Salvation Lost

Life in the mid 23rd Century is the closest that humanity has got to a utopia, energy is pretty much free because of the quantum entangled portals and it has enabled mass transportation to almost anywhere. That comfortable life is about to come to an end as a threat of epic proportions has just been discovered. Feriton Kane’s investigative team has discovered that the supposedly benign Olyix race are heading to Earth.

They plan to harvest humanity, in order to carry us to their god at the end of the universe. It is the worst threat ever to face mankind and there is almost no time to fight back. As the Olyix ship appears it opens a portal and thousands of ship pour through with one aim in mind. Humanity could be wiped from the face of show more the universe; they have a choice; stay and fight, or flee out among the stars.

When I read the first in the series, Salvation, about this time last year, I thought it was a fast-paced and well-conceived sci-fi thriller. This builds on all the elements that he put in place in that first book but doesn’t have the relentless pace of the previous book. The plot is more subtle, with subplots that weave around the main thread and slowly are drawn in but the gravity of the ending. I did feel that it took a lot longer to get going than the first in the series, but then that hit the ground running.

His world-building of the habitats that humanity now live it and a futuristic London and other major cities that are preparing for the worst on Earth is really special. I also liked the space battles too, they just felt really plausible and are really well written. I thought that it concluded fairly well, but it suffers from a little of those middle book blues where a lot of the plot is unresolved and left open. That said, there is the third book coming that should resolve all these threads and I am really looking forward to it. show less

Mr. Hamilton does it again. But this time, rather than kicking off an epic war of dead people versus the living in a high-tech far-future space-opera, he twists us around a truly desperate struggle against very powerful aliens coming to "save" us, preserving us and sending us to the end of the universe where we will all share the experience together.

Sound like some religious nutters? They FEEL like religious nutters. And it's awesome. This is the start of the full-on conflict right here. All the human worlds, some alien help, and the full efforts of our own far-future humanity are set against this odd invasion.

And it's an extinction-level event.

Never mind that we have near-immortality, quantum entanglement transporters, von Neumann show more transhumanists, or some extreme printing technology, minds as big as moons, or anything we thought would make us amazingly resilient.

This is total war. And the twists to come are pretty damn amazing. No spoilers, but this is one of the more impressive novels by Hamilton. And when it comes to worldbuilding and storytelling and the epic, that's saying a lot. show less

This one picks up right where Salvation left off. If you haven't read Salvation, you can get by in this one, but I think you'd be missing a lot. There are two time tracks in this book - the 'present' of 2204 and the far, far future. The two are equally interesting and compelling, but I really liked the future timeline better. There are some really unpleasant parts of 2204, which I thought weren't necessary, but that is only about 2 chapters. Otherwise, this is still fascinating and a great read. This is plot-driven, not character driven, it doesn't seem like we're supposed to get too invested in any of the characters, but the premise and action are fascinating. I'm looking forward to the next book. Beware aliens bearing medical gifts!

OK but less interesting to me than part 1 of the Salvation sequence. While I was impressed with the Dreaming Void sequence, over time I've become tired of constant space opera battles that fill Hamilton's book -- where unbelievable amounts of energy / mass / whatever collide in multi-page sequences, all occurring over a span a few seconds or minutes. The first book had less of this since it was setting up the two storylines: the invasion in a near future Earth, and the culmination of humanity's attempt to fight back thousands of years later. In this book, both stories are now replete with the microsecond megawatt battles, on Earth and in space. It's hard to go more than twenty page before another one occurs. The mysteries of what's show more going on in the first book have mostly been resolved, except for the location and nature of the eponymous Salvation.

OK for Hamilton fans and for those who enjoyed the first book enough to trod through this one. But if the third book is more of the same, I will be disappointed. show less

I really loved Salvation, and had super high expectations for this. I enjoyed this as well, but for some reason this was a lot more difficult (for me) to stay on top of. Also, my pet peeve in scifi is "futuristic" slang or new terminology for things you could just call by their names, so every time a noun ended with a z I was thoroughly annoyed. I was mostly interested in the Vayan storyline, and secodary to that the Saints storyline. What I didn't care about were the London groups, but I get that they're part will probably become more relevant in the Saints of Salvation. Anyway, even though this wasn's quite five stars for me, I'm still incredibly excited about the third (and presumably final) book.

A very solid readable continuation of the Salvation series. What more can I say?

Amazing! Salvation set things up and this one knocked them down. Wow what a story. This picks up pretty much where the last one left off. It starts of fast and keeps driving all the way to the end. I cannot wait for the final novel to comes out for the big finale.
The void trilogy really rubbed me the wrong way and I was concerned that PFH had decided to go in a different direction. But this series so far has blown my mind.