Greetings to Dark Star Reviews - a channel that will focus mostly on science fiction. Science fiction literature, to be more specific. Over the years, I have read dozens of book series, stand alone novels, and short story collections, from world famous authors as well as lesser known writers. Sharing my views on these works in the format of review videos that are several minutes long is an excellent avenue for me to organize and categorize my own thoughts related to the works I will be covering throughout the coming weeks, months, and maybe even years. After all, it is worth shooting for the stars.
Hopefully, some of you will find these videos entertaining and will enjoy watching them. I will try to upload videos in regular intervals, although it might take me some time to get the video editing process stream lined.
With that out of the way, let us begin this journey.
I don't know what the spoiler is that you mentioned yet... so I appreciate you not saying whatever it is. I tried to read this book some years ago and fell off it, but after picking it back up recently, I've found myself enjoying it a lot. I look forward to the many pivotal moments ahead in the novel. So far I'm amazed at the way Hamilton sets up unique perspective characters and creates evocative worlds and some of the most incredible vistas I've seen in scifi (the triple volcano scene early on for example). Looking forward to reading more and checking out your other reviews of this series as I read more.
I agree with the thumbnail! After a reread of the series I came to view the third book as not some ex Machina ending. But the seeds of what was going to happen were planted well in advance.
Something similar happened to me as well. The second time I read the trilogy I was surprised how early the ending of the series was foreshadowed. Reading it the first time, one could have easily overlooked these parts of the story and Hamilton did introduce several other potential solutions to the reality dysfunction (i.e. the the device "deleting souls" etc.).
I didn't think anyone ever read this series besides me! I've been harboring some opinions about it for literal decades now and it's nice to see someone else shared them a little. I felt the entire series was the most wasted potential I've ever read. The world-building is, to me, still the most fascinating hard science fiction I've ever read (not counting Dune due to it's heavy philosophical and religious themes over the science). In fact, I loved the Confederation Handbook, the details were engrossing to the point I still know the distinctions between Adamists and Edentist, the use of Lagrange points, the believability of spherical ships without gravity inside, living habitats, consensus, etc. It was all so cool. But I agree, the characters were terrible. In fact, I found the entire story about the dead reclaiming the living to be an awful use of the world Hamilton built. It took me completely out of the story. I would rather it been about Laton's redemption or anything else grounded in reality, really. It was also horribly edited. I literally skipped around 400 pages in The Naked God because I felt like nothing was happening. I'd never done that before or since. And I missed . . . fucking nothing. Nothing had changed in any meaningful way, because there were too many minor characters doing too many irrelevant things for the sake of things happening, so none of the plot threads progressed an inch (Hamilton must have loved the Wheel of Time series, it did the same thing). Just terrible. Fun fact: I predicted that Fletcher Christian was Fletcher Christian before he introduced himself! I had recently watched Mutiny on the Bounty with Marlon Brando, and the way the character and his dialogue was written, I actually envisioned Brando as that character pages before he revealed who he was. Very weird that I guessed that correctly, it could have been literally anyone or just some nobody.
My favorite quote from Cryptonomicon: "The Russians can't make a shoe that's any better than the box it comes in. But when it comes to making weapons to kill Germans, they turn into f***ing Einsteins." Hilarious. 😅 Stephenson can be very funny when he wants.
I appreciate that you liked the video. I still need to streamline the processes of making the videos, though. If I have ironed out these things, it might be easier for me to go for a longer format. There is definitely a lot to talk about and maybe I will revisit this particular series in a future video. But stay tuned for more content related to other authors as well.
This was a good review, but perhaps a bit too... technical, or "efficient." :) What I mean is that it was very structured and to the point - to the point of being impersonal. I would have loved to hear more about what kind of thoughts and feeling the book gave you, and what specific parts you really enjoyed.
