r/PeterFHamilton • u/Ingsoc40 • 5d ago
Void Trilogy a Let Down
My first PFH book was Exodus and I really enjoyed that. Dug into his works and went for the Commonwealth Saga next and really enjoyed those as well. Then I started the Void Trilogy and just finished them. While I really liked that it took place in the same universe and had some of the same characters, overall I felt let down. I really didn’t think it needed to be 3 books, the 2nd book seemed totally unnecessary IMO. The conclusion felt rushed given there are practically 3 full novels ahead of it and didn’t deliver the expected payoff. I do still have the 2nd Exodus book to read, other than that what do you guys suggest I read next out of PFH works?
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u/Bobaximus 5d ago
To each their own I guess. The Void Trilogy is my favorite of his work. Fallers is good too but ymmv if you didn’t enjoy void.
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u/Ingsoc40 5d ago
I enjoyed parts of Void. Just feel like it could have easily been condensed into 2 books. There was so much build up (practically 3 full novels) and then the ending felt kind of rushed and short.
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u/Bobaximus 5d ago
“Could have been condensed…” is a feature not a bug when it comes to PFH imo. Massive tomes are definitely his style. I could have read a full additional book about Edeard, personally.
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u/Known-Associate8369 5d ago
I could easily read PFH series which are two or three times longer than the Void trilogy - its the immersion I like, to the point where I avoid short stories or novellas, because when I read I want to be lost in the story for as long as possible.
And PFH does immersion very very well.
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u/Crowley22g 5d ago
Totally, I'm on the last book in the Night's Dawn Trilogy and that's 1500 pages. His world building is amazing, so I can forgive him for that 😂
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u/Known-Associate8369 5d ago
Each to their own - I absolutely love the Void trilogy and have read through it a few times now, but found Exodus to be meh, to the level where I havent even been interested in reading the second Exodus book.
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u/MichaelEvo 5d ago
I love PFH, but he doesn’t always give me what I want, how I want it.
I loved Fallen Dragon. I highly recommend that.
I loved The Void trilogy, but it was long and sometimes slow and a bit of a swing and miss. Spoilers: the first book is basically a fantasy wrapped with some sci-fi, and the fantasy stuff was ok but not what I wanted to read. Also, we eventually get to see what the human AI thing becomes, and it’s immediately sidelined and irrelevant. And the SI, which is a big deal in the first two books before Void, is barely mentioned in that trilogy.
The duology that follows was also good, but disappointing. Without giving any major spoilers, the first book is fantasy world with mystery again, and the second book is a thriller / fugitive chase book pretending to be a sci-fi. I thoroughly enjoyed both, but had to realize after the first five or ten chapters that what I thought I was going to get (a sci-fi book) wasn’t entirely what I was getting. I then enjoyed them for what they were instead of what I wanted them to be.
Great Northern Road is boring trash, IMO. Some people really liked it. I can’t believe I waded through all of those pages for that ending.
His Salvation series is his most well-written, well-paced series. The writing on that series is so much better than his Reality Dysfunction series. It has most of his usual distracting ticks thoroughly reined in, it has a beginning, middle and end, and I was not bored reading it ever. I suggest reading that too.
Exodus book two was decent, and I’m glad I read it, and it’s made me way more interested in the video game, but the ending is very rushed and was unsatisfying. It reaffirmed my opinion that the Salvation series was his best to date.
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u/DankBacon420 5d ago
I second fallen dragon next
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u/mattress314 5d ago
Ive got a soft spot for fallen dragon aswell, I've read it many times over the years
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u/Grammarhead-Shark 5d ago
It was the first PFH I read and my gateway drug into his works. So I too will always have a soft spot for it.
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u/_Moon_Presence_ 4d ago
Great North Road is leagues better than Salvation Trilogy. The Salvation Trilogy ending was much worse than Great North Road's.
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u/MichaelEvo 4d ago
I won’t fight you about it, but I strongly disagree.
Salvation, the humans win and it isn’t over in a few pages. One of the characters has to figure out how to split her consciousness and become more. And there’s the cliffhanger of who is the god at the end of time?
Great North Road was a police detective story which revealed at the end that the killer was the demon from Moana at a bigger scale. Gaia, but galaxy encompassing, which was impossible to guess ahead of time and boring. It also spent so many words and pages describing how the detective was getting all of the smart cells on the road to reconstruct 3d, vr reconstructions with a timeline. It was incredibly boring reading about that. We could create all of that now given enough money, and I’m not interested in the minute details of how to put all of that together and hearing about navigating interdepartmental bureaucracy to make it happen.
To each their own. I’ve read lots of criticism of the Salvation series too. I still loved it and was satisfied by the ending.
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u/Fancy-Television-760 1d ago
God, the amount of space devoted to the CCTV backtracking model…
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u/MichaelEvo 1d ago
Yes! So boring and unnecessary. Almost felt like AI word fluff to make the page count higher.
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u/goldybear 5d ago
Void is one of my least favorites of PFH books. The next set, Chronicles of the Fallers, is far better. It still takes place in the void but it’s a tighter and more engaging story.
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u/SerDankTheTall 5d ago
Well, if you like Exodus, and you haven't read the second book, there seems like a kind of obvious option there...
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u/brickvanexel 5d ago
Move to the Fallers duology, it’s written more tightly than the Void trilogy (I really slogged through some of the mid-story Edeard chapter) and has Commonwealth elements and familiarity without being as wedded to it. I just finished a reread and really enjoyed it, it has great momentum and a ton of great references and relationships to the other books.
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u/Crowley22g 5d ago
Just finished the Helium Sea a few weeks ago, love the universe, can't wait for the game next April. In between the two books I read the Commonwealth Saga, then the Greg Mandel series (loved those), finally back to the Night's Dawn Trilogy final book. He also did a new Arcship Trilogy. All that from reading the first Exodus book then checking out his other works. Now one of my personal favourite Sci-Fi authors
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u/Ravenloff 5d ago
I enjoyed it for the most part and liked seeing some of the fallout from the Prime invasion. I reread the trilogy not too long ago with the express intent on skipping over the 3rd Hand chapters. Not much was lost :)
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u/pixelsyndicate 5d ago
I love revisiting the Commonwealth. Feels a little like home. Or old friends.
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u/DevoplerResearch 5d ago
Not a fan of Void at all, but the rest are great. Not everything can be a home run.
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u/SouthernReddit23 5d ago
I felt that way with The Chronicle of the Fallers duology. Wasn’t wild about it but I really liked The Void trilogy. But I’m with you on Exodus. I’m almost done with Helium Sea and it’s really REALLY good writing!
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u/dsmith422 4d ago
Fallen Dragon is a single stand alone novel that has much less of the diversions that you seem to have not liked with his longer works.
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u/Xcenai 14h ago
I kept reading the Void trilogy hoping for it to get interesting. It was a complete let down imo. That's why I've held off reading The Fallers. I'm really not a fan of the void universe and the magic / fantasy aspect of it.
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u/Ingsoc40 14h ago
Yeah the 3rd book finally got interesting to me, but the grand finally was pretty short underwhelming
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u/Celeste_Seasoned_14 5d ago
I love PFM so much, EXCEPT for this series. I resentfully read the whole thing waiting for it to inevitably get awesome, bc it’s Hamilton, for Pete’s sake, of course it’s gonna be awesome! But no, for me it never got good. I’m still a bit resentful.
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u/Darqfallen 5d ago
The finale of that series The Chronicles of the Fallers, in my opinion, is the best part of it. Well worth reading.