Great North Road

By: Peter F. Hamilton

Narrated by: Toby Longworth

Length: 36 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

A century from now, thanks to a technology allowing instantaneous travel across light-years, humanity has solved its energy shortages, cleaned up the environment, and created far-flung colony worlds. The keys to this empire belong to the powerful North family - composed of successive generations of clones. Yet these clones are not identical. For one thing, genetic errors have crept in with each generation. For another, the original three clone "brothers" have gone their separate ways, and the branches of the family are now friendly rivals more than allies.

Or maybe not so friendly. At least that's what the murder of a North clone in the English city of Newcastle suggests to Detective Sidney Hurst. Sid is a solid investigator who'd like nothing better than to hand off this hot potato of a case. The way he figures it, whether he solves the crime or not, he'll make enough enemies to ruin his career. Yet Sid's case is about to take an unexpected turn: Because the circumstances of the murder bear an uncanny resemblance to a killing that took place years ago on the planet St. Libra, where a North clone and his entire household were slaughtered in cold blood.

The convicted slayer, Angela Tramelo, has always claimed her innocence. And now it seems she may have been right. Because only the St. Libra killer could have committed the Newcastle crime. Problem is, Angela also claims that the murderer was an alien monster.

Now Sid must navigate through a Byzantine minefield of competing interests within the police department and the world's political and economic elite...all the while hunting down a brutal killer poised to strike again. And on St. Libra, Angela, newly released from prison, joins a mission to hunt down the elusive alien, only to learn that the line between hunter and hunted is a thin one.

©2012 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2013 Tantor

Critic reviews

"It's a perfect introduction to his gifts for character design, dialogue, and sheer, big-idea-driven storytelling." ( Booklist)

One of the greatest SF writers

Not quite as much hard SF as his other books but still very enjoyable.
As to the reviews that made me hesitate, saying it was too difficult to follow with many timeline jumps, I just have to question people’s ability to concentrate. There were no parts at all that seemed out of place or jarring, easy to follow in my opinion.
Not as great as his other works, commonwealth and Void being my favorites, but certainly time well spent.
Thank you Peter for many, many, many enjoyable hours over the years! Your imagination is legendary.

Trudging The Great North Road

Short and to the point - a pretty great story buried under ridiculous layers of tedious police procedural, a wild array of cartoonish characters, and long winded development of meaningless plot points and inconsequential players.

If you boiled out the real plot from this giant doorstop of a book, it is exciting and suspenseful. The story starts with the investigation of a murder that expands into a threat against all humanity from a powerful and mysterious alien presence. The sections that deal with the hunt for the alien are tightly plotted and full of delicious apprehension. Unfortunately, that is only a small part of the book and those sections suffer from frequent flashbacks and cuts to the extremely slow murder investigation.

In addition to the erratic pacing and lack of editing, this book suffers from a few other disagreeable faults:
1. The central female character, Angela Tramelo, is a total caricature of a woman. Seriously, the woman is beyond beautiful, super brilliant, athletic and tough, has powerful connections, and has been genetically altered to stay young for hundreds of years. So, of course, the only way she can resolve a challenge is to prostitute herself. Note to Peter: Selling one's body is really NOT the "go-to" solution for most women especially those who have as many other resources as Angela Tramelo. Some of the men are just a hokey, but at least police detective, Sidney Hurst, is portrayed as a "regular Joe" which does help the slower police sections of the book.
2. The ending is way too neat and tidy and after this VERY long trek on The Great North Road, it wraps up so fast that it feels rushed.
3. A really threatening and incomprehensible Alien suddenly becomes just "one of the guys" at the end and loses credibility and any power he once had to frighten.

Toby Longworth is not my favorite narrator, but he is not bad. He is rather dramatic in his delivery of the narrative sections of the book which I don't usually like, but it was good for this book that often wanders far "off the road".

With some severe editing (half of this book could go) and a little reworking of the character of Angela and the Alien, this could be a great book. As it is, I don't recommend it unless you are an avid Peter F. Hamilton fan.

