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• Judas Unchained
Peter F. Hamilton

Del Rey, 2007 - 1024 pages

average customer review:based on 21 reviews
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   highly recommended  highly recommended





Immensely satisfying sequel and conclusion

_Judas Unchained_ by Peter F. Hamilton is the exciting, action-packed sequel to his earlier work _Pandora's Star_, a book that completes this two-part series. I found it every bit as good as the first installment and found this novel a page-turner to the very end. There are even bigger battles and more intrigue than the first book and there are many twists, turns, and surprises.

Hamilton continued with his huge cast of characters in _Judas Unchained_, helpfully listing these individuals and a few words about their role in this tale in a three page dramatis personae section before the story begins, organizing into categories whether the characters have to do with the Navy, the various Dynasties, the Senate, the Guardians of Selfhood, are Alien, or fit in the category Others, a categorization that included such individuals as the irrepressible Mellanie Rescorai, Orion (Ozzie's companion from Silverglade), and Simon Rand, the founder of Randtown and the leader of the Resistance there to the Prime invasion. Despite the large cast of characters though, the main actors from the first volume remain the same ones in this installment as well.

Readers of _Pandora's Star_ know that the Prime invasion finally happened towards the end of the first novel, and that twenty-three planets (the Lost23) were successfully invaded and captured by the Prime, with human causalities running into the hundreds of millions. Though there were some successes - one world, Wessex, an industrial Big15 world, was spared invasion, millions of refugees were saved thanks to the CST and the Navy, and resistance groups survive behind enemy lines to harass the Primes - the feeling in the Senate and the Navy is that the Lost23 are truly lost and the focus should be on preventing the Prime from invading still more worlds, worlds deeper in the Commonwealth with larger populations and a greater role in the Commonwealth economy.

At the same time, intrigue continues outside of the public eye, as the Guardians of Selfhood continue their quest to oppose and ultimately destroy the Starflyer and its agents, the Starflyer and its servants continue their quest to bring down the Commonwealth, and officials in the Navy and the Senate such as investigator Paula Myo and Senator Justine Burnelli and their allies have to decide whether or not to continue to pursue the Guardians, whether or not the much mythologized Starflyer is real (which has for most of the Commonwealth the same status and respect we would today probably give Bigfoot), and whether or not they should and even can work with the Guardians against the Starflyer.

We also continue to follow Ozzie, Orion, and Tochee on the walkabout to end all walkabouts, as when we last left the three they were at the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers.

The action at the end of the book, the final showdown, maybe the last quarter or so of the novel, takes place on Far Away. I found it gripping and exciting and really loved how an already fleshed out world became even more detailed, as readers become familiar with this distant and mysterious colony world at the very edge of the Commonwealth, from the crowded, byzantine, cosmopolitan streets of Armstrong City to the planet-girdling epic Highway One to the equatorial grasslands of giant Anguilla grass to the bizarre climate of the wet desert in the shadow of the towering, epic Grand Triad mountains, mountains so high that their peaks are above the planet's atmosphere. I would love to see more stories set on Far Away, perhaps exploring the mysterious Barsoomians.

Though all the major plot threads are neatly tied together and finished at the end of the book, there were a few unanswered questions, though more in the vein of suggesting that some of the major characters will continue to have adventures and there are still mysteries in the Commonwealth universe rather than story elements left dangling. If Hamilton wanted to write more I would be glad to read more about the intentions and plans of the SI for instance, the truth about the Barsoomians, visit Tochee's homeworld, or find out just what it was that Catherine Stewart (aka the Cat) did to earn such notoriety but I imagine it is good to always leave the reader wanting more.



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Pandora's Star plus Judas Unchained is 2000 pages of sci-fi adventure!

Judas Unchained, by Peter Hamilton, is part two of a two part epic beginning with Pandora's Star. And it really is part two. Pandora's Star without Judas Unchained is half a story, and vice versa. These books don't stand alone.

The general theme is as follows. Because of their ability to control the formation and location of wormholes, humans have expanded throughout the galaxy. They've encountered a few sentient alien species, but none that were particularly harmful to human interests.

