The Dreaming Void Book

The last time I read a book by Peter F. Hamilton was around mid-April 2014, as I write it is the 2nd of April 2015, almost a year in between. The book was The Naked God, 1268 pages of eye watering mayhem. What that useless factoid means is that his books are so damn long that after I finish a series by him I tend to feel the need to take a year's break. What it also indicates is that after a while I always come back for more of his long winded adventures. Having said that The Dreaming Void is a mere 607 pages long, practically a pamphlet by his standard!

The Dreaming Void is the first volume of Hamilton's Void Trilogy, the trilogy itself is a sequel to Pandora's Star, PFH does not waste any time faffing about before hooking you with his action packed opener and awesome world building. The Dreaming Void is set 1,500 years after the end of the Saga ( Judas Unchained). The Dreaming Void introduces "The Void" a universe within the universe that is gradually devouring the galaxy, like some kind of cosmic Pac-Man. Some religious types want to make a pilgrimage there to find some kind of Promised Land, while others suspect it will cause the Void to expand and accelerate the galaxy consumption.

As usual initially there are quite a few neologisms for the readers to grapple with, but PFH has a knack of revealing the meaning of his weird words by implication, so the meaning of most of these words can be fairly easily inferred. The fantasy - like chapters initially threw me for a loop a little but once I get used to them they are even more fun than the sci-fi ones. I think this is due to the likable Chosen One protagonist called Edward. The world building in these chapters is also a nice change from the high tech scenario of the other chapters, at the same time this is not the average fantasy setting with magic and dragons. There is technology of a sort here, based on the conceit that everybody has mental powers to some degree, and such powers take place of electricity and most aspects of life. The most advanced and important type of science seems to be bioengineering through manipulation of organic matters into desired forms.

The science fiction side of it is as great as ever, setting the story 1,500 years after The Common Wealth Saga means that Hamilton has to come up with a lot of new technology which is far in advance of the already futuristic technology depicted in the previous series. So communication and networking across the galaxy through wormholes is in use. Most of the enhanced humans of the yore are now transhuman uploaded into some kind of galactic data storage, living in their private virtual worlds. Top of the line spaceships are armed with black hole creation weapons etc. There are numerous alien races of course, and the most advanced of them still make humanity look like cavemen. The trouble with setting the story so far in the future (3589 AD) is that while many things changed out of all recognition, some things don't seem to have changed enough, like people are still behaving as they do today, drinking beer, falling in love and whatnot. Still, PFH is only human, not transhuman so I can live with this minor flaw in his depiction of humanity in the far future; and who is to say he is not right?

Hamilton knows how to write characters, they are not terribly deep or complex but they are mostly interesting and believable enough to be more than mere plot devices. The central characters are all quite likable, and it helps that a few of them are from the Commonwealth Saga (thousands of years do not mean much in term of mortality in this universe). His narrative is always a breeze to read, though there are a few sex scenes which are decidedly unsexy and made me cringe, and I thought he left that kind of thing behind after the Night's Dawn trilogy. Hopefully he will have curbed this tendency in future volumes.

Reading over this review (I do proofread my own writing occasionally!) the emphasis seems to be on the "fun factor" of the book. I do think the whole point of reading PFH is for the fun of it, I don't think you can expect much in the way of insightful commentary on the human condition or acerbic social satire. Nothing wrong with that of course we all need to just kick back and enjoy sometime, and this is far from being mindless entertainment, as the sci-fi aspect of it is very imaginative and stimulating. I am certainly looking forward to reading the next volume The Temporal Void.

(Five-ish stars, like 4.6 or something)