Product Description

The third volume in the 'Night's Dawn' trilogy Hell just went quantum...The Confederation is starting to collapse politically and economically, allowing the 'possessed' to infiltrate more worlds. Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth, destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose goal does not match her own. The campaign to liberate Mortonbridge from the possessed degenerates into a horrendous land battle, the kind that hasn't been seen by humankind for six hundred years. Then some of the protagonists escape in a very unexpected direction...Joshua Clavert and Syrinx now fly their starships on a mission to find the Sleeping God - which an alien race believes holds the key to finally overthrowing the possessed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6146 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1184 pages

Customer Reviews

Here ends the excellent Nights Dawn Trilogy
When I first saw the size of "The Reality Dysfunction" (part one of this trilogy (Night's Dawn)) I was a bit wary about buying such a large book by an author I didn't know. It turned out to be a great decision. I couldn't put the book down. Even with so many characters and different threads of stories, the book is easy to follow with a gripping stroyline. Enough of the minor stories came to an end to make it an excellent book but the cliff-hangers ensured I bought the next book, "The Neutronium Alchemist". Once again I was not let down. This too was a brilliant book. The plot thickened as it developed. The carefully thought out technologies of the future become intriguing parts of the book as opposed to just being extras. By the time I had finished I was desperate to read the final part of this 3600+ page trilogy. The Naked God excelled where the other books shone and it brought together all the plot elements that had been so carefully seeded during the first two books.

The science-fiction I typically read normally comes either under 'hard science-fiction' (such as Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, etc.) or very easy going such as the Aliens and Predator books. The Night's Dawn trilogy (and especially the Naked God) manages to settle very comfortably in the middle. There is enough action, romance and horror to keep the easy reader attached to the book whereas at the same time Peter F. Hamilton manages to make his invented technology sound so real and so natural to the people who use it (while at the same time not so alien that we can't understand it), the typically 'hard sci-fi' reader will find themselves submerged in a believable far future of mankind.

While in my own opinion, no one can come close to Isaac Asimov's ability to portray a 'History of the Future' in so many books, if anyone should try, Peter F. Hamilton should. He has the ending in this brilliant trilogy, he has some short stories in 'A Second Chance At Eden', now he needs to expand on the history of his universe which he has already outlined at the end of each book.

People have compared Peter F. Hamilton's work to that of Iain M. Banks. Banks' Culture novels are superb but have such amazing technologies in them that are thrown around and introduced only when needed, can confuse the book or offer quick ways out of difficult situations (just read about the bike in the non-culture novel 'Against a Dark Background' to see what I mean). Peter F. Hamilton introduces the technology in a similar way to how he introduces people. You get to know and understand the technology/person so when it does something, while unexpected, it is believable (in a sci-fi kind of way).

I have read the entire trilogy twice from beginning to end and still want to read it again. The only thing that is stopping me is I have to sleep sometime, don't I?

A superb conclusion to one of the best sci-fi epics.
I seem to stumble onto good sci-fi books - The Amtrak Wars in the late 80's, and more recently China Mieville's superlatively dark and grotty Perdido Street Station. Well, the same happened with the Night's Dawn trilogy. I was introduced to this epic in 98 when I was living in England by a guy who worked at a publishing house. He gave me the first two books and I have never looked back. I was hooked and read the first 1400 or so pages in 5 days. After waiting for 18months, I finally got my hands on a signed copy of The Naked God in late 99. Never has a book kept me on the edge of my seat like this one, I was constantly finding myself wanting to turn the pages and at some points I found myself gritting my teeth as if I was actually there! Hamilton brought together a wide assembly of different SF ideas and melded them into one cohesive whole. He teeters on the edge of cheesiness with Al Capone's appearance but manages to pull it off. After re-reading it I can see how this guy would be a better selection than some of the other genocidal figures from our history. Now that would be cheesy if Stalin or somebody turned up...

I found Hamilton's language style excellent to the point of invention. He uses some extremely futuristic technologies in the books but manages to describe them in a way that is easy to understand and visualise. The finale is stunning, almost 'Saganaesque' in its breadth. I don't wish to spoil it for others, but I'll say that it is one of the better finales I have read of late and the solution is straight out of left field.

As a minor quibble I found that some of the astronomical descriptions within the book were stretching the imagination such as wormholes exapnding faster than the speed of light and the Orion Nebula illuminating its surroundings like a star. On a whole though, Hamilton's understanding of astronomical concepts is very good and makes the story much more believable.

As a parting comment, there are two one liners that have stuck in my mind since I finished reading the novels. The first one is the female possesor from Ketton Island who finds herself returned to this universe in pouring rain in the 2.1m high body of a Tranquility Sergeant -"Oh look, it's positively weeing down!" and the Navy Admiral telling his minion to "get your shabby arse out of my office". Excellent humour and excellent character descriptions - read it.

Flat ending, no re-readability
The book maintains the brisk pace and complex plotting of the first 2 parts of the Night's Dawn Trilogy, lots of ideas and a huge cast.
Unfortunately the ending lets everything down completely by introducing a previously unheralded factor that solves all the problems simultaneously while not involving most of the threads the reader has loyally followed thoughout the book. It's rather like the classic "and then I woke up from the dream" ending, and particularly sad as it deflates an otherwise excellent trilogy.