Feelings, I do not have those... Jokes aside, I get your point that some of these review videos have verged a bit into the impersonal, especially in the videos related to novels of longer book series. In those cases I have expressed more personal views in videos related to "rankings" (the video for the Culture Series is here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YFocdvlFBQk.html). Now I am opting for somewhat longer videos and there I naturally will have to add more of a personal viewpoint as well. So here is hoping. :D
@@DarkStarReviews Ok, I just watched that video, and it was great hearing a more personal opinion. But... would have loved to hear even more of your thoughts on it. :) But eh, don't sweat it. This is just me wanting to hear more of the good stuff!
@@Gnug215 No worries, I will take my time with the videos without stressing myself out. It might take longer to upload, but then again I personally am aiming for more quality over quantity.
@@DarkStarReviews Yeah, keep that up. I really just want to reiterate that my only real gripe was that you didn't make more, since what you did make was good. :)
I'm watching this video again, just to make it clear that I appreciate your format, I just think that in some books a slightly longer analysis would help with the algorithm. God Emperor of Dune is considered by some to be the best of the saga, I just see it as being stranger than the first three books, but still retaining some quality. From Dune to God Emperor, the last book was the one I had to take the most breaks to continue reading, I read the four books one after the other in the same month and maybe that's why God Emperor seemed more tedious. I think the "intellectual" aspect of the book is a little overrated, especially when compared to the other books in the saga that were its processors. I'd still say it's an 8/10 at best.
Yes, longer review videos will likely be picked up more by the algorithm and I am trying to steer into that direction. However, I am just doing this as a hobby, so there is only so much time left in a day😅. And you are also right with fans really praising God Emperor. I guess I ruffled some feathers, when I placed it at the end of my ranking in another video. But in my view, the "deconstruction" (I do not really like this word, but it fits here) of the hero/leader archetype did already occur in parts of Dune and specifically Dune Messiah - which funnily enough is one of the least liked Dune books. Also, the burden of knowing the future and having the resolve to act accordingly (or breaking under this pressure) was already a theme in the two first novels and is nothing only limited to God Emperor. And finally one of the main reasons why I did not enjoy God Emperor that much is simply that it is quite limited from a world building perspective. Most of the factions have been neutered by Leto II. and the plot itself is centered around an Arrakis that just felt empty in comparison to what we experienced in the first books of the series.
After having read Snow Crash in recent years, I was surprised at how accurately Stephenson was able to extrapolate future trends from technology that existed at time that book was published. I look forward to reading this one, and comparing his predictions and ideas to the world now. It sounds like a good read.
As I mentioned in this review of The Diamond Age, I am of the opinion that - on a societal level at least - this book might be more predictive than Snow Crash was. But the strange thing is that what The Diamond Age predicted started to materialize more openly in the last few years. That is why I enjoyed reading The Diamond Age way more when I read recently compared to more than a decade ago. In any case, I hope you will enjoy reading it!
the reality dysfunction set a high bar for sci fi writing when i first picked it up i just thought wow its some writer who using a lof of fancy words to look good then i picked up and read it and it was a big page turner and peter hamilton develops the plot and story line so well and hes right about ais true application and what gonna happen with that and it just get better the more you read the nights dawn trilolgy is a master peice and is in top 3 of the best sci fi ever written the pandoras star thing not sure what he was aiming their but he style of wring just makes it engaging and on point and from dare i say it from an criminal point of veiw as in hes looking at the score and the corruption and what would you do and hes really looked into it and for me the reality dyfunction is a brilliant work of sci and i dont think many books can come close to peters narrative and style is any
@@DarkStarReviews i like his feel for organised crime and he goes at it from whatys the worst that can happen and from there he really does develop a narrative that so engaging because its hard and itsd fast and its done from an organised crime corruption point of view not saying petter hamiltions a gangster but he writes from that point of view and that hard heavy plots like mindstar rising and julie and a quantum mirder i think thats his best work to be honest the minstar with julie and the quantum murder but the reality dysfunction is a fucking masterpoeice of sci fi and prob is one of the greatest sci fi novel ever written then entire book the realylity dysfunction id fucking brilliant
