I picked this book up on a whim whilst travelling in New Zealand. Up to that point, and since, I have not read a book that builds up such a detailed universe of cultures, characters and technology as this one. Yes it does take a while to get into, but once it gets going; the story and pace are fantastic. The story threads both amaze and annoy at once, as you get into one plot line just to be pulled out and dropped into another (character group, planet, story); but this just makes you realise how drawn into the book you are.

It is a mammoth first part of a mammoth trilogy; but worth it - even if it did make me miss a large amount of fantastic scenery, as I read in the car whilst my mates drove around New Zealand (I had to do something other than look out the window - the radio out in the sticks in NZ is dire). ( )

1st off I gave this a try because a few people recommended it on the Amazon Kindle Discussion board. I generally love Sci-Fi and the price was right, $7.99 for all three books on my Kindle. What I didn't realize was that all three books have a total page count north of 3,600 pages! Yikes. So I plunged into this trilogy.

Book 1: The Reality Dysfunction.
It took a while for the book to get moving. It wasn't until after eight long chapters that things started to click. The author goes into a lot of detail and the characters are very well formed. It just that there is a lot to set up in the story. Once you get past all that things really start moving; characters start intersecting and all hell breaks lose. By the end, you are left breathless. ( )

Top notch science fiction of the best kind. ( )

Space opera horror monster massive tome.

The start of a humongous trilogy, and with so many pages to fill Hamilton is able to come up with all sorts of stuff.

The Confederation is divided basically on religious grounds between those that use organic technologically to actually bond with computers and animals, and those that only use non-organic or electronic technology.

They still work together, but there are tensions.

Against this backdrop we have the invention of a doomsday weapon, interplanetary war, strange alien investigators, royalty, smartarse starship captains, sentient spaceships, the opening of death's door, nasty cults, wildly varying planets, royalty, and some really good booze.

A vastly entertaining epic, indeed.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/12... ( )

A very interesting book compassing a large and detailed universe. I read the Confederation novels (Pandora's Gate and Judas Unchained) first, and what you can see is that there's a lot of shared topics between theme. It some ways, it feels like a practicing precursor - which is not meant to degrade the book in the least; it delivers the story in Hamilton's usual exhilirating way. Even though the later books feature a similar storyline, modulo the "Zombies in Space!" effect, there's no sense of spoilage, just the occasional bout of déjà-vue.

If you're in for the straight action, you might experience a bit of boredom at the passages detailling the background story of the universe, but to all hard sci-fi fans, it's a must-read. ( )