Books

Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton

I love big books. I have even read books primarily because they are famous for being long. And I enjoyed them. So don't think I'm complaining about these two books by Peter F. Hamilton being long. (988 pages and 1008 pages in mass market paperback) But some parts of the books, especially the first one, were long and tedious, hundreds of pages of politicians and VIPs schmoozing and fornicating. But the more interesting parts, with strange aliens and time shifting paths through the woods and such were very brief.

I know some people say, "Why waste time on a book you're not enjoying? Just quit and move on to something else." It makes sense but most of the time I just can't, maybe because I've been rewarded for such patience again and again. I actually decided at one point that I would not buy Judas Unchained though, but before I got to the end of Pandora's Star I was hooked in spite of the the long, tedious passages and it ended on a cliffhanger so of course I had to continue.

Judas Unchained turned out to be increasingly interesting and finally brought the story to a satisfying conclusion. I really like Hamilton's world building and characters, two elements of a story that are especially important to me. And overall the story was excellent - about the fight against a truly terrifying race of aliens determined to exterminate humanity.

Now I'm sure I will read more by this author but probably not for quite a while. I have a lot of other books on my must read list and maybe even some re-reads that I want to get to first.

Reading List

As if I really need more books to read, here are 95 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in 2018. I haven't finished reading the list yet but already I have found a few that interest me.

Stars Uncharted, S.K.Dunstall
QUIETUS, by Tristan Palmgren
Free Chocolate, by Amber Royer
Outpost, by W. Michael Gear

Well, that's certainly a good start. Now, to read the rest of the list.

Great Space Opera

Oh! Wow! Space opera fans, you have to read this: Kit by Val Kubera. It's part crime drama, part political drama, part horror story, part romance, and 100% space opera.

The title character is a Tentari, who are hermaphrodite humanoids. Kit and a younger sibling are the only survivors from a starship that was destroyed under suspicious circumstances. They survive as best they can on a large space station inhabited by all manner of unsavory characters. He (I'll address the matter of pronouns in a minute.) has some memory chips given to him by his parent that contain information that everybody wants. He is taken in by a merchant ship captain who was close friends with his parent and thus the wild ride begins.

The author uses male pronouns when referring to the Tentari which is grammatically correct, I suppose, but it feels wrong in a number of ways. One, it reinforces our human tendency of binary thinking - every creature must be either male or female. I found it nearly impossible to think of Kit and other Tentari characters as anything but male. It also at times felt awkward and ridiculous since the author remained consistent in using the male pronoun even when referring to a character nursing an infant. I think it would have been preferable to use made up pronouns, such as Mary Gentle did in The Golden Witchbreed with the neuter pronoun ke.

Anyway, very minor quibble. Overall it was a fantastic, exciting, edge-of-your-seat, unputdownable book. A few scenes are not for the squeamish and there are a couple of fairly explicit sex scenes but nothing that a reasonable person could call "gratuitous," in my opinion.