Teaser

A North clone has been murdered in Newcastle, and now the other Norths want answers. Detective Sid finds himself embroiled in a mystery that has consequences far beyond one world’s future . . .

Review

One of the ways I’ve been putting off buying new books in recent months is taking a look at my Audible library. When I first made a foray into audiobooks a couple of years ago, I DNF’d hard on a couple. At the time I simply wasn’t enjoying the audio format, largely because of how achingly slow the narration of those two books was. However, at the time I didn’t know you could speed up the narration. It turns out that putting Toby Longworth in double speed does wonders for making progress through a thick tome. So here I am, re-examining a partially listened o book by an author I don’t expect much from.

To get the bad news out of the way first, this book has not changed my opinion on Peter F. Hamilton. Like the other works of his I have dabbled with, Great North Road is just too long. The paperback is over a thousand pages long, and the audio is thirty-six and a half hours. And listen, I don’t mind a long book. So long as it’s continuously interesting. Great North Road is far from that. It’s a badly paced slog that has taken me more than a month to finish. Now, granted, Peter F. Hamilton is a successful author and I am not, but I’m firmly of the opinion that you shouldn’t be adding new viewpoint characters at the twenty-hour mark. Our initial protagonist Sid spends a lot of his time stuck in an investigation that goes nowhere, and I can relate. I spent thirty-plus hours of my life listening to endless tangents about football and taxis. And those are just the matters of little consequence.

The main plot of this book is ostensibly a murder mystery. But it also includes a first contact scenario, the possibility of annihilation by yet another alien menace, and a whole load of politicking. Any one thread could easily drive a novel. Here, they jostle for space and compete for primacy. The murder is seemingly wrapped up as an afterthought, the aliens take precedence, and the potential annihilation of humanity is basically forgotten about. Oh, and we end with an out-of-the-blue interstellar journey for an unlikely group too. For some reason. As if that’s not enough, there are further pacing issues. Each chapter takes place over a single day, with the date given at the start. At least in theory. In practice there are countless flashbacks, which are very poorly signalled and surely should have been split into their own chapters. or even just labelled clearly. There is a timeline at the very end of the book, but that’s far less useful in audio than if it were a physical copy.

All of this is a shame, as the ideas here are pretty good. The North clones, the Gateways, the Xanth (or possibly Zanth), it’s all good fodder for science fiction. The mission to Saint Libra is by far the best part of the book, especially in its latter stages. But one satisfying arc in a book this bloated is not enough to redeem it.

Deeper Dive: Clones

One part of this book that fascinates me is the North clones. While I question the idea of a man so manly and virile that all of his genetic offspring are female (and that’s the least of the weird sex in Hamilton’s books), the execution is great. There are three successful clones, and each of those has clones, and each of those has clones. But the fourth generation clones don’t survive, or at least don’t thrive.

It’s the problem of photocopying a photocopy. As any farmer knows, a limited gene pool will only get you so far before errors start cropping up. The rivalry between the three family trees is also well-handled. And then there’s the issue of clones impersonating one another. Had this solely been a book of clone intrigue, it would have been far stronger. Because Augustin, Bartram, and Constantin are easily the lynchpin about which the novel turns.

Audiobook Stats

• A Standalone Novel
• Published in 2012
• Published by Pan Macmillan
• An SF Crime Thriller
• 36hrs 35 minutes