The Reality Dysfunction
(Part 1)
Hamilton, P.F.
It started off bad - a lengthy description of faster-than-light spaceships that are grown - along with their captain-pilots, to ensure some type of holistic (and pseudo telepathic) connection between ships. The ships are intelligent, and love their captains. They also have babies near the end of their lives - when the pilot’s offspring are also born. And they grow up together, And they love each other. At this stage, I almost quit.
Anyway, the main ship-captain pairing are Oenone and (Edenist) Syrinx, and serve a term in the Confederation Navy. (Edenism is one of the confusing religions in the Confederation.) Later, we’re introduced to the more interesting Joshua Calvert - a 19-20 year old genetically engineered scavenger who finds an archaeological artifact of great value, and sells it at auction for big money. The archaeological subject is the Laymil, a race of intelligent and technically advanced beings who apparently killed themselves in a mass suicide/genocide. A gas giant planet, Mirchusko, has a ring of debris created originally from 1000’s of destroyed Laymil habitat satellites, and that’s where Calvert makes his find. With his winnings, (paid on the orbiting space habitat Tranquility) he rebuilds his deceased father’s space ship - the Lady Macbeth - and starts a new career as a successful freelance space cargo hauler and successful womanizer.
We’re also introduced to a 19-20 year old troubled genetically enhanced kid - Quinn Dexter - assigned as a virtual slave on a newly colonized jungle-planet - sentenced to do all the manual labour for the new colonists. The planet - Lalonde - is poor, and colonists face decades of hardship before any chance of prosperity, meaning that the slaves (Ivets) don’t have much to look forward to.
Now for the aliens and other oddities. There is the Ly-cilph, an ancient and seemingly benevolent non-corporeal species whose purpose is to map and learn everything about everything. Then there’s Laton - okay, he’s human, but an antagonist doing research on immortality - by transferring consciousness into others’ (unwilling) bodies. And finally, there is the ??? - energy entities, similar in nature to the Ly-cilph, but aggressive, who seem to be doing the same thing as Laton, but far more efficiently, and threatening all life on Lalonde, and presumably, everywhere else…
Yeah; weird, but still...
7/10
The Reality Dysfunction
(Part 2)
Hamilton, P.F.
Peter Hamilton’s “world building” takes up a lot of page turning - a lot. However, part 2 of The Reality Dysfunction moved a lot faster - don’t get me wrong, there are still pages and pages of world building, but it is spaced out with a lot of action - a lot more than in part 1. For the first time, I can say that I can’t stop reading a Peter Hamilton book. This is a good ride.
Turns out the ??? are the dead - that have been given the power to return from “the beyond” (sort of like vampires) through the intersection of universes caused inadvertently by the Ly-cilph. They begin taking over bodies on Lalonde, and eventually possess almost all of the human settlers. Gradually, they leave on transports destined for many other planets, where they plan to completely take over. Military intervention starts on Lalonde, with mercenaries dropped to reconnoiter, most of whom are possessed; the Dead gain more mobility when the transports return to the motherships in orbit. Once there, they start destroying other ships, making an invasion force untenable. Josh Calvert and crew are involved, but avoid possession (aka sequestration), while managing to save the last bunch of kids and a couple of adults from certain doom. In typical Hamiltonian fashion, the book ends with an introduction to another series of 500+ page books. Well, we’ll see…
8/10
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