Pandora's Star

By: Peter F. Hamilton

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Critics have compared the engrossing space operas of Peter F. Hamilton to the classic sagas of such SF giants as Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert. But Hamilton's best-selling fiction - powered by a fearless imagination and world-class storytelling skills - has also earned him comparison to Tolstoy and Dickens. Hugely ambitious, wildly entertaining, philosophically stimulating: the novels of Peter F. Hamilton will change the way you think about science fiction.

Now, with Pandora's Star, he begins a new multi-volume adventure, one that promises to be his most mind-blowing yet. The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars some 400 light-years in diameter, contains more than 600 worlds, interconnected by a web of transport "tunnels" known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible: Over 1,000 light-years away, a star...vanishes. It does not go supernova. It does not collapse into a black hole. It simply disappears.

Since the location is too distant to reach by wormhole, a faster-than-light starship, the Second Chance, is dispatched to learn what has occurred and whether it represents a threat. In command is Wilson Kime, a five-time rejuvenated ex-NASA pilot whose glory days are centuries behind him. Opposed to the mission are the Guardians of Selfhood, a cult that believes the human race is being manipulated by an alien entity they call the Starflyer.

Bradley Johansson, leader of the Guardians, warns of sabotage, fearing the Starflyer means to use the starship's mission for its own ends. Pursued by a Commonwealth special agent convinced the Guardians are crazy but dangerous, Johansson flees. But the danger is not averted. Aboard the Second Chance, Kime wonders if his crew has been infiltrated.

Soon enough, he will have other worries. A thousand light-years away, something truly incredible is waiting: a deadly discovery, the unleashing of which will threaten to destroy t...

©2004 Peter F. Hamilton (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"The depth and clarity of the future Hamilton envisions is as complex and involving as they come." ( Publishers Weekly Starred Review)

Audio falloff is annoying

When I began the book, the sharp volume cutoff at the end of each sentence was extremely frustrating and disruptive to my experience. I'm not sure if this is due to the narrator, the post production, or both. It took several hours to get used to it and really immersed into the story.

I'm glad I did.

Thoroughly enjoying the story and looking forward to Judah's Unchained. I do enjoy the narrator (with the caveat about the volume falloff).

Universe building

Any additional comments?

Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained are two of the best books I have read in a very long time. The true sign that you have fell under the spell of a good writer and/or book is when the boring parts are mesmerizing.
Pandora's Star is the introduction to the universe Hamilton is creating and it is easy to wonder how many of the characters are relevant to the big picture. The best approach is to let go and let the narrative evolve. The books are expertly crafted. Everything pays off and every miscellaneous thread ties in beautifully.
Hamilton's intelligence and creativity are deeply evident in these pages. He is not simply world building, he is universe building and the myriad forms of life, environments, religions, political structures, mythologies he has created is astonishing.
John Lee does a fantastic job on the narration. He never gets in the way of the story and only serves to further the wonderful story playing in our imaginations.
I will admit that I used a wiki to keep track of the characters in the beginning because this is a giant story with many plot lines and histories. I would recommend this option because it does help to involve you quickly into the machinations of the Common Wealth.
If you are a Sci-fi fan who likes large intricate stories and have the patience for 40hr books you should give these a chance. They are quite rewarding.
I will expand on this review talking about the ending under the Judas Unchained review.

p.s. I could read a whole trilogy on Ozzie and the Silfen Paths.

Don't make mine a decaf

The sex and profanity give a gritty edge to the book. IMHO the novel could not withstand the excision. If you prefer a G-rated version may I commend the fast forward button to you?

Despite flaws, I couldn't stop listening!

Would you consider the audio edition of Pandora's Star to be better than the print version?

I've now listened to Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained, and the full Void Trilogy. In fact, I'm now listening to Pandora's Star a second time.

