Teaser

A few decades from now, when global warming has pushed sea levels to new heights, political upheaval has reshaped Britain, and the economy has once again crashed, a devastating new technology becomes the target of powerful men with sinister agendas . . .

Review

In theory, Peter F. Hamilton is one of those authors I should enjoy. He’s written plenty of books, most of them firmly sitting in the space opera genre. They’re full of space battles, big ideas, and adventure on a grand scale. I’ve dipped in and out of his body of work, sampling various series, and I usually find myself having an okay time, but am sometimes disappointed and have never been left wowed. My usual grievances are twofold. Firstly, his books are massive, some of them clocking in at over a thousand pages, and that is accompanied by little sense of momentum. The other problem, a lesser one, is that any time he has a cool science fiction idea, it seems like Hamilton’s instinct is to ponder how this would affect people’s sex lives. Naturally, this leads to long and frequently arduous chapters of lovemaking. And yet, around the start of the millennium, Hamilton was the bestselling science fiction author in the UK. So something was clearly going well. In search of what I was apparently missing out on (and because I found a cheap copy) I decided to go back to where it all started. Mindstar Rising, Hamilton’s debut novel.

Mindstar Rising is not a space opera. It’s a more grounded story set in the near future. Impressively, it’s a near future that still feels plausible thirty years later. With the caveat that the government destroying British credibility seems more likely to be fascist than socialist. Oh well, you can’t guess everything right. Into this post-collapse world steps Greg Mandel, and while I initially thought I was in for a crime novel, I soon realised this fits more neatly into the thriller category. Think James Bond and you won’t be far off. Though Mandel manages the impressive achievement of making Bond look like a feminist. At a trim four hundred pages and change, this book largely goes to show that Hamilton can write a self-contained story that won’t break any bookcases. Unless you through it really hard, I guess.

As I say, this is a Bond-like adventure. Mandel inhabits a murky world of corrupt politicians, reclusive millionaires, and incredibly attractive women. the politicians are there to be killed, the millionaires are there to be employed by, and the women are there to be slept with. The sex in this book might be more traditional than in other Hamilton books, but there’s still a lot of it. Within the first chapter, Mandel is happily bonking away. Later on, he’s remarking on the ‘delicious’ appearance of a younger woman, and when his employer confides that she has been sexually assaulted, Mandel’s first instinct is to tell her how beautiful she is. Put simply, Greg is the worst.

As for the rest of it, it’s a standard spy thriller. There are some twists, but the villains are fairly obvious from the get-go. The setting is grounded enough that it doesn’t require much exploration, but the future Britain feels nicely fleshed out. There’s a satisfying earthiness to it that Hamilton’s later space operas rarely manage.

Is this the end of my journey with Hamilton? Probably not. But I am likely to turn towards audiobooks. Hamilton’s prose is much better when someone else is reading it for you.

Book Stats

• Greg Mandel #1
• First Published 1993
• 438 Pages