Salvation

By: Peter F. Hamilton

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's Summary

In 2204, humanity is expanding into the wider galaxy in leaps and bounds. Cutting-edge technology of linked jump gates has rendered most forms of transportation - including starships - virtually obsolete. Every place on Earth, every distant planet humankind has settled, is now merely a step away from any other. And all seems wonderful - until a crashed alien spaceship of unknown origin is found on a newly located world 89 light-years from Earth, carrying a cargo as strange as it is horrifying. To assess the potential of the threat a high-powered team is dispatched to investigate. But one of them may not be all they seem....

Bursting with tension and big ideas, Salvation is the first book of an all-new series that highlights the inventiveness of an author at the top of his game.

©2018 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2018 Tantor

Critic Reviews

“Peter F. Hamilton smashes through the crazy battlefield of space opera like a giant all-conquering war-robot. His newest is loud, proud, and beyond epic. Accept no substitutes, this is the real deal. You need Salvation, my friend.” (Ian McDonald, author of the Luna series)

Wait For Book 2

I had patiently waited almost 2 years for a new Peter F. Hamilton book, and, unfortunately, as expected _Salvation_ is a 19 hour introduction to this new series. It's a series of short stories setting up the arc with the bulk of the stories being back story for the main protagonists. Anyone who has read his Commonwealth series will see many similarities, though this is not the same universe. While not a bad book, I was quickly aware that no real progress was going to made, just lots of groundwork being laid so my advice is to wait for at least the second book to be published where some progress might actually be made in the plot.

13 of 14 people found this review helpful

excellent plot. Probably better on paper.

I enjoyed this tremendously. The characters were well developed. The performance was excellent. the world's that Hamilton creates are rich. The one downside is that Hamilton jumps around from place to place and across different time periods. and, that is difficult to keep track of when you're listening to an audiobook.

but the book ends with a cliffhanger. Unfortunately we now have to wait to find out what happens next.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

John Lee not at his best

I really like the book -- the story, but John Lee is another matter. Which is odd because I have mostly liked his narration in all the other P.F. Hamilton books, but in this one his characters seem to meld together into some odd "Transylvanian" accent. Like something from a vampire cartoon. Not only that, but he will have an accent going for a character and it will shift into the vampire accent and I get lost immediately trying to figure out who is talking because now the next character has the same or similar accent.

He has used this accent more sparingly in other books, and I have not liked it there either, but one or two characters. Okay. I can excuse/live with that. But smeared all up and down and over all the characters. No way.

It takes away from the book because I am having trouble following the jumping from story to story, but add in not being able to follow who is talking and a mish mash of epic proportions ensues. I stop the audio, go back and try to sort it out. I can't always.

Lastly, who speaks like this? Honestly, just cartoon vampires from Transylvania. It's not even a thick British accent as some have commented.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

I wasn't able to get going on this one...

I have to remember not to get books with John Lee as the Narrator. He has this weird syncopation to his reading that just distracts me so bad. I know most of the time he is reading "in character" but it annoys me no end. As to the book, several times I found myself saying out loud "I have no idea what is going on here!" so... Love Peter F Hamilton but... pass. Wish I could return it...

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

boring. too much time in minutiae.

boring. couldn't bring myself to finish it. felt like he was getting paid by the word. not sure how much the narrator helped or hindered the story. I just cant. I like him as an author too but this has had no redeeming qualities in the first 3 hours and I had to stop.

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Not enjoyable

I really wanted to like this book; I am a fan of Hamilton's other work such as the Commonwealth Saga and the Void Trilogy. This book showed promise but failed in form. The premise of the story was solid and the science fiction world was great. The book was more like an Anthology within the same universe.The stories within the book are meshed together and done so in a way that it feels like a whirlwind. And within the whirlwind of past, present and future the characters are telling additional stories. Its 15 stories in one and it was not enjoyable.

9 of 11 people found this review helpful

if Dan Simons and Peter Hamilton wrote a book

Far to much like other PFH books with a very similar structure to Hyperion. A fun read, but nothing we haven't seen before. The narrator was fantastic as always.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

poor narration very heavy accent difficult to hear

narration has very heavy uk accent. recorded at a very low volume level. heavy accent made the book very hard to understand and follow, in addition sometimes also monotone

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Canterbury Tales of first contact

The storytelling format may throw you off at first as it's a bunch of disconnected tales of life in future earth as well as of distant future humanity. It's reminiscent of Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos in some ways. At first, I was irritated and distracted by never getting to stay with anyone long enough to get into the characters. These aren't quite self-contained short stories with a satisfying ark (as in Hyperion). However, this is Peter F Hamilton - and this is Book 1. All those tales are tied together and deeply interconnected - and you only get the first hints of that near the end of this novel. There will be a lot more text before it's all clear. And I can't wait.
It may not be for everyone - it's long-winded space opera, but seems less frustratingly long winded than some of Hamilton's earlier work.
My biggest complaint is that John Lee's narration has all started to blur together for me. I've listened to a lot of Hamilton's work narrated by Lee. Lee doesn't have the biggest range of truly distinct voices - and Hamilton's novels have a huge cast. Within a single novel, character voices start to get a little blurred together - and after a few, I'm frequently confused which character I'm hearing and if they're from this novel or not...

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

Alien artifact, alien shenanigans

Salvation by Peter F Hamilton, is the first book in the Salvation Sequence. While the main story is set at the dawn of the 23rd century, the story shifts between a far future (on the order of 3000 years ahead) and several decades earlier. The basic plot concerns the discovery of an alien spacecraft and its subsequent investigation by an assortment of various individuals whose backgrounds and relationships are relayed in a series narratives, each engaging and captivating that unfolded over the previous earlier decades. The far future concerns a small group of post-humans that are gearing up to take on an adversary that is presumably related to the alien spacecraft.

The sci-fi elements are varied and include some standard Hamiltonian features such as man-made wormholes or more properly "worm-doors" that allow instantaneous travel between any two points by means of quantum entanglement. There's an alien race that stops by Earth on their way to a religious pilgrimage and trades for a fuel source by providing "K-cells" that are super pluripotent, but artificial stem cell entities. Up to this point humanity has been getting by with telomere treatments for life extension. Each backstory to frame the relationships between the major players is short story to novella in length and nearly standalone compelling tales in their own right. The far distant future story has extensively genetically engineered humans being trained for all out warfare.

The narration is spectacular with excellent character distinction covering both genders and multiple accents. Pacing is well aligned with the plot which moves quickly.

4 of 5 people found this review helpful