Sci-Fi Series

I finished up the book B gave me to read, The Reality Dysfunction, Part 1: Emergence by Peter F Hamilton. it's an extremely complicated book with a dozen or so characters doing their own thing throughout the galaxy. Towards the end a few of the various characters meet up but still end up going their separate ways. Kind of a sci-fi version of the Song of Ice and Fire series.

I do wish the different characters were separated out into different chapters, like in the Martin series. It would have helped me to keep things separated. Hamilton swaps between characters in the same chapter. It wouldn't bother me if we just got multiple points of view of a series of events, like if we first got the perspective of the captain, then another crew member, then maybe an outsider coming on board the ship. but Hamilton will give us the events character A experiences, then jump across the galaxy to character B, then to character C, then B, then some other new person we hadn't read about yet at all, all in the same few pages. sometimes i wanted to start writing down a who's who list!

I never really warmed up to Joshua Calvert, the young rake of a starship captain. I wanted to like him; he's the Han Solo/Dirk Pitt/James Bond type character. I was ok with him until the last chapter, then he did something i found pretty despicable. So i won't be rooting for him if he shows up in the next book. I really liked a couple of the females: Ione Saldana, the brilliant heiress, and Syrinx, the captain who's empathy-bonded to her living ship, the Oenone. I disliked pretty much every colonist character.

anyway, i'll keep reading. This one kept my attention and had some cool action in the middle. really, though, it is pretty obvious this book is part 1 of a longer series. a 5 from me.