Nice standalone military scifi book. Great power armor concept. ( )

Not one of Hamilton's finest works, best seen as a sort of precursor to the much more successful universe of Pandora's Star - still, there's a lot that does work, and Hamilton has the continued knack to present to the reader a mirror image of the world we presently inhabit, and by an imaginative extrapolation of current circumstances makes clear its awful totality as a military-industrial complex. In this book, though, Hamilton relies on the supposed power of story to enable the characters to find redemption and personal resolution beyond these most terrible forces of society. The narrative devices used to underline the liberatory effect of tale and fancy are unfortunately inadequate though - and these contrivances get in the way of portraying the 'potency of Fairie', whose essential effects are here transposed to a future society. In the aspect of 'Fairie' it feels overall like a weak homage to Tolkien, who Hamilton has name-dropped directly in his work. ( )

(Alistair) This is the first actual Peter F. Hamilton novel I've read (previously having just read the novella/short story collection, A Second Chance At Eden), and having heard very mixed things about his books in the past, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I picked this one up.

Having read it, now, I'm still not entirely sure what to think.

In Fallen Dragon, we start out by getting multiple stories, none of them immediately connected to the fallen dragon, thus far unmentioned, of the title. In it, we follow Lawrence Newton, disillusioned interstellar mercenary (who isn't, quite), working for the hard-nosed corporation recovering some of the money pit of investing in interstellar colonies by sacking them every few years (that's not it, either); Denise Ebourn, schoolteacher on the about-to-be-raided by the fleetlet of director Simon Roderick (kind of) planet Thallspring (which actually is) who is creating wonderful fictional stories (which aren't) to tell the children, while simultaneously running the planet's fairly standard resistance movement (no, it's not either)...and if you think those are spoilers, well, I haven't yet ventured beyond the first fifty pages or so of the 800 in the book.

I think I like it. My only uncertainty comes from the sheer quantity of assorted more-than-they-seemness which the plot ladles out, coupled with some of the technologies involved - some of which are, admittedly, fairly necessary to make Lawrence's coming-of-age-then-recoming-of-age personal growth tale work, even if they do verge on deus ex, which twanged my suspension of disbelief right mightily in parts. Writing-wise, I'm sure some people would quibble with the amount of exposition and flashback used, especially since the payoff comes right at the end of the book, but what the hell. That usually works for me.

Yeah, I liked it. Better than decent spopera with a few rough spots here and there, I think is my verdict.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ce... ) ( )

Military repossession confronation.

In Hamilton's future, space travel is expensive, and it appears colonisation is too expensive to keep up the outrageous profits the corporation that has control of said travel wants.

This leads them to send power armored military forces to loot formerly established colonies for everything of value, with basic hostage taking terrorist tactics. Send in the troops, and put explosive collars on people that will blow their heads off if others misbehave.

One particular colony is aware of this, and has been developing a long term guerilla plan to deal with any such attempt.

The novel follows a disillusioned soldier in the present, and his past as a space obsessed teenager, who realises that the space travel thing isn't all it is cracked up to be.

Other parts follow those he is close to, at times.

Being a Hamilton space adventure, there are a few more bizarre elements than this to be discovered, of course.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/12/fallen-dragon-peter-f-hamilton.html ( )

Military repossession confronation.

In Hamilton's future, space travel is expensive, and it appears colonisation is too expensive to keep up the outrageous profits the corporation that has control of said travel wants.

This leads them to send power armored military forces to loot formerly established colonies for everything of value, with basic hostage taking terrorist tactics. Send in the troops, and put explosive collars on people that will blow their heads off if others misbehave.

One particular colony is aware of this, and has been developing a long term guerilla plan to deal with any such attempt.

The novel follows a disillusioned soldier in the present, and his past as a space obsessed teenager, who realises that the space travel thing isn't all it is cracked up to be.

Other parts follow those he is close to, at times.

Being a Hamilton space adventure, there are a few more bizarre elements than this to be discovered, of course.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/12/fallen-dragon-peter-f-hamilton.html ( )