Salvation Lost

By: Peter F. Hamilton

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's Summary

Fight together - or die alone....

In the 23rd century, humanity is enjoying a comparative utopia. Yet life on Earth is about to change, forever. Feriton Kane’s investigative team has discovered the worst threat ever to face mankind - and we’ve almost no time to fight back. The supposedly benign Olyix plan to harvest humanity, in order to carry us to their god at the end of the universe. And as their agents conclude schemes down on earth, vast warships converge above to gather this cargo.

Some factions push for humanity to flee, to live in hiding amongst the stars - although only a chosen few would make it out in time. But others refuse to break before the storm. As disaster looms, animosities must be set aside to focus on just one goal: wiping this enemy from the face of creation. Even if it means preparing for a future this generation will never see. 

Salvation Lost is the second book in the Salvation Sequence by Peter F. Hamilton.

©2019 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2019 Tantor Media, A Division of Recorded Books

slow and unfulfilling... again

I cant really say what is wrong with this book, it follows a similar pattern as other sagas, but it feels fragmented and with many characters and events that seem unimportant, I understand that probably they will be crucial for the last book in the trilogy, but you can't have half of the books narrating stuff that doesn't quite connect to anything and seems unimportant that just makes it a bad book.

Much Better Than The Last One

I wasn't mad about the first book. This is better. (Not a spoiler) Actually the best bit is the stuff with the High Flyer.

I still mix up some of the guys from the assessment team apart from the Scottish guy which is a bit weak.

A lot of hate for John Lee in the reviews ? Maybe the American ear doesn't suit his voice but I think he & Hamilton go together like rejuvenation clinics and enzyme bonded concrete.

Not as good as the first book

An ok story but the character voices put me off, nearly every character has what sounds to me like an East London accent and the 'posh' characters all sound like reformed gangsters from East London. Ainsley's contributions are basically saying F#ck a lot, without actually coming up with any useful ideas - so much for the technical genius. Peter is one of the best in my opinion but I think I'll skip the final book in this series and wait for the next series.

Awesome author

After listening to many average authors you can really see the difference between Peter and others.

A masterpiece of a science fiction novel

Few words before I start my review:
I believe that the back-and-forth plot this book is based on is not for everyone. If you’re in for a straightforward science-fiction thriller going from a defined beginning to an ending point or conclusion, This is not the book for you.

The book is filled with twists, plot turns and goes back-and-forth in time considerably throughout its course.

I loved it.

The book goes around an alien invasion from its current point of view in which the aliens invade to a future time in which humanity’s plan to fight back kicks in. Even though you have the general idea of what is going to happen, the reader can’t escape the general feeling of impending doom, delivered masterfully by a slew characters with different points of view and social statuses.

Moreover, the book climaxes both in the future and current storylines at the same time connecting them together in a way one wouldn’t think possible at the beginning.

I do not want to spoil the book for anyone who is going to read it so I’m going to stop here and just wish you a great time reading this wonderful book

A little slow and meandering

I know that Hamilton’s books are long and detailed and full of individual story arcs that come together towards the end. And I usually like it (esp the Commonwealth saga). However, here it seems like a bit of pointless dithering. I had more or less lost interest in the “now” even during the first book, and the future setting is where all the action will take place so that is what I want to read about.

I think that he should have written the story more linearly, but I understand that he didn’t want to come to the point where “the plan” was set into motion and having to write “and then 10000 years passed” before kicking off the final part (which is what Neal Stephenson did in his absolutely horrible Seveneves).

So, I still enjoyed it, but 80% felt like filler, especially clearly felt in the audio book format.

Great 2nd part of the series

I really like Peter F. Hamilton's books and this series is really good. Can't wait for the last one. I hope the ending will be as good as is in his other book series.

Good story marred by bad narration

The overall story is good, but the narrator's attempts at non English accents is horrendous irrespective of the accent he tries to emulate

The story's great. The performance is poor.

The story from Mr Hamilton is good as always. That's not the problem. The problem is the awful performance from John Lee. I do not understand why he's chosen when there are so more many nuanced, capable artists out there. The accents are atrocious. The intonation, even when he's not trying one of his 'mystery' european accents is often weird and jarring. Try listening to 'Ancillary Justice' (read by Adjoa Andoh) or any of the Culture novels (read by Peter Kenny) and you might appreciate how much more satisfying the experience can be.

It's my own fault. I keep going back and buying the latest and greatest, hoping beyond hope that he'll change. Foolish. I won't be doing it again. I'll buy the books instead!

The narrator kills this

John Lee narrates all of Hamilton’s books so I’m used to the delivery of.ev.ery.word.syll.able.by.syll.able but this book has some heavy dialog which John Lee mutilates in his awful attempt at accents. Often I can’t tell who is the speaker or even the supposed gender of the speaker. Can’t really review the book because I spent so much time reuniting trying to work out what was going on.

