Customer Reviews

The Naked God

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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."

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.

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.

There are six books in Peter F. Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" series:

- "The Reality Dysfunction - Part 1: Emergence,"
- "The Reality Dysfunction - Part 2: Expansion,"
- "The Neutronium Alchemist - Part 1: Consolidation,"
- "The Neutronium Alchemist - Part 2: Conflict,"
- "The Naked God - Part 1: Flight," and
- "The Naked God - Part 2: Faith."

Be warned: you CANNOT read these books individually. They are, essentially, chapters in one whopping great book. If you like the first book, then you'll have to read the other five books in order. There's no tie-up of any sort between any of the books. The publisher just broke the story up because it totals over 3,000 pages. If you pick up a book before you've read all the previous books (in order), put it down. It won't mean anything to you. Since these books are entirely dependent on each other, I'm writing this review on the series as a whole, not on the individual books.

This is one of the greatest science fiction sagas written. It ranks up there with David Brin's "Uplift Saga." It is literally a story of good vs evil and shows some of the potential (and pitfalls) of the human race. Over the years, I've read the whole series five times, and I still love it. I really only have two gripes with the book. First, and this is unavoidable in what Hamilton is doing, the evil in the series is definitely, graphically evil. This is not a book where the villain twists his mustache and laughs "nyah hah hah" as he forecloses on the orphanage or ties the heroine to the railroad tracks. The writing is fairly graphic in a lot of places. After five readings, this gets a bit wearing. My second gripe is one which somewhat limits the audience of the series (even more so than the evilness presented, and it's why I've given the series four stars instead of five): there's too much sex and the writing about it is too graphic. This is a problem with all of Hamilton's books, but it seems more prevalent in this series. Because of this, I wouldn't recommend the book for your children to read. But, as long as you're aware of that, I highly recommend the series and give it 4 stars out of five.

Wow, what a let down of an ending. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this book immensely. However, the thrill came from the excellent adventure and detailed action which Hamilton is so good at describing. I was disappointed because of the total lack of exploration of the concepts that teased and awed in the first two books of the series.

For four books, Hamilton sets the reader up to expect an exploration of the concepts of life after death, eternity, the nature of evil, self determination, etc. The ending addresses none of these issues, completely bypassing the issue which created most of the tension in the first place -- the Kiints' insistance that humans must find their own solution to the problem of possession -- the Kiint won't even give them any hints.

Reading the Epilogue, my thought was "Gee, so there never really was a problem anyway."

Anyway, it's still a good book, hence the three stars. If you've already read the first four in the series, it's definitely worth finishing it up.

If you're this far into the series already, is anything I say really going to sway you either way? So I guess this will be targeted towards new readers who might be wondering if they should invest in reading thousands of pages if the later books stink to high heaven. Rest assured, dear reader, the first half of the last book keeps the same quality as the other books, I've found this to be almost conpulsive in making me keep turning pages, Hamilton as the rare ability to keep plots spinning and zips you through so many plots that while you can keep them straight (most of the time) you rarely get bored. Most of the plots are fairly crucial more or less to the final cascading plot, so moreso than others and they are more wildly split by distance and importance than the other books but we're still treated to lots of action and some philosophy, everyone is getting gtim as they move the players into the last stages of the battle, we're getting near do or die time folks. The intensity is almost unrelenting sometimes and some of the payoffs are better than others but Hamilton leavens it out with enough humor or horror to keep things interesting, his characters may not be the most well rounded people in existence but they are a fun bunch that you won't mind cozying up to for seven hundred pages (or more if you've been reading since the beginning). There's not much I can say without giving away the plot to the entire series, if I skimp too much it sounds like "Same old same old" I mean yes the possessed are still taking over people and those folks not possessed are trying to stop it and everyone's fighting or trying to find solutions or whatnot . . . but if I go into too much detail then I'll be giving away too much or it won't make any sense. So let me just say that if you're read this far you probably won't be disappointed and if you're thinking of starting, the quality of the series tends to remain high throughout, which is a rare occurrance these days. Hopefully the ending will be just as good, we'll see I guess.

There's no denying it: the entire series is a page-turner, and you will stay up late to finish it. Peter Hamilton is a world-builder on the level of Julian May (Pliocene Exile) and Dan Simmons (Hyperion). Great plotting, a fully realized universe and compelling characters. Some quibbles though. First, this book could have used some more serious editing. Too many typos, lots and lots of run-on sentences, and occasional rambling descriptions that needed tightening up. Second, is it just me or was every reference to homosexuality in the series somehow wrapped up in rape and/or satanism? Are there no normal gay characters in Hamilton's universe? Those complaints aside, I highly recommend the series and TNG. I wasn't so bugged by the rushed ending--maybe because I had read the reviews here and was forewarned!

After having bought the first book in the series (The Reality Dysfunction) by chance in a rush at the airport, I was enthralled with the depth of the characters and the well thought out sci-tech future. The author did an excellent job of setting the scene before introducing the fantasy component of the spirit realm. However, he very successfully resisted the temptation to err towards fantasy and stuck to his hard-core sci-fi guns with vigour. The second book (The Neutrino Alchemist) wavered slightly in the plot and I got the impression that he decided to expand his planned sequel into a trilogy. The third and emphatically final book was, in my opinion, the best of the three. The sense of excitement and drama that built steadily throughout the book culminates in a heady and mesmerising fashion which literally left me gasping for breath. By far, the best book I have read since Dune first appeared and re-defined the concept of the Space Opera with its ground breaking complexity and interwoven plot. I would definitely recommend reading the first two books before as too much scene setting would be lost.

I have just finished reading TNG. I am left with a great sense of completion, but not the emotional high I left with when I finished reading the Hyperion Cantos.

To remind myself of the details of the epic story (and to make sure I got the plot!) I re-read the first two books. I found this set me up well for TNG.

Hamilton writing is just phenomena; he has constructed a universe and characters of immense complexity and depth in a multiple plotted story that I was amazed how he managed to keep track of.

Published as an 1161 page hard book in the UK it no small feat to carry it around but I had to. TNG was very compelling I wanted to now what happened to Joshua, Louise and the host of other characters, not to mention the Confederation. Perhaps the ending was not as emotional rewarding at it was on intellectual level, but I would be had pushed to find an author could do better, especially given the subject matter. I always thought Hamilton was brave to take the Nightfall story where he did and I for one am looking to the next book he writes.

Looking at the three books overall the Nightfall Trilogy is excellent, if not heavy read, but worth the weight on many levels.

I haven't even gotten a third of the way through the book yet and I am astounded. Having read the 5 other books in this series I was greatly anticipating The Naked God, and so far I have not been let down. My jaw dropped as some of the different plotlines from the rest of the series started to unfold in TNG in ways I never would have expected. The scale of the events in this series is enormous. Mr. Hamilton has come up with future tech that is brilliant. Well written space battles, and multiple interconnected plotlines are some of this book's advantages. One of the best, if not the best sci fi series I have ever read is looking like the final book will be quite a show stopper. I have recommended this series to all of my sfi fi fan friends.