Great North Road

Unusual for PH to do a story in one book but although as always quite long it was very good "a page turner". I love the way the story was developed with its back stories fitted in along the way. PH developed a really sumptuous universe in this tale. I love his attention to detail. The plot lines were good and kept you guessing until near the end. The end itself which is quite involved was wonderful and a bit of a tear jerker but I do tend to be a bit of a weepy. Nice that he managed to slip Rutland in!

Great North Road tells two stories, one a detective murder mystery story based in Newcastle and the other a thriller, a monster hunt, set on the tropical planet of St Libra. Sounds good, doesn't it?As the novel begins, a body is pulled out of the Tyne in Newcastle, its heart shredded by five razor fingers. Investigator Sidney Hurst has two (actually, he probably has a lot more than that) problems to overcome. The first is that the victim is a member of the North family; a hugely powerful dynasty comprising three generations (the fours aren't doing so well) of clones, all created from three original brothers. And yet, this lost soul is unclaimed. All the clones are accounted for. The other problem is that this crime replicates another committed twenty years previously when one of the original three brothers, along with his household, was slaughtered in exactly the same way. One of his harem, Angela Tramelo, the only escapee, has served the years since in prison, following an interrogative torture in which she proclaimed that the murders had been committed by a monster that she had escaped.While Sidney continues to investigate the crime on Earth, tracing the twisted threads through the North enterprises, Vance Elston, Angela's interrogator and a soldier who fights in the name of Christianity, leads an expedition to hunt out the monster, an expedition which includes the non-ageing Angela. She is a One in Ten; this means she may last for hundreds of years, adding further layers of ambiguity to the truth. The mystery is intensified by the knowledge that St Libra contains no animal life at all. In fact, none of its life could have evolved in the time that it's existed. So, if it is a terraformed world, who and where are the makers? One by one the members of the team are picked off. These are frightening times on St Libra, not least because the planet itself has turned against its human inhabitants.Great North Road is a fine novel. At 1100 pages it is complex, intricately woven and deep in characterisation and rich in worldbuilding. The scenes on St Libra are spellbinding. Unfortunately, this also means that by comparison the scenes in Newcastle are not. The police procedural takes up far too many chapters. Interesting as they are, they cannot compete with the rest of the story. This also means that there are sections of the novel in which Angela doesn't feature and that is a pity. However likeable and interesting Sidney is (and he is), he doesn't compare enough to Angela and other members of her team. The truths that are unearthed on Angela's expedition resonate far more powerfully. Nevertheless, the scenes in Newcastle aren't poor, they're just up against the extraordinary worldbuilding powers of Peter F Hamilton. Although I would argue that there are far too many chapters beginning with Sid's family breakfasts.Hamilton creates fascinating characters. There are layers to them that time unpeels. It is a pity that Hamilton's female characters spend far too long disrobed amusing the male characters - not least because the women are so interesting. Hamilton does his female characters a great disservice in this and other novels by reducing them to little more than male sexual toys despite their great intelligence and integrity. In a novel of 1100 pages this is not easy to overlook.I found Great North Road almost impossible to put down. The Newcastle scenes slow the action down a little but they fill the pause with fascinating details and procedural investigation; I wanted to know the truth. The St Libra scenes are full of tropical life and they are compelling. There are mysteries out here in the jungle and not all of them are to do with the knife-fingered monster. Throughout, the narrative takes leaps into the past, mostly providing us with the astonishing past of Angela as we learn who she is. The movement between the years works very well. And all the time something picks off the expedition members one by one.The worldbuilding is magnificent, whether it be St Libra, wintry Newcastle or the orbit of Jupiter. It's the little details that Hamilton provides, whether of places or people, that enrich the experience of reading his novel. I continue to work my way through his books, constantly grateful to have discovered them. If you haven't read any Peter F Hamilton before I would recommend you begin with  Pandora's Star (Commonwealth Saga 1) , otherwise do plunge in to take a trip down Great North Road.

So how could I resist an SF novel with large chunks of it set in Newcastle 130 years from now, especially with a title like that?(I should explain that I live in the City of Sunderland, a mere 12 miles south east of Newcastle. Both cities boast prominent football teams which are arch-rivals, particularly their fans and just last weekend Sunderland, the under-dogs, beat their rivals 3-0 away at Newcastle. As a result a few hundred Newcastle fans trashed their own city centre which gives you an idea of the mentality of the Newcastle United supporter. This has nothing to do with the review, I just wanted to mention it.(On the other hand, the Great North Road refers to the A1 which starts down south and continues all the way up to Scotland. The Romans built the first one nearly two thousand years ago. In this novel, however, it also refers to a road that leads to another planet on which the rest of the novel takes place.)You may have noted the page length of the novel. This does not include those pages devoted to the timeline prior to the start of the novel nor the list of key characters and their functions (e.g. detective). It's a very long book which took me only five days to finish.As I don't do long reviews -I write reviews not criticism- it's very difficult to briefly summarise the plot. But I'll do my best.It's triggered by the discovery of a body, one of a clone family of industrialists, who has been murdered in a unique way that was only seen once before and the woman found guilty of the early murders, which included another clone, is still in prison; also the clone can not be identified. A local detective is put in charge of the case and what is discovered prompts a military expedition to a colonised world, which provides vast quantities of bio-fuel, in search of a previously undiscovered deadly alien species and is accessed via the Newcastle gateway.Woah! That's not bad even if I say so myself.Of course it doesn't begin to even hint at the richness and complexity of this terrific piece of SF. There are so many things that Hamilton does so well.His portrayal of the not quite near future is comprehensible and accessible. My view of the future is that it's not unlike the present only with twiddly bits. Not that many years ago I took my first look at Sunderland's new bus station from which is visible a new shopping complex and it looked like the future as seen from 1950's illustrations. And yet in between bus station and shopping centre were several buildings which have remained pretty much unchanged in nearly 60 years or more. The future, with twiddly bits. People still go to pubs and chat up women while every dust mote is a camera watching everything. Well, almost. Many car accidents are caused by drunks who won't let the car drive itself.He doesn't lay it on with a trowel but global warming has given the north of England long winters full of blizzards and snow drifts and short hot summers.The main foci of the novel are the detective and his team trying to solve the murder and identify the victim and the story of the woman, who was found guilty of the original murders and claimed it was an alien, who goes to the alien world with the military expedition. In one sense it's a mystery novel set in the future with both plot strands essentially being attempts to solve a mystery which ultimately has one solution.Hamilton uses his flashbacks well, revealing only part of an incident which suggests one thing only to show something different when it is continued. Characters who appear to belong to different subplots are revealed to be closely connected. Sometimes they're even the same person.Frankly I stand in awe of the author who juggles so many different things yet manages to bring them all together in what is finally revealed as a gloriously woven tapestry.If you want a book to lose yourself in, this is it.