Mindstar Rising

This was billed to me as 'Thatcherite science fiction' and I avoided it for a long time. That was my mistake (avoiding the book, that is, rather than avoiding Thatcherism). The book is well-written, with an excellent sense of place and a fine ability to move the action along. A friend who comes from the Fens applauded the Eastern English setting, even though the landscape in the novel is transformed by global warming and rising sea levels. ( )

Psychic corporate sleuthing.

Greg Mandel is literally a psychic detective, an ability given to him via technology and a stint in the military. So not a psychic detective in the ghost busting sense, at all.

This very nasty far left government has since collapsed, leaving old pommieland in a semi-parlous rebuilding situation.

Mandel is hired to look into both thefts, and attacks on a digital personality, via that personalities granddaughter.

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

ZB5

Good read. I will finish reading the series. ( )

"Realization struck. He could sense her mind. A pale disconsolate mist of disjointed thoughts, fluttering aimlessly, corrupted with coarse threads of harrowing pain."

In the near future, global warming and an economic collapse have transformed society. Greg Mandel, once a soldier, is scraping a living doing investigative work. His USP is that he's a psychic; a military experiment left him the ability to read emotions. He knows who's lying to him. Called to investigate fraud within one of the richest companies around, he finds himself caught in a deadly game of conspiracies.

This isn't a patch on Hamilton's epic Night's Dawn Trilogy, but it's pretty good nevertheless. The exposition is rather clunky, which had me worried. But once it takes off, it moves along nicely. The action sequences are well done, the political allegiances intriguing, and the characters believable. ( )