@@DarkStarReviews but peter hamilton always works on 3whats the worst hat could happen and he fits it into his story why his books are so good and he does it from that organised crime point of view he knows and their just brilliant books
@@DarkStarReviews but now is the time for one of his books to be put into a graphic nove land the book to do thaty is fallen dragon thayt book is brillaint and that would make a brilliant graphic novel
@@DarkStarReviews fallen dragon would make a brillaint graphic novel the love story and its not to complex so its not gonna require loads of art work and fulfilling the reality dysfunction the artwork required would be too much but fallen dragon i think that would work and if that does well then obviously we need thr reality dysfunction as a grphic nove along lines of dc or marvel dc would do it defo dc are the best comic house in the world and their pushing the boundareies when it copmes to comics DC are smashing it
God bro please dont cook again... i mean first up i dont where you heard people hate god emeproer cause it is probably the best or second best in series.then why did you put chapterhouse so high its incomplete My ranking (also quinns ideas ranking . Similar opinions) 1.God emperor of dune 2. Dune 3.children of dune 4.heretics of dune 5.chapterhouse dune 6.dune messiah
Certainly everyone is entitled to their own ranking. But regarding the overall popularity of God Emperor, it ranks fifth out of the six Frank Herbert books on Goodreads, Amazon, etc. Only Dune Messiah ranks lower. And in online and offline discussions, people more often than not have told me that they "like Dune and its sequels, but God Emperor is just weird." I get why people may like God Emperor, but its main themes that make it stand-out, Leto II's sacrifice and adherence to the Golden Path, are already explored in the original Dune and to a lesser extent in its two direct sequels. To put it bluntly, Paul chickened out where Leto II went through with his perceived duty. But then again, original Dune offers way more in other aspects than God Emperor. So having them in a similar range on a best-of list would not sit right with me. But as stated at the beginning, these are personal opinions.
I received the notification while reading Snow Crash. I'll watch the entire video after I finish reading the book. So far, I'm enjoying it more than Neuromancer, which I plan to read again as I didn't really like it when I first read it over a decade ago.
I tried to keep this review spoiler free, but if you are currently reading the book, then it might be the best course of action to just finish it. After all, it hopefully is entertaining enough to encourage you to finish it pretty quickly :D
Ranking the series is certainly a difficult thing. I have recently re-read the series so read most of the books twice. My Ranking is similar to yours with some changes, so .... 1. SURFACE DETAIL 2. HYDROGEN SONATA 3. LOOK TO WINDWARD 4. EXCESSION 5. PLAYER OF GAMES 6. USE OF WEAPONS 7. MATTER 8. CONSIDER PHLEBAS 9. INVERSIONS 10. STATE OF THE ART Player of Games is certainly the easiest to read but it is a "smaller story" compared with some of the later novels. Consider Phlebas was at 10 originally but rose slightly after my re-read. My top 6 are all outstanding SF books.
Yes, these rankings are not set in stone and are after all just a personal list. I guess INVERSIONS on #9 is reasonable as well, since it is very different from the other novels and possibly farthest away from "scifi". And you are right regarding Player of Games as well, it just happens to be also the novel that really made me appreciate the Culture Series, so I am likely biased in favor of it :D
I'm not sure which book it is, but whichever one contains the chapter that is solely Bean debating himself on whether or not he should have sex with his girlfriend deserves to be very low on this list.
This duology is easily in my top five sci-fi stories of all time. Thanks for reviewing it. Sadly I didn’t enjoy the rest of Hamilton’s work, including the Void trilogy that (sort of) follows this book. But man is this pair are so good. Morning Light Mountain is a fun villain.
His other works - specifically Void Trilogy and Night's Dawn Series - have more fantastical elements and might thus not be everyone's cup of tea. Chronicles of the Fallers was a pleasant surprise, as was The Great North Road in my view. So if you have not read these novels, you should consider to give it a go. At some point I will have to make reviews of Hamilton's most recent series - The Salvation Sequence. Just as a teaser: it had some interesting elements, but there are also some fundamental flaws.
