BOOK REVIEW: Peter F. Hamilton's The Evolutionary Void

 

Peter F. Hamilton's The Evolutionary Void is the third (and final) book in the British science fiction grandmaster's Void Trilogy which started with The Dreaming Void and The Temporal Void. I was looking forward to reading this book very much and even purchased the hard copy on Amazon.com months prior to its official publication.


Hamilton is well-known for his long, intricately plotted, hard sci-fi space operas which are peopled with a dizzying number of characters. The Evolutionary Void is no exception, and it is even more complicated than his other books because it is not only the culminating work in the Void Trilogy, it also follows his earlier Commonwealth Saga books Judas Unchained  and Pandora's Star.

The Evolutionary Void picks up exactly where The Temporal Void concluded. There are multiple storylines which are instantaneously resumed which requires the reader to get up to speed very quickly. In fact, it is probably impossible to read and enjoy this book without reading the first two books (The Temporal Void and The Dreaming Void) first, and relatively recently.

The main story lines are bifurcated into action that takes place either inside or outside the Void, a spatial anomaly which can potentially expand to eliminate the known Galaxy. Inside the Void, the main character is Edeard the Waterwalker who lives in the curiously exogenous city-state of Makkathran which possesses a pseudo-feudal political structure with very limited technology but is populated with humans having telekinetic and telepathic powers. Outside the Void, 1200 years have passed since the exciting events depicted in Hamilton's Judas Unchained  and Pandora's Star. Many of the main characters from those books (Paula Myo, Ozzie Isaacs, Nigel Sheldon, Gore and Justine Burnelli and Oscar Monroe come to mind) are still around, and if you haven't read the previous duology then the reader will miss some nuances of these characters' interactions. The people outside the Void know about the goings on inside through Dreams which are shared in the gaiasphere, a galactic-wide network where properly equipped humans can share their emotional states (invented by Ozzie, of course!) with everyone. Only two people have ever been able to dream about events happening (or that have happened?) within the Void: Inigo (The First Dreamer, around whom a powerful religion called Living Dream has been formed) and the unknown Second Dreamer, who is only identified (and publicly exposed after a multi-planet manhunt) as an average Commonwealth citizen named Araminta. Araminta is a great creation, again demonstrating Hamilton's deft approach with female characters; just as Paula was the heroine of the first series, Araminta is the heroine of the second.

For someone whose reputation is built (deservingly so) on his depiction of action-packed, explosion-filled space battles and mind-blowing, futuristic technology, Hamilton does a surprisingly compelling job of telling what is essentially a fantasy tale inside the Void involving Edeard. The fantasy bits are the best part of the Void books, in my opinion. Hamilton's actually used this device of interlaced chapters of fantasy and hard science fiction before, in Fallen Dragon, and it works very very well. In fact, when the fantasy section becomes somewhat irrelevant due to an ill-chosen plot device I will not give away here, the science fiction story did not hold my attention nearly as well as my previous interest in Edeard's story and as a result I lost interest in The Evolutionary Void. This really surprised me, but it's undeniable that at some point I was just simply confused and slogging through the out-of-the-Void story, anxiously looking forward to catching up on Edeard's story inside-the-Void. When all I could look forward to was whatever Paula, Araminta, Oscar or Inigo would do next, my attention and interest flagged.

This is not to say that The Evolutionary Void is a bad book; Hamilton is an incredibly ambitious author and I think he just tried to do too much in one ridiculously large novel. (Really, the three Void books are clearly just one gigantic tale that due to the constraints of the publishing industry had to be released as three separate volumes.) This is also not surprising because Hamilton's masterwork, The Night's Dawn Trilogy, which is hands-down the best science-fiction trilogy ever written, was released as no less than 6 different books when really it is one gargantuan tale. I have to confess even reading that work one can get lost, but there the problem was that one had too many plot threads and characters one cared about. Reading the Void trilogy we have precisely the inverse problem: too few characters we care about--even characters that we had previously cared about quite a bit in the earlier duology. Of the new characters, only Araminta and Inigo are really fully drawn, with the primary villain of the piece recycled from the earlier series (The Cat). I think there was just one more hook (mystery, romance, comedy, horror) which if it had been included would have greatly strengthened my overall evaluation of this final book, and by extension the entire series. I have read both The Night's Dawn trilogy and Judas Unchained & Pandora's Star twice in their entirety; I believe I would rather re-read those than the Void trilogy (although I will probably give The Evolutionary Void another read, just for completeness).

There is still a lot of science fiction out there I have not read, such as Hamilton's own Misspent Youth, which is a standalone novel set around 1500 years before The Void Trilogy. If any of it is as creative and compelling as this sub-par (by his superlative standards!) Hamilton novel, I will be happy indeed.


Author: Peter F. Hamilton.
Title: The Evolutionary Void 
Hardcover: 704 pages.
Publisher: Del Rey. 
Date: August 24, 2010.

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A-.

OVERALL GRADE: (3.583/4.00) B+/A-.