Review: Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton

I've always had slightly mixed feelings about Peter F. Hamilton.

Technically, Salvation is, emphatically, one of his better works. He has improved as a writer, and it very much shows. The book has very solid worldbuilding, even if I disagree with a couple of his decisions. It is well written, and the characters are interesting.

Unfortunately, it is also rather flawed.

The first, and biggest problem, is that Salvation, which weighs in at a hefty 564 pages, is being marketed as a novel.

It isn't.

Salvation is a series of linked shorter pieces, not presented in chronological order, all of which are excellent, but it is not a true novel. It should probably be marketed as a mosaic. This doesn't make it bad, but it does make it a little jarring if you are expecting one, overall, coherent story. To make it worse, it's not clear when the calendar changes, which makes the timeline a bit uncertain in places.

It's still enjoyable.

The second problem was the one which actually affected my enjoyment. Bluntly, I ended up wanting to set Marc Okrand on Hamilton.

Conlang is a great way to set things in the future, but I'm sorry, the word "taxez" and "cabez" for self driving taxis and...I believe cabez were rickshaws. I just don't see it. We'd still use taxi. Just the same as a pocket computer is a phone in English and probably will be. The repeated use of the ez ending for self propelled stuff threw me out of the story more than once. Your mileage may vary - it may not bother you at all, but it was nails on a chalkboard to me.

(As another issue. I don't buy that people would completely stop taking road trips just because teleportation portals become cheap and easy. People like to journey for the sake of it, and that's basic to human nature, IMO. Sure, you wouldn't commute, but driving old Route 66? It would still be a thing. It's a smaller issue, but...)

I'm not saying I don't recommend this book. I do. But I couldn't give it as many stars as I would have liked due to the issues with the format and conlang.

SPOILER stuff.





















Salvation is much more of an alien conspiracy theory/invasion novel than the blurb reveals. There is a  deft use of unreliable narrator - in that the narrator himself doesn't know he's not who he claims to be. And while it is very obvious the Olyix are evil (The main theme of the book is "Don't trust fanatics"), the exact nature of their evil is well hidden.

The restoration of binary humanity after getting rid of gender to fight a war sat ill with me. I don't think Hamilton intended to be sexist against men, but he managed it. Oops.