Not sure yet, but looking at Orson Scott Card's prolific body of work, I would be surprised if he took as long to write a book as George R. R. Martin, for instance.
good summary! i just started the series, loved Consider Phlebas up until the second half where the pacing dramatically slowed down which slightly put me off reading Player of Games for a month there. Your review is making me planning to pick it up!
@@BurnEnough Thanks for the recommendation. I have not yet read the book, but at a first glance, it looks interesting and promising. I will add it to my reading list. However, I guess it will take a while for me to then also make a review video 🤷♂
I highly recommend 'Dominion' by C. J. Sansom. Probably the most well thought out WW2 alt. history with mixed plausibility depending on each individual consequence from the point of historic departure.
I agree that is seemed unplausabable behaviour for young kids.. the bullying scenes of the brother and the language/psychology the kids used even though gifted was strange and I had to keep reminding myself to just enjoy it and not be puzzled by it so much. I enjoyed it and my 10 year old boy loved it too so the book did the job of being enjoyable for wide age range.
This is often a problem in media trying to depict children or juvenile protagonists. One instance would be that in A Song of Ice and Fire the younger characters (i.e. Ned's children) had to be "aged-up" for the TV adaptation, as it would have otherwise seemed to unrealistic. As I mentioned in the video, it kind of makes sense, since the children in Ender's Game have been chosen for their intellect, but it is really complicated to make it work properly.
I need to read the book. I watched the movie when i was younger, and was quite moved by the story and its premise, as well as enjoyed the more realistic scenario, instead of the “Deutschland Über Alles” scenarios we see, where Germany obtains miraculous, absolute victories over everyone and the victorious Reich faces little to no issues at home or abroad. This one is more realistic, and shows that in actuality a German “victory” is really just a prolonged World War II, especially in the East, and that despite the Nazis’ military victory, their new empire is a fragile one and faces numerous domestic issues, similar to what the IRL Socialist states like the USSR faced after their triumphs. Great world, great story, moving ending, good piece of media.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy was one of the first "ebooks" I read. I purchased an electronic copy of the trilogy from Amazon several years before they released the first Kindle. I had a Palm PDA on which I had loaded some public domain ebooks I had downloaded from Project Gutenberg. That wasn't the greatest way to read a book since my PDA had a smaller screen than my current smartphone. But I liked that it was small enough that I could easily carry it with me and read it while I was on the subway or while waiting on a line. That was how I read many of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars novels. But one day I was looking at some Palm software that Amazon had on clearance. One item was an SD card listed as "PalmOne PalmPak eBook Series: Sci-Fi (m125, m130, i705 & m500 series)." That was all the listing said. It didn't have the titles or the author. But it was on sale for 88 cents so I added it to an order I was placing. I really enjoyed it. Downloading ebooks is much more convenient than purchasing them on SD cards, but getting a great series like that for less than a dollar was awesome.
Do any of the books have actual Robots? I know there is the MIND and ai drones and such, but are there any books in the series you would say are featuring full on Robots and not just sentient computers?
As far as I can remember, you either have drones, ships of various classes and then Minds controlling entire habitats. In the book Matter, a ship used a humanoid avatar, though. Not really a robot in the classical sense, but probably the closest thing to a robot in the Culture Series
@@DarkStarReviews thanks. Which of the books would u say is the most space opera? Like time on spaceships and traveling to different planets and multiple planets and politics?
@@dresdenjackshula4940 Honestly, this is not an easy question. Going the other way might be a better approach. You can exclude Inversions for being basically fantasy and The State of the Art for being a collection of short stories. Matter revolves mainly around a shellworld and one of its technologically less advanced societies. Surface Detail certainly fits your point about politics, but its “infernal” narrative threat is more of a horror story. Now if you want to confine your search to novels that have human or humanoid protagonists and not ships or minds, then this would somewhat exclude Excession, leaving The Hydrogen Sonata, Excession, The Player of Games, Look to Windward, and Consider Phlebas as contenders. These fit mostly your description, although some books will focus more on politics, others on travel, others on combat and conflict.
