The Saints of Salvation

In which Hamilton tries to tie together the multiple threads into one knot, with a string or two left loose for future side stories, if not another trilogy. Doing this is harder than in other trilogies with multiple story lines, given that the threads are thousands of years apart.When that happens, as in, say, The Cloud Atlas, the merger is one of themes and perhaps some relics left from one age to the next. Here Hamilton brings them all literally together, by doing some serious jiggering around with both time (fast and slow) and space (wormholes and portals).

This is a trilogy a la Lord of the Rings. It makes no sense without the previous two books. The Olyix are aliens sent a message from the future have spent millennia traveling show more through the galaxy, collecting all members of every other species they find, to debone, dehydrate, and save for one big gathering at the end of time. The trilogy threads are bookended by the Saints, i.e., a small group of humans who led the initial efforts to fight the Olyix, and a band of humans 10,000 years later who grew up being trained for some ultimate battle. As with Stapledon and EE Smith, once you span one millennia, you can't help upping the ante to lots of them. There are many other story lines, at least one of which, while prominent at the start of this final entry, peters out so much that it's hard to believe people are still talking about it 10,000 years later.

I have a problem with mega-scale space opera (and mega-scale SF like Benford's Galactic Center series) . There's no sense of scale when distances and times are multiplied willy-nilly. Douglas Adams made an observation in the Hitchhiker's Guide about a room feeling incredibly huge precisely because it was finite.

A perfectly reasonable conclusion, but not one that will lead me to pick up another set of Hamilton doorstoppers. Recommended if you like that sort of thing. show less

A good conclusion to the Salvation series. Hamilton is great at serious, somewhat technical scifi. Humans throughout the galaxy are still trying to defeat the Olyix. There are still two time tracks in this book, the 'current' time track of the saints and the far future time track of the expansionist humans. To make all this work, there has to be a lot of manipulation of time, both by humans and Olyix, and it gets a little heavy-handed at times. Still, a good scifi novel.

Hamilton, Peter F. Saints of Salvation. Saints No. 3. Del Rey, 2020.
Now that Ian M. Banks is gone, the mantle of best far-future technologist has to go to Peter F. Hamilton with Alastair Reynolds coming in a close second. And if there is a spiritual heir to E. E. Doc Smith as a writer of galaxy-spanning space opera, Hamilton is the guy. The visit of aliens to Earth jump started human technology, but then the aliens attacked our dome-protected cities, kidnapped large numbers of human beings, placed them in stasis cocoons, and headed for “the end of time.” Humans pursue, and we get to see the climactic battle that results. That is not really a spoiler, since that plotline has been apparent in the series for a long time. There are lots show more of characters to care about, and their individual fates are quite diverse. Once again, we have two major settings, one in the nearish future and one in the far future. And yes, they actually do come together. I will say that keeping track of who is where in the light cone is a challenge, but well worth the effort. 5 stars. show less

Stellar concepts and themes
The plot had me so hooked, I couldn't put this down
- Writing didn't always flow the smoothest
- The characters were a little unrelatable/flat
- The romantic relationships were unnecessary and felt artificial/plot devicey

Over all this was really interesting and entertaining and had such cool concepts that at times I felt like my brain was just lagging behind. Hamilton is just such a master of his craft.

A very satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Lots of space battles, different timelines and most everything resolves in the end (private notes of mine explain more sorry). Whenever I finish a Hamilton novel I have almost an afterglow lol. Love it.

A bit disappointing if I'm honest. It felt unnecessarily fleshed out and also a tad fantastical. To be frank the corpus humans feel like a step too far and all the slow/fast time stuff feels contrived and I'm not sure would stand much scrutiny.

Compared to the other two books this one feels like it was perhaps a bit rushed, having said that though, it's a Peter F. Hamilton book so still excellent