Would make for Fantastic TV

An excellent follow up to the superb Salvation. The story whips along much faster this with none of the character flashbacks this time. My only mild criticisms are: it’s over too soon! Obviously it lacks some of the mystery of the first book...

Amazing *****

Amazing story it's definitely up there with Ian Banks, can't wait for the next one

Loving this series

I was amazed when he read the parts happing in Croydon, some of it was right on my doorstep down Beddington Lane. Great work Mr Hamiltion. Glad John Lee was narrating again to.

disappointed compared to salvation

really disappointed compared to salvation.. nearly gave up on it ... too many future tech references descriptions and not enough story for my liking

Voices very similar

This is the first Peter Hamilton book I have returned for a refund. The voices used by the narrator were sometimes so similar that I had difficulty working out who was speaking.

In the previous book Salvation, John Lee was quite good. I don't know why this novel is not so clear. Perhaps it is a production quality thing

Opportunity Lost

Well, my review of the first book in this three part series defended the claim that "nothing much happens", my view being that that first book was setting the stage for-the middle act and therefore for readers to be patient. I have to confess, after just finishing reading that middle act, Salvation lost, that I couldn't help but feel somewhat disappointed. I had expected that once the ground work had been laid so well in the first instalment to this trilogy, that this second instalment would really hit the ground running. The invasion was on, the decades long deception was over and now the pace was set to ramp up in this story. Umm ... not so much I'm afraid to say.

Don't get me wrong, I am a champion of the classic "slow burner" and love the immense world building that Peter F. Hamilton can do so well. I sipped that fine wine that was the first part of this series with great anticipation for this book. Alas, I'd have to say that Hamilton really didn't get anything of great significance to happen with respect the direct assault that was expected until just about half way through this story! Sure, he focused on elements at the periphery such as Ollie and his Southwark gang and their unwitting part in crippling part of London's power generation network. All this is fine and Hamilton is excellent at painting complex collections of characters and the world they inhabit. however, not quite enough happened in the first half of this book to hold my interest as much as in the first in the series. I really think Hamilton wasted an opportunity to get this moving much quicker and thus pack more into this story. I do really like Hamilton's writing abilities, his incredible imagination and skill at generating rich and complex worlds, but there are times where he hangs around in the weeds too much. With the worlds and habitats he has already touched on in his first book, he could've taken us on journey's to those places as the war unfolded and expanded the cast of characters and their plights to really drive home the widespread scale of the conflict. Things become far more interesting for me when Hamilton does start to do just that, but by now we're half way through the book and the forays to other asteroids and an habitat are too limited and only offer a taste of the growing human story he might have told.

In fact, given the massive scope of the potential spread of humanity here, we could have had a long series of books that focused on different groups as they struggled to survive. I've seen this sort of narrow focus before, where authors paint us a broad potential canvas in their extensive world building phase, only to limit their narrative to a tiny portion of it. I understand that having too large a cast of characters can dilute things and that it's a balancing act, but entire books in the series could've focused on disparate groups of people in their story of survival.

So far, I feel that the Commonwealth saga was a better series of books and mainly because it managed to take us to more worlds than this series has. I found, for example, that the trail ranger journey in the first book that set out on an alien and unexplored planet to be far more mysterious and compelling than the grubby streets of Southwark. On that subject, I found that hearing of places such as Plough lane, Richmond, Kew gardens and other areas that are just down the road from me tend to make such stories feel far less mysterious and exotic and bring a depressing air of the mundane to things. Probably just me, I know, but that's how I felt.

I have to conclude that "Salvation Lost" was more akin to opportunity lost as much as I hate to say it. I do like Hamilton's work, but he can be rather hit and miss at times. In overall terms, I enjoyed this book, but I only began to feel that way after the half way point.

Interestingly, the end of this book has a section summarising the key events in history that led to the current society and situation faced in this series. For me, this would have been far more helpful had it been placed at the beginning, as a sort of foreword or prologue, in book one. Why it was left to the end of this book is a bit odd.

Alas, Salvation Lost was not the middle act I was hoping for. I can't say I hated it, not at all. It was just less than I'd hoped for in this pivotal part of the three book series.

underwhelming

Peter F. Hamilton has written some epic space operas. This isn't one of them. Slow. Repetitive and full of forgettable two dimensional characters. Reading this is akin to watching paint dry. I suspect the author could have condensed this into a sharp story, one book or at most two books long as he did with the fantastic, Pandora's star - but it seems he decided to milk it and pad it out needlessly resulting in a great concept, delivered in a watered down lacklustre story that is diluted with hours of filler.

Classic Hamilton

Really good story. Narration took some getting used to - a declamatory style intrudes in full immersion IMHO.
Looking forward to the last in the trilogy.