Pandora’s Star by Peter Hamilton

Eight attendees with six people starting the book but only two finished.

Five people had read Hamilton before and quite enjoyed the experience. This book was not counted among his best, however. Comments like “1,000 pages of small print” and “He could teach Umberto Eco how to do description,” dominated the discussion. At one point, struggling to find some good, a reader brightly pointed out “At least it didn’t involve a lot of torture like in Reality Dysfunction.” “Just for the reader” another reader grumbled.

This book is a sprawling space opera involving wormholes, aliens, and immortality. There were a lot of characters and a lot of ideas, and a lot of plot. One person felt a full third of the book could have been cut without harm. Another thought long books were what Hamilton was all about. If you wanted a book to really chew on, this was the ticket.

Spoiler: this book features a classic cliffhanger ending, just like the book we read last time. Two books in a row with annoying finishes make us very leery of series books.

Again, hurricanes were really the dominant part of the discussion, this time with the threat of Rita visiting Houston.

— Judy Strange