These books form a terrific epic story arc with a huge ensemble cast. The best parts are the 'hard sci-fi' portions of the books. Wormholes, FTL ships, the nice alien addicted to human memory recordings, the mysterious 'High Angel', evil alien hordes, space battles, bring them on! These elements are the best part of the book and represent about a third of the content.

Hamilton does a wonderful job of setting up this 'Commonwealth' human society in which people live for hundreds of years on their choice of any of the hundreds of human colonized worlds. There is almost no war, and there is no military at all, just a police force who chases around a small group of fanatic, but interesting terrorists.

The relentless unstoppable detective Paula, explicitly compared to Sherlock Holmes is an interesting character with a large part. Her 'Moriarty', a someone tired and jaded terrorist named Adam was also well developed. You just know the two will get together at some point.

Just when the Commonwealth is really fat, dumb, and happy along comes 'the Prime', who are not the least bit interested in holding hands and singing Kumbaya with humans. Not only do they make HG Well's martians seem like slightly disturbed teenagers, the Prime are terrible litterbugs. Who like to nuke things. Lots of things.

For me the time the character 'Ozzy' spent wandering through 'the Slvian paths' was less interesting, at least until we finally get to meet the 'adult' Slvians anyway.

If you liked Seven-of-Nine you'll find a lot to like in these books, because there are many nymphomaniac beautiful women running around the Galaxy who just can't get enough sex.

In fact, the sex scenes are kind of interesting the first time, but after a while they get kind of tiresome. I use the Audible Android player, which does have 30 second back button, but not a 30 second skip forward button. I wish it did so I could skip some of the entirely predictable sex scenes.

These characters are all potty mouths, take that into consideration if you listen with kids around. The 'F' word is used frequently.

Hamilton uses a lot of abbreviations, and he only spells them out once. Pay attention! I understand the dead tree editions have an appendix but of course we don't get that with the audio version.

Some of the most important abbreviations in Pandora's Star are:

CST - 'Compressed Space Transport': The giant corporation that owns and controls the wormhold technology that humans use to move instantly all over their part of the galaxy.

RI - 'Restricted Intelligence' - Pretty much every physical object (and every person) has a computer in it, most of the time these embedded computers are 'RI's, which have some firewalls in them to keep them from becoming sentient.

SI - 'Sentient Intelligence' - A computer that occupies an entire planet, and is sentient. It's like 9000 HAL 9000s. Only nicer.

'Enzyme Bonded Concrete' - OK, not an abbreviation, but get used to it. Everything in the Commonwealth is made of this.

Your iPhone is called an 'Array' in the Commonwealth.

I think the narrator does a good job, he's not quiet up to Patrick Tull's level, but given the huge cast he's not bad at all. He does American accents pretty well.

As many have observed, this book could be edited down about 10-20% with no real loss of reader enjoyment.

I started listening to Pandora's star a second time because I used my monthly credit on a book that didn't really pan out.

I'm hooked again. Despite the flaws, it's just a great story with some fascinating characters. In fact, I think I enjoy it more the second time because I'm less confused by the subplots and the huge cast.

Yesterday I listened to the part where the pathetic humans go out to the Prime solar system, which some unknown entity has encased in solid opaque force field. They realize that somebody went to a lot of trouble to enclose this whole solar system. Maybe, just maybe, the unknown entity did this for a reason. Or maybe the force field just cuts us off from a race of big, fluffy, happy bunnies.

Being humans, our heroes start messing around with this force field. What could go wrong?

They find what they think is the main control room of the darn thing, and then start poking and prodding it, pushing buttons and throwing switches just to see what might happen. I'm screaming 'DON'T TOUCH THAT KNOB!!!!!!!!!!!!'. But sadly, they do touch that knob with disastrous results.

Of course, right at that point there is a cut to the detective solving a murder or the 500 year old hippie genius (eerily similar to Steve Jobs) is trying to find himself.

But just when you want to give up we're back in space and in the world of hard sci-fi.

I really like this book!

What other book might you compare Pandora's Star to and why?

The Foundation Trilogy, which is of course the Mother of All Epic Space Sagas.