It's always nice to see a reviewers personal thoughts on a series. I also found Player of Games and Excession to be quite compelling reads, especially since I read them both right after Consider Phlebas (quite a step up in how good they were!). Gurgeh was a fascinating protagonist for me as well. I liked seeing the exploration of the ethics and social dynamics of the Culture Minds in Excession, its fascinating to see how they perceive and deal with issues of significance like the excession proper as well as the incursions of other spacefaring peoples.
Good to hear that you liked the video! I think this format of a purely subjective ranking complements the "normal" review videos that I have been uploading, since in the latter I actually try to be as objective as possible.
Look to windward is one of the few books that brought me to tears. I was sitting in a booth at a bar/grill when I read the passage. When the mind explained how awful it was to kill people, and how he will devote his life to protecting such fragile beings, it just broke me. I wish more people had such concern for their fellow man.
Indeed, that was a powerful part of the book. And it once more highlights that in the Culture, the artificial intelligences (ships, minds, etc.) tend to exhibit more humanity than the humanoid characters.
I like your idea of a scifi Mohs Scale. The clarity of your thumbnails titles, etc. is refreshing and reminds me of browsing a shelf at a store or library, but with some very much appreciated extra context as to what the story might be like. I look forward to reading some of the books featured here.
Thanks for the positive feedback. I got the idea from other channels related to vastly different topics (tech reviews, auto reviews, etc.). Apart from a general audience score that you would get on Amazon or Goodreads, I really missed an easy scale to see how hard is the sci in this scifi? How big is this universe? How many characters will there be? I am still tinkering with other ideas, so stay tuned.
I feel like I'm pretty alone in my opinion of this book. I thought it was decent but it was way more concerned with it's several gigantic action set pieces than world building, character development, or even plot. It reminds me a lot of The Mandolorian show where a simple plot is laid out at the start, and then a bunch of whacky adventures take place until some more plot happens near the end.
That is an interesting thought and I can see some logic to it. The gigantic action set pieces (the ring world, the underground train system, etc.) are what I remember mostly from the book, not the plot, or characters.
Indeed that was my own experience. People hailed the Culture Series, but the first book, Consider Phlebas, did not convince me. However, The Player of Games was really enjoyable to read.
For me the cathedral of hate of how it built and ended up was much funnier than the much quoted 42. Simple things such as throwing up after teleportation are also funny but make much sense...
It's true that the "42" is widely known, but not necessarily the funniest part of the book. Just from memory, I would say that (one) of the described origins of humanity as the most useless third of another, much more advanced society, is way more compelling. Just the way how these "early" humans tried to combat inflation made it such an interesting concept. Or the description of the "Somebody Else's Problem Field" as a cheap, energy saving alternative to a cloaking device was also unexpectedly outrageous. And there are many more. I guess the "42" is just very catchy due to its brevity in explaining the premise. It is also probably easier to sell T-shirts this way.
The first time I finished this book was in one sitting, i was done at 2 am and turned to the front page and started all over again. I miss the first reading.
@@mattofsmegpoop3027 In such situations, I tend to re-read the book in question a couple of years (or even decades) later. It might not be like the first time, but it still is a very enjoyable. However, this will likely depend on one's own memory, I guess.😀
Glad to see someone getting into Hamilton's work! I have a friend that got me into his books and I love them now. Hope you review Reality Disfunction and the other books in that series.
I will definitely review the Night's Dawn Trilogy at some point as well as Hamilton's more recent Salvation Sequence. It might take a little while though, so stay tuned!
You know all I remember of this book is how the diffrent place people lived in the solar system. Definitely came up in the expanse when it came to colonies on planets. That was the moment I knew what the expanse was about.
Exactly, the different planets and the entire setting were probably the strongest part of the book. The story and characters were rather weak in comparison, in my view. Also, it might still take me a while, but I will definitely do reviews of the Expanse series.
