The Naked God [Hardcover]

Peter F. Hamilton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2000

The "reality dysfunction" is a break in the fabric of time that allows the dead to return by possessing the bodies of the living. As more and more star systems fall to the possessed, the Confederation starts to collapse economically and politically. With the human race now in imminent danger, Quinn Dexter plots the Final Night -- from which humanity will never recover. But on the far side of the Orion Nebula, an alien god may hold the solution to the crisis...if only Joshua and Syrinx can discover it before it's too late.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

After invasions and battles, panic and horror, after denial and the revelation of ultimate truths, after four volumes and 2,300 pages, it all comes down to this: To stem the tide of souls of the dead who have returned to possess the bodies of the living, Joshua Calvert must take his ship, the Lady Macbeth, on a mission beyond the farthest reaches of explored space. His goal is to find the artifact/entity the Tyrathcans call The Sleeping God in the hope that this legendary presence can offer some kind of help, or at least advice with the problem. Otherwise human civilization is perhaps doomed. Meanwhile on Ombey, an army of bitek soldiers stages a counter-invasion of possessed-controlled Mortonridge--a strange battle in which neither side is completely human--but the gains are little and each victory dear. The best of Adamist "gray" technology and Edenist green biotech, now used together in willing cooperation, still offer little hope. Physics cannot overcome metaphysics.

This final installment of Peter F. Hamilton's Homeric space adventure, which began with The Reality Dysfunction, volumes I (Emergence) and II (Expansion), and continued in The Neutronium Alchemist, volumes I (Consolidation) and II (Conflict), is no simple winding up of the story. You'll be amazed to find Hamilton busily introducing new characters, new plots, and new enigmas up to the very end. After all this time can he possibly surprise us? Absolutely. --J.B. Peck

From Publishers Weekly

In the massive conclusion to his elaborate metaphysical trilogy, Hamilton (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist) resolves the fate of humanity and its confrontation with the souls of its dead. In this volume, the Confederation's epic spiritual crisis reaches a climax: the tear in the boundary between reality and afterlife, a boundary that many souls cross to possess the bodies of the living and to use their energistic power, remains open. Petrified of being forced back into the beyond--a hell where all souls anguish in nothingness but can see the familiar universe just out of reach--the possessed withdraw entire planets from our universe to another. Two factions of the possessed, however, have no intention of leaving our universe: Al Capone's brutal, ever-expanding mafia organization and Quinn Dexter's cult of pain, which is trying to orchestrate a torturous apocalypse. Meanwhile, a Liberation Army attempts to forcefully remove individual possessors from their living victims, resulting in atrocities. GovCentral works on a weapon to extinguish a soul entirely from all existence, but is unwilling to commit itself to the kind of genocide the weapon would unleash. As a last hope, two starships are sent to hunt down a literal deus ex machina, another species's Sleeping God. Its existence is the only real hope that mankind has of surviving. Hamilton's work encompasses a broad sweep of philosophical and moralistic themes, yet he keeps a tight focus on his 100-plus "principal characters" and the highly fantastical universe they inhabit. His work requires slow, careful reading, but those who put in the extra effort will be paid back in full and then some. The depth and clarity of the future Hamilton envisions is as complex and involving as they come. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 975 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books (January 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446525677
• ISBN-13: 978-0446525671
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,332,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter F. Hamilton was born in Rutland in 1960, and still lives near Rutland Water. His previous novels are the Greg Mandel series and the bestselling 'Night's Dawn' trilogy: The Reality Dysfunction , The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God. Also published by Macmillan (and Pan) is A Second Chance at Eden, a novella and six short stories, and The Confederation Handbook, a vital guide to the 'Night's Dawn' trilogy. His most recent novels were Fallen Dragon, Misspent Youth, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sprawling, Astonishing, and well worth it., January 16, 2000

By 

Eric Oehler (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Naked God (Hardcover)

This gigantic (970-page) book is an intimidating read. With two equally large volumes of backstory, more characters and plot threads than you can keep track of without taking notes, and an admittedly hard-to-describe premise (merely saying that "the dead are coming back and posessing the living" sounds dumb), The Naked God is not at first glance an easy book.

But what a story. Hopping between the main protagonist's voyage into uncharted space looking for the Tyrathca god of the title, the posessed-ravaged Earth, the bitek habitats, the Kiint homeworld, the military campaigns agaist the posessed, and even entire other universes, the tale flies along at a breakneck pace. It's nearly impossible to expect all the plot twists and intruigues, and many of the climactic scenes have an edge-of-your-seat intensity. It's unapologetic space opera, yes, but it's absorbing in the complexity of the worlds and characters created.

The ending is a bit sudden, as is often the case with grand series like this...there's no way to do complete justice to such a grand tale with a few chapters of denoument (I personally was left thinking "alright, more! What happens next?" much as I was at the end of the Dune series). Admittedly, the solution to the posessed and the Beyond is a bit of a Deus ex Machina, and has a twinge of hokey sentimentality. That should not deter one from delving into this series - the solutions to the problem are less important to the story of the problem itslef and it's effects on the main characters. "The Naked God" examines the tales from so many angles and viewpoints - political, social, spiritual, economic, technological and ethical - that it is a deeply engrossing tale. The characters are believable, some likable, some despicable, some worthy of pity, others of redemption. It's very rare to find fully multi-dimensional characterizations in scifi, especially scifi on the scope of this trilogy.

The "Night's Dawn" trilogy deserves to become a classic on par with Simmons's "Hyperion Cantos" and Herbert's "Dune."

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Naked God - A Proofreader's Nightmare, February 6, 2000

By 

John (Seattle, WA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Naked God (Hardcover)

I am a big fan of Peter F. Hamilton. After reading the first two novels in this series, even though it was really four novels, the publisher's ploy of releasing the book in hardcover worked on me. I snapped up a copy of the book as soon as it became available.

I should have waited. While I enjoyed the story, and thought the writing was as crisp as ever, I was disheartened by the amazing number of proofing errors I found. Nearly every page had at least one, and many had more.

While I would otherwise give this book a wholehearted recommendation, I would hesitate to suggest to any but the most impatient reader that he spend his hard-earned money until a new, and hopefully corrected, edition becomes available.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the convenient ending...and all the typos, January 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Naked God (Hardcover)

Hamilton's ending to TNG may be unworthy of his own writing, but it's high art compared to most other SF writers. This is an author who succeeds at things most writers don't even attempt--and that scores major points in my book. If his next book is this good and has 50 blank pages instead of an ending, I'll still pay its hardcover price.

While I didn't consider this in my rating, I have to add that this book has more typos than anything I've ever read. If this book were any other product, you'd call it "broken" and return it. Missing words, double words, and misspellings abound (and no I'm not talking about British spellings). In places you don't so much read this novel as decypher it. I'd blame sloppy proofreading if I thought it was proofread at all (or even spell checked by a computer). It's embarrassing to have such a fine novel defaced like this. And it's a ripoff to the readers to deliver a book in this condition.