An astronomer was "lucky" enough to watch a star... disappear. However, it didn't just disappear. It was enveloped in some type of super cocoon. What technology could envelop a star? Did an advanced race put this cocoon up to protect it from a greater danger? Or was something very, very dangerous, penned inside?

We needed to find out.

As a mission approaches the barrier, it suddenly switches off, and humans meet MorningLightMountain. Let's just leave it at "bad things begin to happen."

These "bad things" result in a fight for, quite simply, the survival of humans as a species (in Judas Unchained).

If that's not enough, this series also has the mysterious Starflyer, possibly manipulating both races to get them to annihilate each other so that it can pick up the pieces. Of course, Starflyer is a myth, right? Only zealots care about Starflyer.

You don't want to miss the history of MorningLightMountain in chapter 18 of Pandora's Star (remember the tale of opening Pandora's box?).

Humans, by the way, have really ratcheted up their biotechnology: re-life, rejuvenation, memory crystals, defensive and offensive implants ("wet wired"), and connections to the unisphere.

Cool.

There are very complicated personal relationships in both books, and, I have to admit, they begin to get tedious. Hence the four stars.

Judas Unchained brings all the loose threads together. Will humans survive? Is Starflyer real? Do the interests of the Dynasty Families lie with the human race?

Your questions will be answered. Make sure you have time to read all 2000 pages!


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well written, entertaining, but flawed

Actually, I am a fan of Peter Hamilton's writing, but found too many technical and conceptual flaws in this series. In Pandora's Star, the idea of transporting a neutron star into the center of a gas giant is certainly a very novel idea until you realize that the gas giant would then probably mass more than the entire solar system, which would then accrete into one giant glob which wouldn't be cool for all the folks trying to live there.
Unfortunately, Peter appears to be pandering to black folks,with his 400 year old black genius who is apparently developmentally arrested in 20th century hip talk and a somewhat anachonistic "afro". He then embarks on some ridiculous Quixotic quest to save a race of unspeakably evil beings who will continue to be a horrific threat to the entire universe. I'm afraid it was at this point I put the book down and gave it away. Peter you are capable of so much more.


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Another rollicking space opera from Hamilton

Hamilton's got a real knack for writing expansive, compelling sci-fi epics, and along with the initial "Pandora's Star", this is another great read.


reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5



Peter F. Hamilton?s superbly imagined, cunningly plotted interstellar adventures are conceived on a staggeringly epic scale and filled with fully realized human and alien characters as complex as they are engaging. No mere world builder, Hamilton creates entire universes?and he does so with irresistible flair and intelligence. His previous novel, the acclaimed Pandora?s Star, introduced the Intersolar Commonwealth, a star-spanning civilization of the twenty-fourth century. Robust, peaceful, and confident, the Commonwealth dispatched a ship to investigate the mystery of a disappearing star, only to inadvertently unleash a predatory alien species that turned on its liberators, striking hard, fast, and utterly without mercy.

The Prime are the Commonwealth?s worst nightmare. Coexistence is impossible with the technologically advanced aliens, who are genetically hardwired to exterminate all other forms of life. Twenty-three planets have already fallen to the invaders, with casualties in the hundreds of millions. And no one knows when or where the genocidal Prime will strike next.

Nor are the Prime the only threat. For more than a hundred years, a shadowy cult, the Guardians of Selfhood, has warned that an alien with mind-control abilities impossible to detect or resist?the Starflyer?has secretly infiltrated the Commonwealth. Branded as terrorists, the Guardians and their leader, Bradley Johansson, have been hunted by relentless investigator Paula Myo. But now evidence suggests that the Guardians were right all along, and that the Starflyer has placed agents in vital posts throughout the Commonwealth?agents who are now sabotaging the war effort. Is the Starflyer an ally of the Prime, or has it orchestrated a fight to the death between the two species for its own advantage?

Caught between two deadly enemies, one a brutal invader striking from without, the other a remorseless cancer killing from within, the fractious Commonwealth must unite as never before.

This will be humanity?s finest hour?or its last gasp.


From the Hardcover edition.


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