I wish this was 2 different books

This very long audible book encompasses two novels. One is a well-written and well-plotted mystery that launches the book. (Great narration, too) The police detective characters are great and the way they solve the mystery is smartly written and plotted. The other part is basic horror story: Isolated team gets picked off one by one by knife wielding monster that stalks them. Cue scary music. And why do characters go out in a blizzard by themselves to get slaughtered again and again? Be warned: How the horror story resolves itself may make you scream: WTF! I can't help but wonder if the publisher was screaming at the author: "Finish the bloody thing already."

Despite all of this, I do love what Hamilton tries to accomplish in his novels. He imagines interesting new worlds with complex people. I also don't mind the back and forth of the narrative, as he jumps back into time to give the reader background stories on the various characters. In this case, it is partly to keep the reader guessing. He hides key clues by doling out details slowly.

And, yes, I'll probably listen to another Hamilton story.

Hamilton at his baroque best

This is a wonderful, great sprawling sci-fi mystery book, and a great way to remember what you liked about Hamilton if you've been suffering from series-fatigue after some of his recent efforts. The classical elements (setting, plot, character) all come together in a delightful tangle.

Setting and characters are greatly enhanced by the skillful narration of Toby Longworth, who gets to show off his range to superb effect. The array of UK accents is exactly what the author ordered, all internally consistent and consistent with the text. Even the American accents are at least credible--unusual in a British reader. Female characters sound female, male characters sound male. It's all precisely as it should be.

Not as good as his other works

Although the narration is fantastic, the story could have used some editing. Also I found the frequent flashbacks confusing and the final payoff was so-so in my opinion. I really enjoyed several of his other novels, though.

Hamilton'ed

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No I would not - Hamilton and his enzyme bonded concrete...jesus christ, is everything done on enzyme bonded fucking concrete?!!

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Not bad

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The North's are my kind of twisted family

Do you think Great North Road needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No, this book is about 3 books in one

Any additional comments?

No

The narrator can't pronounce some words correctly.

Swath or swathe is the same pronunciation in American english and British english.. The narrator says swayth, it took a moment to realize what the heck he was talking about as I had to take into account the rest of the wording to understand he actually meant to say swath.

Much too long

I wanted to love Great North Road. It's a monster of a book, so I wanted to the investment to be worthwhile. But it was too long, much longer than it needed to be, by ~500 pages. And it focused too much on police procedure and odd tangents, instead of exploring and indulging the really intriguing aspects: the Zanth, Angela, the St. Libre creatures.

The novel would introduce a character or subplot with potential, and then ignore it -- literally -- for hundreds of pages. Perhaps this is an editing flaw, or perhaps it's just Hamilton's style. In either case, it didn't work well for me.

As well, the Geordie (Newcastle) dialect was at first charming, but we see only a few colloquialisms, which quickly become tiresome. "Pet" and "crap on it" were overused so much they should have had a drinking game named for them. In a 1000 page book, variety is key.

Good story.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I did recommend it to a friend. The narrator and author were both great.

Any additional comments?
The story literally bounces around in time and space. That's not that bad, as the author has written in dates and times to start the scene, so you know where you are.

Sciencey Science Fiction Goodness

What made the experience of listening to Great North Road the most enjoyable?

I truly love how Peter F. Hamilton builds these awesome characters, in a range of regular joe's who live in an advanced technological age, all the way to personalizing beings who are so alien they would be near impossible to comprehend. All the while, he adds in base human problems, thrilling action, and super-nerd science that is well-researched and truly upholds the rest of the story. All of these things in one novel.... I was absolutely saddened when it was over. This is one hardworking author. And an excellent book.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Ravi. Angela. Hard to pick between the two. Ravi is your basic Sgt. Slaughter super-warrior who is past his salad days but is grounded enough he can still see the forest despite the trees. Angela is just a cool character who has floated through so many lives...

What does Toby Longworth bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The way this guy distinguishes characters voice is as fun as listening to the story.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, never got bored or distracted. The execution was so good. Just when you thought you might hit a low dull point where something is re-explained.... whoosh, it didn't happen.

Any additional comments?

I recommend checking out other Peter F. Hamilton books if you like this. The guy can tell a story in any setting. And make it worth every last second of the listen.