent it to went out and bought all his other books , as I did.
I look forward to the next volume THE NEUTRON ALCHEMIST with bated breath and recommend his other books which are also excellent but less ambitious
Rating: 
Summary: epic space adventure
Review: An epic adventure in the classic sense.Brilliant characters,sentient starship's and a deadly nightmare all come together in this classic space opera. Great reading! I look forward to the next one
Rating: 
Summary: promising ideas, too long and little payoff
Review: I liked the first part of this book, and part 2. It's too long, though. I'd say this book could be one third the size and be 10x more enjoyable. There are just too many very, very long descriptions of situations, people, places and items which are just plain boring. I found myself skipping over these long interludes.Also, I was disappointed in the end. Not because it didn't wrap everything up in a tidy little bundle, but because the thread he chose to resolve was the least interesting, in my opinion. There were lots of other threads that were completely unexplored. Perhaps the rest of them will be tied up or discussed more in future novels? I won't be reading them.
Rating:
Summary: Science Fiction of Epic Propotions
Review: The Reality Dysfunction opens your mind to worlds of stunning beauty, characters with both noble and sinister goals and a wonderful description of what the future may hold in store for humanity. The story focuses on the tropical planet of Lalonde. Recently opened for colonization, the planet is still very primitive and humanity spread thin. Here colonists and deportees fight aganist the wild nature and a primitive existence far from their usual lives on the core worlds to build a home and a future. In these hellish settings Mankind comes face to face with a nightmare of epic proportions - the return of our one true adversary. At the same time, the book introduces two branches of evolution, the Adamists, which embraces a human-machine interface, and the Edenists, which makes use of bio-engineering and intelligent creatures. Based on different perceptions of life and religion, these two cultures each have their advantages and problems, which opens up to a certain amount of racism and misunderstandings. Not only does Peter F. Hamilton master the ability to make a wealth of persons come to life with each their unique motivation, he also describes a future taking its outset in the major tendencies of today, creating a believable universe for the characters to roam. Being the first book in a triology, The Reality Dysfunction leaves many questions unanswered and stories to be told, yet it promises well for the sequel, which I'm waiting for with anticipation.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Series, But Not For Everyone
Review: There are six books in Peter F. Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" series:
- "The Reality Dysfunction - Part 1: Emergence,"
- "The Reality Dysfunction - Part 2: Expansion,"
- "The Neutronium Alchemist - Part 1: Consolidation,"
- "The Neutronium Alchemist - Part 2: Conflict,"
- "The Naked God - Part 1: Flight," and
- "The Naked God - Part 2: Faith."
Be warned: you CANNOT read these books individually. They are, essentially, chapters in one whopping great book. If you like the first book, then you'll have to read the other five books in order. There's no tie-up of any sort between any of the books. The publisher just broke the story up because it totals over 3,000 pages. If you pick up a book before you've read all the previous books (in order), put it down. It won't mean anything to you. Since these books are entirely dependent on each other, I'm writing this review on the series as a whole, not on the individual books.
This is one of the greatest science fiction sagas written. It ranks up there with David Brin's "Uplift Saga." It is literally a story of good vs evil and shows some of the potential (and pitfalls) of the human race. Over the years, I've read the whole series five times, and I still love it. I really only have two gripes with the book. First, and this is unavoidable in what Hamilton is doing, the evil in the series is definitely, graphically evil. This is not a book where the villain twists his mustache and laughs "nyah hah hah" as he forecloses on the orphanage or ties the heroine to the railroad tracks. The writing is fairly graphic in a lot of places. After five readings, this gets a bit wearing. My second gripe is one which somewhat limits the audience of the series (even more so than the evilness presented, and it's why I've given the series four stars instead of five): there's too much sex and the writing about it is too graphic. This is a problem with all of Hamilton's books, but it seems more prevalent in this series. Because of this, I wouldn't recommend the book for your children to read. But, as long as you're aware of that, I highly recommend the series and give it 4 stars out of five.
Rating:
Summary: Only half a novel
Review: It's been pointed out by other reviewers, but this is a VERY frustrating book. Or rather, half a book. I'm a big fan of space opera series, and I don't mind loose threads left hanging, but this book leaves ALL threads hanging. There is not a single plot element wrapped up, not a single character development phase completed. New characters are introduced in the last 50 pages for no apparent reason (no doubt they'll appear in the other books).
All of this would be less frustrating if this book were good enough to make me want to read the rest of the series. It's not. The writing style is competent, but about as subtle as a sledgehammer. The characters are all tell and no show. The female characters are especially badly drawn. (Note to all sci-fi writers -- Heinlein was *terrible* at writing women. Please stop trying to imitate him.)
Rating: 
Summary: Too much suspension of disbelief is bad for you
Review: I bought this book used because I usually don't like serial novels much, living in Venezuela makes it hard to get the entire series must of the time.
I'm finishing this one and selling it again, I won't bother to read the entire series because of the poorly structured chapters- the rhythm of the book is out of whack- and the knowledge that this will take 3500 pages... It started well but then - attention spoiler coming, don't read further- it wen't literally to hell: yes , hell as weird as it sounds. The premise looks like the one from that awful movie "event horizon". When I got there in the book I started to question a lot of the cool science and technology that was laid out before and found that the entire building came crashing down on me, the suspension of disbelief entirely broken.
If you like hard SF or cyberpunk this book is not for you. If you like Fantasy it may be a good choice although I still like a book that can stand by itself .
Rating:
Summary: Ugh. Don't waste your time.
Review: You will not believe this if you read it. Hundreds of pages, and then, I *swear*, an honest-to-God, literal, deus-ex-machina ending.
Ugh.
Rating:
Summary: Great Start...
Review: ... with some great ideas, but this saga really sags in the middle. I read the original trilogy (I see now it's been split up into 6 smaller and no doubt more financially lucrative novels), and enjoyed the Reality Dysfunction immensely, but the next two novels were really hard going. To his credit, he takes the premis he establishes regarding the undead returning to a futuristic society and explores it in some depth, but he runs out of steam very early on in the second book, a lot of which reads like some kind of bizzare Soap Opera. And be warned, the climax of The Naked God is like something out of a bad Star Trek or Voyager episode, and you can see it coming a mile away. I'm giving it 4 stars though because I think he's an excellent writer (he just needs a good editor).
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