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Pandora's Star

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by Peter F. Hamilton

ISBN-13: 978-1447279662

I haven’t posted a book review to my blog for a very long time. This is because I haven’t finished a book for a very long time!  Last night I finished Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star, the first of the Commonwealth Saga. At 1151 pages it took me just over a year to read on my second attempt. I think the first attempt started a year earlier than that. I was struggling with it, but it was worth it.

Pandora’s star is a space opera of reasonably wide scope. I like books that force me to keep up to follow the interactions of the characters, often in separate plot lines that come together at the end. There’s plenty of that in Pandora’s Star. Some of the sub-plot lines used to build the characters felt a bit much and there are places where it’s a little ploddy and others, such as the flight of the Second Chance where more detail would have been good. I also didn’t get on with Ozzy or his storyline at all.

Overall it was a good read. I really liked some of the characters, like Paul Mayo. The end of the book is fast paced, exciting with a few unexpected twists. If it had been like that most of the way through I wouldn’t have been able to put it down. I’m already looking forward to Judas Unchained.

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