Judas Unchained

Commonwealth Saga, Book 2

By: Peter F. Hamilton

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 40 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

In this incredible sequel to Pandora's Star, the Commonwealth Saga goes out with a bang. Judas Unchained is a stunning, expansive space opera from one of the world's bestselling science fiction writers, Peter F. Hamilton.

Our worlds are under invasion – and only the impossible can save us now . . .

Over hundreds of years, the human race has been manipulated into starting a war. And it's one that could destroy our entire civilization. Chief Investigator Paula Myo is nominated to hunt the creature behind this ploy, while our invasion continues and multiple worlds fall to the enemy. In response, Admiral Kime commands humanity's defense, marshaling war-ready super-weapons. Yet he discovers his adversaries wield equally powerful armaments.

The question is – where did these come from? Has the Commonwealth's top-secret defense project been compromised, or is the truth even worse than we can imagine?

The Commonwealth Saga duology starts with Pandora's Star.

©2005 Peter F Hamilton (P)2008 Tantor Media Inc

Critic reviews

'If Pandora’s Star represented a return to form, Judas Unchained is even better' - Guardian

Amazing world building

Amazing world building and characters, it’s not for those who likes a short straight to the point story, but if you let yourself immerse into the universe and technology he builds it’s perfect for you

loose story from bad to worse

What disappointed you about Judas Unchained?

The story develop into a mess of loose threads and the character become less and less convincing.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Alastair Macreinolds

What about John Lee’s performance did you like?

The voice, the characterization, the overall sense of drama

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

I had high expectation for this story, especially after the first book of the miniseries (Pandora star) that, although not exceptional suggested interesting development. Sadly, this was not the case.

Too many accents

I am sure there is a good story here, however John Lee is not my style of reader. He may appeal to other listeners but for me it is almost as though he is using various accents to give a character a voice . It becomes an annoyance after a while, for me. I like Peter F Hamilton but unfortunately John Lee spoiled it for me. AUDIBLE 20 REVIEW SWEEPSTAKES ENTRY

Good story - probably better to read

This is a massive piece of fiction with a lot going for it. Unfortunately, the narration doesn't do it justice. It's not that the narrator doesn't do a good job portraying the characters. Quite the opposite; I thought he did a great job of bringing the characters to life. The problem lies with the organisation of the reading. First, the narration suffers from weird shifts in tone and recording quality that I believe to be a result from the narrator taking a break from recording and starting up a while later. This means that the the narrator's tone of voice and the volume of the recording might switch at any time. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence. Second, given the large number of characters, it becomes confusing when the story shifts perspective between characters as the narrator does not mark this shift whatsoever. You might switch from the calm view of a mountain range to the center a frenzied battle in a heartbeat, without knowing that the two scenes belong to different characters. This is too bad, really, as this book features a number of bombastic action sequences featuring several main characters which become a confusing blur instead of the intense cataclysmic events that they try to be.

TL;DR: This is a good book that is marred by poorly structured narration.

It's hard

I love the concepts but it's so loooooong, I actually got a printed version and skipped last 30% to the end. John Lee is a great narrator as always

This was sadly a waist of time

This book is possibly good in paper format, and may even work as a tv-show. But as an audio book, it didn't work for me.

Too many people and side stories that is difficult to keep track of, and at many times the story is dragged out with really uninteresting parts that last for 10-20 minutes.
This combined with really awful editing that have made the switching between scenes so short that for most times you are not aware it has happened. You are just suddenly pulled out of the story because you realize that the scene has changed almost mid-sentence. When this happens, it took me a little while to get back to actually listening to the story again.
And this is true between ALL story sections - in both books!
Was there no quality control of this before releasing the audio books?

And suddenly (I think it was about 10 hours before the end) they even changed the narrator for about 2 hours?? At least, that was what is sounded like. Totally different voice and audio quality of the recording.

I will try to return both of these books - only completed them due to foolishly hoping for an increase of quality or that maybe it would be easier to follow all the different story lines after a while. It didn't.