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

I think he gives excellent voices to the many, many characters. This adds to the story.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The second time I listened, when the humans start futzing about with the 'barrier'. I of course knew that this was a bad idea, and I dreaded and was fascinated by the terrible consequences.

Any additional comments?

Much of the criticism of this book is justified, but the book is so good that it rises above these petty quibbles.

Terrific story, horrible production

If you could sum up Pandora's Star in three words, what would they be?

Star Opera Western

What other book might you compare Pandora's Star to and why?

Not so much a book, but the feel is very much like the Firefly series in that most of the worlds are developing with a few at the very center being the major industrial warehouses.

Would you be willing to try another one of John Lee’s performances?

I love John Lee. I hate this publisher, Tantor Audio. The previous publication audible made available was excellent, but Tantor has ruined this book. It sounds as if they recorded it on a laptop microphone and the free audio editing software that came with the laptop. John Lee, you should demand Tantor pay to have you redo this book. It is an insult to your talent.

On a side note, the version audible will not sell in the US for some reason, by Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd, is also excellent. Log out and search for Pandora's Star. The three-minute section of the Tantor production is as good as that production ever gets and the difference between it and Macmillan's production is night and day.

Audible! What the heck are you doing!?! I loved this book before it became unlistenable.

Go-to guy for modern space opera

Reading a Peter Hamilton novel is really like reading several novels at the same time, each one set in the same universe, all of them connected by overlapping events, and all leading up to the big finale where all of these narrative roads lead. It can be a bit overwhelming, and it definitely involves a commitment. It's more than worth the investment if you find really smart speculation about artificial intelligence, biological solutions to the aging problem, human-machine interfaces, and really cool, scary aliens interesting. This particular collection of sub-novels starts slowly, in spite of the very interesting mystery about how the Prime worlds got trapped inside uber force fields, but as soon as the Primes are introduced, things get truly fascinating. Hamilton does a wonderful job of thinking through the details of this truly alien way of organizing life and intelligence. The aliens, even though they are really malevolent, were the most fascinating characters in the book. Others have commented that there is too much detail and too much character development in the novel, but I did not find that to be the case. Everyone in the story is compelling in some fashion, and the way Hamilton eventually weaves all of their lives together is masterful. The novel is truly operatic in scope, sometimes over the top, and always interesting. I had none of the audio issues discussed by others, but the narration is just okay -- not up to the novel itself.

Good book, very unique alien bad guys

What made the experience of listening to Pandora's Star the most enjoyable?

A lot of book for the money. Multiple story points and some cool bad guy aliens.

Who was your favorite character and why?

MorningLightMountain was the coolest alien I've ready about in a long time. Seems like SciFi aliens all get similar after awhile but I've never read about one like this.

What about John Lee’s performance did you like?

Overall it was very good. Although he tends to bleed story lines together with no break so it's hard to tell sometimes when the story line changes.

Lots of Fun for Fans of "Space Opera"

Although I am a long-time science fiction fan, Mr. Hamilton's work was new to me. Starting with a cracklingly funny introduction, where two young scientists using wormholes beat the official government expedition to be the first humans on Mars, and moving on to a later struggle of humanity with an imaginative form of hostile intelligent life, this is an enjoyable novel with many strands of stories woven together, but fitting well.

What I took to be the ending sucked until...

I found out that there is a sequel which is the second half of the story. With that realization I can enthusiastically say that this is one fantastic story.

Epic, gripping...could not stop listening.

What did you love best about Pandora's Star?

I love the original ideas about faraway worlds, and distinctive characters, and the tension that builds and is finally released to great effect.

What did you like best about this story?

I like the scale of the story and the unique perspectives, from larger-than-life characters, diverse venues, and bizarre aliens.

Which scene was your favorite?

My favorite scene was the Prime first contact on Dyson Alpha.

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

Definitely was hard to put down.

Any additional comments?

Looking forward to the subsequent books in the Commonwealth series!